SC Madrid 2004
SC Madrid 2004
When I first heard about BEST last spring I wanted to apply for a course immediately but unfortunately the deadline for Spring Courses was already over. As soon as the list of Summer Courses was online, I started searching for information on all the courses, which sounded interesting to me, and finally I applied for three of them. I couldn't believe when I heard that I was one of 20 lucky participants out of more than 400 who applied for the BEST Madrid Summer Course.
I was the only German speaking participant (besides this Russian girl who lived in Germany for the last years but didn't want to speak German ...) and when I arrived in Madrid in mid-July I only knew few people from our mailing list. But from the beginning on I felt in perfect company! All the people - participants and organizers - were so friendly and communicative that it was fun to talk with all of them. And isn't it a great start into the Summer Course, if the first thing you do is to go to the swimming pool, which was directly at our residence? Yes, you heard right: We had a pool at our sleeping place! I guess there is no better way to get to know all those nice girls, right?
Even better than the pool were the parties our Spanish friends organized for us! We had a special theme every day and it's impossible to describe how much effort they put into showing us their culture, their food or just how to party in Spain ... Obviously one of the highlights was the famous International Evening were we had the opportunity to taste great food from all the different countries ("Flaming Manner" from Austria included of course). Oh, I forgot about the drinks! Yeah, there were a lot of good drinks to taste to say at least.
Besides partying we also did some sight-seeing in and around Madrid. The city rally and the "night walk" were awesome but what I and my summer course friends enjoyed most was our two day visit of the medieval town Toledo.
I think I don't need to tell you that the night life in Madrid is outstanding. And so is the food (tapas, tortillas, calamari ... yum yum!). After you tried one meal at the Mensa of Technical University Madrid, you will never want to go back.
Let's move on to the academic part. The topic of our course was "Web design for all", which was a little bit misleading for some of us, but it turned out as very interesting. We learned how to make web pages accessible to all people. And with all people I mean all, no matter if they're disabled, blind, deaf ... sounds hard? It is - as we experienced in those two weeks. But we were able to hear the opinions of a lot of people, who experience it every day how hard it is to use the internet without seeing or hearing what's going on at the screen. And although it was sometimes a little bit hard to stay awake early in morning, it was definitely worth going to all the lectures.
All in all I can only say that these two weeks were by far the best "holidays" I ever had. I met so many new friends there, that it was so hard to say goodbye at the departure day. Some of us had the opportunity to stay a little bit longer or to continue travelling together but unfortunately I had to leave Madrid and go home to Austria. Two of my BEST friends already visited me here in Vienna and we had a great weekend. I am sure that I will be able to meet some of the other guys and girls soon somewhere in Europe. And if you know BEST you know that Europe is small, very small!
text and photos by Matthias Buchetics
