LC Innsbruck, Austria

Well, after a 2 hours flight from Munich to Istanbul and 70 minutes waiting at the Istanbul airport, the bus to the Global Village finally left. Just imagine me, having my real big suitcase with about 22 kg, my bag pack and still wearing long trousers heading to the site for Global Village. Even though the bus was riding real fast (Turkish driving style :-) we didn’t make it in time and the rest of the Austrian delegation was already partying. Changing clothes fast to wear traditional Austrian clothes (Lederhosen, Stutzen and a Trachtenhemd) I was heading for the party, joining the rest of the Austrian delegation. Tiredness was like blown away when I saw about 650 other delegates, wearing their traditional clothes, dancing AIESEC dances.

After some amazing 2 hours we all went to a conference hall to attend the opening ceremony. Hearing very “inspiring” speeches from PAI, MCP of Turkey, Major of Istanbul etc. many people were just sleeping as they were tired *g*. Finally, at around 23h00 I arrived at the venue (YETIPEDE University), still carrying my heavy suitcase, fu**ing tired and guess what: I had to wait half an hour at the check-in desk. (I’ve later on been told that the rest of the Austrian delegation had been waiting for more than 2 hours when they arrived on the 17th of August). So, around 23h30 I knew where I would sleep. Next problem: how to go there? The university campus is quite large and I had no clue where to go. Fortunately Karo took some time to show me around but..iIf you think that all my problems were solved by now: you are wrong. All the rooms at the dormitories are filled with 2 people but there was just one key per room. My key wasn’t at the check-in desk any more, therefore the Congress Committee assured me that my room mate was in my room. Standing in front of my room I found out that this was not the case. Damned. Where should I now find my room mate? Running around at the whole university campus with my big suitcase again? This was certainly not what I wanted to do. So fortunately one of the Congress Committee members finally opened my door – I was in. After a whole day, I was standing in front of a bed and looking forward to sleep. The room is not big, therefore I almost immediately found another problem: no toilet paper in the bathroom. Travelling half the world, being tired and just wanting to sleep, I did not even have toilet paper. It took another quarter of an hour to find again this member of the Congress Committee and to make him organise some toilet paper for me. “Toilet paper is handed over to delegates on Monday” he said. “Monday?” I asked. “That’s in 6 days. What do you guess I can do without toilet paper for 6 days?” “You can buy toilet paper here!” I was shocked. What kind of organisation was that? This is the biggest AIESEC conference in the world, there are 650 delegates from almost 100 countries in the world and there’s not even toilet paper? Conferences in Austria have a higher standard!! Well, after some time he then came back with 1 role of toilet paper explaining me that he’s doing me a favour. I guess you can imagine that I became angry by now. I was just glad that my room mate wasn’t there cause otherwise all my anger would have hit him.
Unpacking my suitcase I had the chance to calm down before he arrived around 1 o’clock. This Malaysian guy just thought that (as he didn’t have a room mate during the pre-meetings from 17th – 20th of August) he won’t get a room mate. Therefore he didn’t see a necessity to hand in the key at the info-desk when leaving the room. I kindly explained him that this needs to change by now before we got to know each other better.
At around 2 o’clock, 19 hours after getting up, I went to bed, feeling stressed and disappointed by IC for the first time as I had just expected a conference with Austrian standards.