Strasbourg Day 6: Coming Home

The course was now over, and we had said most of our goodbyes. However Andrea, Marlene, Gaylord and myself decided to have lunch together, before I left. We made our way to the centre of the city, and had a very good lunch together at Le Dauphin. We were seated outside and it was great fun. I had Voul-au-vent mmmmm and we chatted our way through lunch. Suddenly it started pouring with rain 😦 and the umbrellas under which we were seated started dripping. After some table movement and seating settlements we managed to finish our meal.

Unfortunately it was now time to make my way to the bus station to start my trip back home. I said goodbye to my new-found friends, and left to the train station. There I found the line for the Lufthansa airport bus and started my trip back home. The bus trip was OK, but things only went downhill the moment I arrived at Frankfurt airport. There was a long queue and wait to check in, because they had some problems. This made people frustrated. I was in the club-class/flypass line (I have fly pass weee). And once they started checking in a guy decided to ask whether he could check in because he was club class. They told him sure and they just checked him in whilst skipping the whole line. Obviously people got angry, because everyone in that line was either club class or fly pass. But anyway I checked in and went to the gate. We boarded the airplane on time. But then we waited, and waited, and waited. After 1.5hours on the plane we finally flew WEEEEE.

The flight was not that nice, especially towards the end where we had quite some turbulence, and we landed to find a stormy Malta. I then went to get my luggage and it had a stud missing at the bottom. I went to claim the damage, but they told me it is wear and tear…so I now have a nail poking out of my luggage…well, patience right. I came home and SLEPT.

Overall…it was a great experience. I think that the course could do with some improvements. But it is something that people should do more of 😀

Strasbourg Day 6: Course Day 5

My last day in Strasbourg had arrived :(…I woke up earlier than usual and made my way to the ENGEES building, where I met with some of the others and we left to arrive at the Council of Europe building together. It seems to be a big thing to be invited there, because not many people get to go there…you need invites etc etc. In fact most of the French people had never been. We arrived at the CoE building and met up with the others who made their way there on their own, had some photos outside the building and then proceeded to go through security. There we were given our name tag (saying EXPERT weeee) and we went inside.

CoE Building

Once inside, we met up with our tour guide for the day. We saw a small video about the CoE and then went to the Parliamentary assembly. This was not in session, since it only operates about 1 week in every month or so. It seems that there are many buildings in the CoE, many of which are used for only a short period every month. I think it is such a waste, as they are probably able to have multifunction rooms.

CoE Parliamentary Assembly

After this, we went into our meeting room, where we gave our presentations which we had prepared the day before. OUr group went last, and I think we did a good job…yeah go team 😀

Once we finished we had a small discussion with the Executive Secretary of the Eur-opa Major Hazards agreement, Eladio Fernandez-Galiano. I was impressed at how he was willing to speak openly about his opinions in relation to climate change, risk management and environmental consideration and governance of such issues. He was also very knowledgeable about the subject and was willing to answer any questions we had.

By now the tour was over, and the course had seen its end 😦 so we all said our good byes and made our separate ways 😦