Heart of Europe Week at INSEAD

It’s time to share some more of the student life activities! One of INSEAD’s greatest advantages is the diversity of its student body. As mentioned before, Simon’s class has about 65 nationalities. For the students to learn more about countries or regions that they may be unfamiliar with, INSEAD has created a platform called “national weeks” which is a week where students from one country / region can present its cultural heritage, the cafeteria will have a “national dish” each day in that week and there are certain social events being offered – usually a dinner and a party. In January, there was “Lowlands Week” that introduced the Netherlands and Belgium (and a lot of Heineken), in April was “Dragon Week”, portraying China and in early May happened “LatAm Week”, a week that saw many countries from Central and South America. Heart of Europe Week, representing Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein (since there is one Student from Liechtenstein in the class graduating in July) was coming up next in the last week of May.

The logo for the week

The selection of these national weeks happens twice a year. Simon (and to some extent Ana as well) had experienced the bidding day for the national weeks that will happen after the summer – a very fun, colorful and emotional day as students from e.g. Lebanon try to convince the students from Israel to give them their vote, introducing the planned program and giving out national sweets and (later in the day) drinks. The voting for the Heart of Europe Week had occurred before Simon joined INSEAD. However, he was getting involved in some of the organization and helped to acquire sponsors, plan the evening dinner and some “Oktoberfest Games”. Also, Ana and Simon made sure that they would have a Bavarian outfit available in Singapore since the “national outfits” are also always part of the whole show. The closer the week approached, the more preparation time it required but also the excitement grew stronger.

The organization team

Finally, the last week of May was Heart of Europe week. The central European students had decorated the campus with pictures from the Alps and Vienna and Simon and another German student had spent hours to prepare a video for the “amphi storming” – that is another INSEAD term – basically, at the end of a lecture, the students organizing the event will “storm” one of the class rooms (amphis), play a short video, usually do a dance and then introduce the highlights of the week’s program.  They also managed to involve a few of the professors that were trying to fake a German accent and also had about 10 people in the class room dancing on the Oktoberfest song “Das Rote Pferd”. In case you are interested, you can check the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tmRvfJuOko

The highlights were definitely the dinner on Tuesday and the party on Friday. For the dinner, the organization team had secured a large beer hall room at the Singapore Paulaner. The Paulaner is actually a Munich based beer brand but operates beer hall type of restaurants in all of Asia – more than 20 in China! – and their food is surprisingly better than at the average Bavarian restaurant in Munich. There were more than 140 people who enjoyed a bunch of German / Bavarian specialties from Schweinebraten to Kässpätzle – if you do not know what that is, you need to try it :-)

 

Some delicious German food in Singapore

 The fun part was that after the actual dinner, the hole event turned into a small party celebration with more Oktoberfest music, group dances and conga lines. The students from the Heart of Europe, their partners but also other students in possession of Bavarian clothes had put on their best gear. 

Ana and Simon with more Central Europeans

It was a lot of fun and only the class participation the next morning suffered a little bit. Most of the “other” students would purchase the official branded HoE t-shirts that resembled a bit the upper part of the Lederhosen and wear them on campus quite frequently. 

Simon with "Bavarian girls" from India, Canada and Germany

Other events at INSEAD included some central European breakfast options, a German movie night, Wiener Walzer ballroom dance lessons and loads of free beer in the evening. 

Wiener Walzer explained internationally

Chief Beer Draught Executive (CBDE)

The climax of the week was the Heart of Europe party in a new club in Singapore. Well, it could have been any type of party really but it was also great atmosphere and the highlight there was that the party organizer (an external guy that was hired) had managed to get about 50 bottles of German beer to be distributed for free. Simon and two other INSEAD students that had done the major parts of the organization then went on top of the bar and distributed the beer to very pleased party goers. All in all, a great success and definitely some good advertisement for the Heart of Europe countries.

Servus und Auf Wiedersehen from German speaking Singapur :-)
Ana and Simon