As the blue team’s Europe On Track tradition, this part of the trip also had to start with a hiccup! Our first train was cancelled and the second one had a huge delay. By now we are experienced in unexpected changes so it doesn’t phase us and we still manage to make it to Brussels on time.
Our stay in Brussels was a bit more peculiar than the others, firstly because we stayed for twice as many days as at other stops and secondly because we stayed in the AEGEE house! The AEGEE house is the place where the committee director of AEGEE Europe is housed and if I could describe it in one word, that would be “endless”. It was the first time during our trip where all three of us could spend some time alone to work on our tasks or simply relax and the best part is, there’s even a garden!
Teddy, the actual president of AEGEE Europe welcomed us and made sure that we are comfortable and enjoying our time there throughout the days. We didn’t get to meet many others from the board beside Teo who’s the external relations responsible.
Teddy gave us a “comic tour”, which includes murals of different characters from Belgian comic books (surprisingly, much more than we expected, apparently Belgium has [] ). She also gave us the chance to try all the famous local delicacies! From waffles to Pommes Frittes to homecooked food, we were never hungry, thank you! 
On our first day, we attended the workshop of EoT8’s trainer Alejandra at a park, which helped us with becoming change-makers and “fighting” for a better Europe! Then, it was our turn to give a workshop about gender equality in a post-pandemic world! We were a small circle, yet we still managed to have quite lucrative conversations with the participants.
The following day we visited the house of Europe, and in the afternoon we gave a workshop about campaigns on Gender-based violence, where our participants planned a campaign on raising awareness about the gender wage gap and involving companies in closing it.
Even though we managed to hop by Leuven for a visit, our stop there was cancelled so instead of giving two workshops, the aim was to give 3-but online. We changed the workshops to fit an online environment and tried our best!
Unfortunately, in the first and last workshops, we hardly had any participants, but we managed to do the second one- gender-based violence in the online world, as planned. It is harder to build a safe space in a digital environment with strangers, but the participants were eager to share and learn, which is great.
Because of the lack of participants in most of our stops, we were thinking of different ways to approach people coming from a wider range of backgrounds. So for Leuven, we took the streets and with our large posters, we approached people on the streets! We were surprised by how much people already knew about gender-based violence and gender inequality, the only topic people weren’t as informed about was the Istanbul convention. After explaining what the Istanbul convention is, most people agree that it’s something necessary in Belgium.
By the time we started feeling like locals, it was already time to go to the next stop! Thank you Teddy for giving us an unforgettable experience! See you somewhere in Europe!
