Alpbach

After leaving my home away from home in Norway I flew to Austria, for a journey deep into the Tyrolean Alps. My destination was Alpbach, a tiny little village that is more important for world events than its size would let on. Not a few conferences and retreats of great importance have been held in the beautiful little town. The group that I was a part of was called the Alpbach European Forum. The Forum brought together students from all over world to offer the opportunity to learn about the European Union, European integration, and the possibilities that the future holds. All that aside, it was nice to wake up to this every morning…

The conference center was filled a lot of the time and we got to meet some really interesting people

This was the big speech…

That is Ban Ki-moon, the General Secretary of the United Nations. Not everything was formal of course, we had a lot of informal dinners and receptions that allowed us to mingle with the other students and some of the dignitaries. One evening I got to sit next to the Austrian Ambassador to the United Nations for dinner and later shared a lot of wine with my colleagues and a very influential Norwegian ambassador who was heavily involved in the middle east. I have pictures and names, but I am not going to post them here on a public site. So you will just have to make do with the pictures from a couple of more relaxing days when we went up the mountain…

That was from the first time, it was a beautiful warm day. Here was the second time…

As you can see, it snowed a bit. So we didn’t go to the very top, which was okay with me since we were up about 7,000 feet and the air was kind of thin.

I met a lot of people from all over the place and made a lot of friends. It was a really great experience for me.