Unfortunately for me, the day for which I’m writing this blog post was the day where we spent most of the day on the train from Copenhagen to Stockholm. Our trip to Copenhagen was a resounding success as I found the city to be just as charming as the first time I visited except with MUCH better weather. With Copenhagen being such a small city, it was really nice to be able to walk around and see almost everything the city had to offer. We even managed to have a couple of days where the rain decided to stop long enough for some sun to come through. But as our time in Copenhagen came to an end, we boarded a train and headed for the border to Sweden. While the train ride was quite long, it happened to be on board one of the nicer trains I’ve ridden on across Europe. I certainly did my best to keep myself occupied during the train ride by watching the new season of Orange is the New Black and discussing politics with Dr. Birchfield. After killing most of the trip with these, a nice lunch on the train, and a short power nap we were closing in on Stockholm’s Central Station. Pulling into the city gave a fantastic view as the sun was out and the city was beautiful!

In front of the Swedish Parliament building!

Our late afternoon arrival would have given little time to explore anywhere else in the world, but when the sun doesn’t set until 11 P.M. you have a lot of time on your hands. We ventured out in a large group to get a taste of what Stockholm has to offer. We stumbled upon the area in which the Royal Palace and Parliament buildings are right next to each other. Neither had an extravagantly beautiful or ornate architecture, but both were impressive and distinctly Scandinavian in nature. We then spent some time wandering around the area called Gamla Stan. This is Stockholm’s “old town” where there has been a settlement of some sort dating back to the year 1252! The streets were narrow and lined with shops and houses. One of the distinct things that I noticed in regards to architecture of not just this area but Stockholm as a whole in my brief visit is the black roof tiles on most buildings in the city. When you’re in France or Italy almost every building and house has red roof tiles that I began to associate with Europe in general. However in Sweden all of the tiles are black giving the city a unique architectural aspect to set it apart from its neighbors in the south. I look forward to the coming days and really getting to experience Stockholm!

Following a day of awesome site visits to NATO and the European Parliament, today was the first of the guest lectures for the program. It was presented by Former Colonel in the Italian army Giorgio Cuzzelli. It was a wonderful honor to listen to a man of such distinguished service who worked both in the military commanding directly against security threats and at NATO in charge of generating different approaches to the ever changing security landscape. Based on this experience, he was able to give our group first hand knowledge into the subject matter. Our day with Col. Cuzzelli was separated into two lectures with one centering around the concept of security and the other focused on crisis management. Both lectures were related, but the security lecture was focused more on the theory and idea itself while the crisis management lecture was centered around actual planning and response to issues at hand.

The security lecture presented us with the concept of security and what the word truly means. As Col. Cuzzelli points out, security is extremely complex, multifaceted, and not strictly military in nature. This was the central point of the lecture as the idea of security was broken down into three distinct fields of National, International, and Human security. Each of these have evolved over time to create the complex security environment in today’s world. He presented numerous examples of how security evolved from the “Possession of the Prince” to the emphasis on security of the people through revolutions to transfer sovereignty. Perhaps the most interesting part of this discussion for me was talking about the price of security. Col. Cuzzelli referenced many examples, but centered on the U.S.’ War on Terror. We discussed to what degree civil liberties should be if ever sacrificed in order to guarantee safety. An extension of this was talking about the implications of excessive security (in the case of North Korea) as opposed to too little security (in the case of countries in Africa and South America) and how delicate a balance it is to maintain. As someone who is very intrigued by security in the modern world, this discussion was very rewarding for me.

The second lecture was focused on how to approach crises both before they occur and how to deal with the aftermath. Col. Cuzzelli heavily emphasized the point that if you have to deal in a reactionary fashion to a crisis, then security has been compromised and the process has failed. It was an interesting take, that I had not really considered before. Since the majority of news stories regarding crises are focused on the aftermath and dealing with them instead of crises that have been prevented this is a point that was something I hadn’t really thought of. Outside of this, the biggest takeaway I took from this lecture was Col. Cuzzelli’s heavy emphasis on being able to place yourself in your adversary’s shoes to understand their actions. Without this, he said that any approach you take will be the wrong one. This is something I have always thought of as many of the actions taken in today’s world seem to be focused solely on national interest instead of treating the cause of problem. He advocated this to be done in all cases especially in the cases of dealing with Vladimir Putin the Islamic State. This tied into a further point that in order to truly solve these issues, we need to ensure that stability is held and that there is an actual exit strategy in place in order to prevent the same situations that have continuously occurred from happening again.

Both of these lectures I found to be extremely fascinating and informative. Couple that with a catered lunch and it was a great day! This weekend will still be packed with free visits to the EU institutions followed by a trip to the European Commission on Monday. The trip so far has surpassed my expectations, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Since the program is nearly over, I decided to compile an overly sentimental and much too thorough list of tips for future EU study abroad-ers. Enjoy!

• Things to bring
  • An umbrella and a raincoat, everywhere you go: Among the many positive qualities that Brussels possesses, consistently sunny weather is notably missing. You will get rained on, guaranteed.
  • A gift for your host family: It’s hard to shop for people you’ve never met, but bringing them a gift is a really thoughtful way to say thank you and it will help you start the summer off right.
  • Good walking shoes: Your feet will hurt anyway.
  • Sweaters: Brussels is at about the same latitude as the middle of Canada, so it will be colder than you think, especially at the beginning of the summer. Also, the sun will rise really early and set really late so be prepared for that weirdness.
  • Not much else: Believe it or not, there are stores that sell clothing and toiletries in Europe. If you’re not sure you should bring something, leave it at home. Your beanie baby collection will be waiting for you in August.
• Things to do
  • Be independent: You’re an adult and you can choose how to spend your free time. Don’t do something just because your friends want to. Within the bounds of safety, don’t be afraid to explore on your own.
  • Make a plan: Aimless wandering sounds fun, but when you’re tired, hungry, and lost you’re going to wish you’d spent 15 minutes on Yelp before venturing out of the hotel, I promise.
  • Get to know Google Maps: The little blue dot that tells you where you are even without wifi is a shining beacon of light in a dark world. Google Maps is your new best friend.
  • Participate, pay attention, ask questions: Firstly, participation is a huge portion of your grade. More importantly, though, this is likely the only opportunity you’ll get to speak to so many amazingly qualified people from around the world, so even when it’s hard to stay engaged during a three hour lecture, drink a cup of coffee, suck it up, and make the most of it.
• Things to not do
  • Expect free water and bathrooms: Europeans apparently do not consume water and therefore do not need to use restrooms. They take advantage of Americans’ dependence on such silly luxuries by charging for both.
  • Lose patience with your classmates: The program is full of smart, amazing, globally aware people with big personalities. 10 weeks with the same 25 people can be a lot, but study abroad friends are the best friends.
  • Expect study abroad to be a vacation: Studying abroad can be hard. There is work to be done, though it’s definitely more fun than normal Tech work. Living away from everything familiar for an extended amount of time is not sunshine and rainbows all the time. There will be growing pains, but there’s nothing better in the long run.
  • Take anything for granted: It doesn’t get any better than this.

Greetings again from Belgium! As our tired group made their way back from the beautiful and (too) sunny Paris to the comfortable familiarity of Brussels, we refocused our minds from discussions of foreign security matters and EU institutional concepts towards an exploration of international human rights in the context of European nations.

We welcomed Dr. Mikulas Fabry to Belgium, who is graciously imparting his expertise in ethics and international affairs through a crash course on the nature of international human rights policy and its omnipresent impact on world affairs. We began by discussing current issues concerning the European continent, including the migration of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa into EU countries, Hungary’s reconsideration of capital punishment, and ongoing war crimes occurring in the Gaza Strip. There are numerous obstacles to achieving peace in the current international system, and many center around the lack of effective enforcement mechanisms for human rights treaties, which stem from an inability of national governments and international institutions to concretely define the terms of human rights debates.

Dr. Fabry lead us through a comprehensive definition of human rights, and I especially appreciated our discussion on how human rights were developed from natural law, which constitutes an ancient moral theory that nature contains objective moral standards that are accessible to all people by virtue of their reasoning. A world that is constantly evolving and entrenched in cultural relativism contests natural law, and by extension, human rights protections. This clash between what a culture deems is acceptable for those involved and what should naturally be accessible to all peoples is still relevant in contemporary human rights conflicts.

Our afternoon lecture centered around various international institutions that contribute to the global human rights debate, including the various institutions from the United Nations and the European Union specifically. These institutions have evolved and adapted to address human rights concerns in the past, and are continuing to develop in response to recent crises such as the migration problems and rising tension in the Middle East.

The general conclusions reached after a comprehensive and engaging six hour discussion were that unsympathetic governments hinder the operability of human rights machinery on both the regional and global level, and that sympathetic governments benefit greatly from external reviews of their practices because those reviews establish a good reputation on the global stage. All of us received a solid (but firehose) grounding in human rights theory and are ready to discuss more about the International Criminal Court and other details regarding human rights institutions tomorrow.

We all look forward to using the knowledge we gained from today’s lectures and will gain from tomorrow’s as we prepare to embark to The Hague, Berlin, and Kraków in order to become truly immersed in current human rights issues through relevant site visits!