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| From left: Sunny Gladish - Communications Coordinator, Professor Dagmar Soennecken, Nancy Tran - Logistics Coordinator, Sandra Song - Panelist Coordinator, Professor Ulrich Best, Nicole Thwaites - Finance Coordinator, Malvina Jozwik - Project Coordinator, Suharmys Vivanco - Funding Coordinator, Vanita Thind - Panelist Coordinator |
My apologies for the late update! We’ve all been busy, busy, busy working on the organizational aspects of the conference, consolidating our decisions for our panel topics and panelists, networking with the German community, approaching potential sponsors, setting up our website, planning our field trip, and preparing for our official launch scheduled for January 2012. (Excuse me a moment while I catch my breath…phew, an exhaustive list, I know!) More information on our launch, events and news will be posted on our facebook page as it becomes available!
Earlier during the month, our group attended an open house at the Goethe-Institute Toronto, a German cultural centre located in the heart of downtown Toronto. Jutta Brendemühl, the centre’s Cultural Program Coordinator was kind enough to give us a tour of their facilities and provided us with a good list of German film recommendations ( I will post the list within the next few days for those interested in checking it out). After our tour we headed to WVURST, a sausage/beer hall at King West and Spadina, to try some authentic German sausage. Unfortunately, the sausages were not so authentically German, but the food was delicious and we all had a great time!
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| Mmm...fries and sausage. |
Just before Halloween, a few of our members volunteered at Glendon’s Halloween pub night. We were able to raise a substantial amount of funds due to a great turn out! Thank you to all those who have helped to support Germany Symposium 2012 by attending the event!
In other news, the organizing of our trip is well underway! Although we have much work to do before April, we’ve been able to organize our field trip with the guidance of Professor Best! The focus of our trip will be on Germany’s role in the European Union. Since we’ll be applying for funding from the DAAD, we need to increase the number of people on our trip in order to meet their eligibility requirements. As a result, a few students from Professor Best’s German Studies course have agreed to join us on our trip. We look forward to meeting you all!
The field trip will include a few days each in Frankfurt, Berlin and Leipzig. So far we have confirmed meetings with the Municipality of Leipzig’s Urban Renewal department and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig; the Human Rights Institute, the EU Parliament Office, the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundestag), and the Institute for European Integration at Freie University in Berlin; and the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. We still have yet to contact a few other institutions and organizations, but so far our trip is looking pretty solid!
