—What a Ride

I have just come home from the McKinsey EuroAcademy 2005. It started on Wednesday evening with a team-building dinner for the Nordic participants (four from Denmark, the rest from Norway, Sweden, and Finland), where we in teams prepared a three course, super delicious dinner for each other. It took place in Meyer’s Madhus, which I can recommend highly.

On Thursday, we flew to Athens to meet with the 120 students from all over Europe. Thursday was mostly relaxation, getting to know each other, and a presentation of McKinsey.

Friday was Academy Day, which started with a speech from Patrick Cox, former President of the EU Parliament, followed by a panel discussion. We then split into groups to debate different issues in Europe ranging from Banking in Europe over European Governance to Eastern Europe. I was in the latter with about 15 other students, which proved to be very informative and exciting, especially as we had several students from Easter Europe in our break-out session (e.g. the Czech Republic and Turkey). Our moderator was the Governor of the National Bank of Serbia, Radovan Jelašic. These break-out sessions were followed by an inspiring leadership panel. At dinner, Jean-Claude Trichet, the President of the European Central Bank, held a wonderful speech on, especially, the Euro, its consequences and success.

On Saturday, we went out sailing on 47-yachts. Although sailing is one of my keen interests, I have never sailed such big sailing boats. We were about 21 boats, so we had a semi-race, which was extremely fun.

Sunday, a hectic goodbye day, where we had too little time to say goodbye to each other — hopefully, we have the chance to get together again at some point. I have already some plans, and I am sure the rest has too.

Thank you all for a wonderful trip.