day 75 - Saint Petersburg

Day 75
September 15th

Rise and shine in St P. After successfully completing the Ride of our lives, we had some closing to do. We had the morning off, which was only fair, and got up to spend the day in official matters. We met Prof Ehmann, from Campus Europae, who congratulated us our accomplishments, and had a nice lunch before the afternoon session.

We came to the Saint Petersburg Higher School of Economics for the closing ceremony. Greeted by the Director Advisor and introduced to our fellow students, we set up the GoCycle and began the session.

We had an extensive workshop, which addressed the question of active participation of students in civil society and Higher Education. The discussions were based on participation of students in the university life and decision-making processes (presentation by Professor C. Ehmann, Secretary General of EUF-CE), project management of extra-curricular activities (presentation by Yelena Belokurova, Deputy Director of the German and European studies centre from St. Petersburg State University), opportunities that the EVS programme provides for Young Europeans (presentation by Aigulle Sembaeva, coordinator at the “Deutsche-Russischer Austausch”), examples of student projects (by Tatiana Tsueva, Director Advisor of Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg) and as well an example of student self-organisation in Russia (by Viktor Vorobrov, Head of the Independent Student Union of the Philology Faculty).

In the end, we had one last signing of the Bike of Honour, by the hand of the Director Advisor, and declared the Ride officially over.

As is usual, the closing ceremony is followed by a nice dinner, and ours was delicious. At the top floor of the hotel, with a magnificent view over the city, we gathered everyone around the table for one great meal, to thank all of the people who helped us come this far.

However, there was still one very important official visit to be conducted. After dinner, we went to visit our fixie friends at their Taiga space. There was no one who we'd rather spend this evening with, than with our Russian friends, who supported us, joined us, led us and welcomed us to St P.