In the period between getting back from Maastricht & Aachen and going to London, UK, there was a lull of sorts where I stayed in town for two consecutive weekends. Work was fairly busy, but the weekends were fairly relaxed and consisted of just chilling with E & M, C & J, and a bunch of other UN interns. Snapped a couple of photos during those two weeks, so I'll let those do most of the talking instead:

Grabbed dinner with E & M one night at Madame Negla - as promised by E, these sandwiches were super good! You can't really tell from the photo, but there were green peas in it as well.  

The decor of the place was a little...disturbing though. It was really pink and sort of decorated like the inside of a little girl's bedroom or something. We also got eis and hot chocolate afterwards (not at the same time, of course) and they got much amusement of teaching me "Das ist das Haus vom Nikolaus."  

Watched the Germany vs. Greece match of the Euro Cup with C & J. Everyone looks calmly seated here ^, but whenever Germany scored, and especially when Germany won, there was lots of rambunctious celebrating. It was especially intense after the game - we're talking people climbing on traffic lights, traffic jams, honking horns, car rocking... Definitely awesome to experience being a part of the crowd.

Met a bunch of other UN interns at an international event, and as it turned out, a bunch of them were also going to the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum. It was certainly an impressive conference. I think the final stats had something like over 2,000 attendees from over 100 countries.  

Lots of interesting sessions on a plethora of topics ranging from media to education to fashion to tourism and beyond. Speakers were impressive and quite varied as well - for example, there was the CEO of Frankfurt book fair, the deputy editor-in-chief for ELLE Vietnam, a past Indonesian president... 

One of the sessions I sat in on, "Fair Trade Fashion: Education for Sustainable Consumption," featured TUDO BOM, a fair trade fashion line made in Brasil and Paris - and a month later, I walked by a TUDO BOM store by chance in Paris. Crazy stuff! 

One of the other girls attending that session was also tweeting it (since it is a media conference and all), and I thought her name sounded familiar - as it turns out, it was because we'd corresponded by e-mail in the lead up to NAMUN. Small world, right? 

While the days were packed with plenary sessions, the evenings were a lot more lax. Day 1 was a boat trip, day 2 was a reception at the Bundeskuntshalle (which I'd been to previously), and day 3 was a reception at Deustche Welle. Hey, as an intern/student, not going to turn down free (good!) food ;) 

Apparently the party doesn't stop at college-level conferences - it was kind of cool to see all these journalists and activists rocking out on the boat to live music. (The cover artists were all really good too!)