Report

Away with AI: All-round Luxemburg
by Annemarijn de Jager and Sara Veldhoen

It was on a Thursday afternoon that small groups of students from Nijmegen, Groningen, Amsterdam and Utrecht all gathered at Jaarbeursplein, Utrecht. And how astonishing: those were exactly the students heading for Luxemburg with AWAI!
The bus departed at 16:00 16:30 and it didn’t take long for some mixing to be going on (mostly mixing of students from different cities, for the mixing of booze had to wait some longer). After a few hours on the bus, with a stop at some royal burger restaurant, we arrived at the hostel. The rooms were divided and the luggage dropped, so we were ready to explore Luxemburg by night: soon the nearest bar, called The Tube, was crowded with AI-students. A bunch of students walked half the city looking for entertainment, ending in the same pub. Everyone had received a note on the bus for we were playing the game ‘Gotcha!’, and many casualties were reported that night: some by bad luck (i.e. a really easy word), others by cunning plans from their killers. Students were chatting about all kinds of stuff, they were really mixing now. Apparently people from Luxemburg don’t go out late, for the bar closed at 1 in the night. Everyone was going to bed much earlier than the night to come…
It was pretty early though, having to have breakfast before 9:00. After breakfast we got on the bus again, heading for Luxemburg University. We were welcomed by some important man who urged us to come and study there (a lot of Master programmes in different languages), followed by a lecture on the structure in argumentation by Martin Caminada. After that a lecture on traffic simulations by Yoann Pingé, one on the semantics of trust by a Dutch guy named Tim Muller, and last of all one on logics in election by the Indian Rohit Parkh from New York. Beside this everyone had the opportunity to participate in a workshop concerning Brain-Computer Interface or NAO robots. Opinions were divided: not everyone agreed on how interesting and challenging the lectures had been. It was easily followed by everyone though.
Listening to lectures and playing with robots gets people tired and hungry, so about 17:30 the bus drove us to a restaurant called ‘Le Petrusse’. Since we ordered our food a few weeks earlier, some people had forgotten what they were going to have. Luckily the organisation was well prepared so everyone had their own plate of fish fillet, pork roast or ‘koninginnepasteitje’. Although 14,50 Euros isn’t expensive for a three course menu, the food was pretty bad: according to the cook vegetarians don’t want any sauce with their pasta; I thought chicken was white rather than brown and the chocolate mousse could be held upside down. Even the after dinner liquor we got, Eau the Vie with Quetschengeschmack, didn’t taste too good.
Luckily some people had bought large amounts of crisps and booze so we were able to carry on our meals once we arrived at the hostel. It was pretty warm inside, and we didn’t think unpacking our bags from the super market filled with cheap vodka in the lobby was a good idea, so we occupied the terrace. After many glasses of Gin Tonic, Limoncello and Goldstrike we decided to go down town again, hoping the bars would stay open some longer. The latter appeared to be the case. A guy we met at the university and who was an old member of Incognito, was going to show us the place to be in Luxemburg. We came along the ‘Space Bar’: the ultimate opportunity for nerds like us to put on our dancing shoes. The offer of free beer after paying 10 Euros for entrance also played a role in the decision to go here. Some way the memory of what happened in there is kind of blurred, but it had something to do with beer, music, walking up and down the stairs, looting bottles of liquor, someone losing his glasses, dancing and more beer. Another group went to a pub a little more serene to drink some more, and some of us even got to take a ride to the local hospital…
Next morning was one of hangovers, the one worse than the other, since now it was really early having breakfast before 9:00. But Luxemburg wasn’t over yet: Roos took us all for a walk trough the city, to see the streets, alleys, houses, nature, heights and depths of the city at daytime. What a nice city Luxemburg is! The sun did his part and despite the fatigue it was a nice day. After noon everyone relaxed on a terrace or lying in the grass in the park, playing games. We got on the buss fairly early and departed 16:00 15:30 to attend the last part of the AWAI called ‘returning home’. The after party was a big success, although a lot of students
were eager to go to bed right away.
We are now waiting for the real after party: the NSVKI barbecue in June!