Imagine a 23 year-old guy looking at a poster saying "Want to join an exchange semester in Venice?" Well, I remember my enthusiasm while looking at that poster, at that moment I knew I was going to go for it.
So that's how everything started 10 years ago, the experience of a lifetime. I remember studying for 5 courses: History of the European Union, History of Economics, 2 Sociology courses and Italian course for beginners. But to say the truth, there was much more than just studying. The variety of students coming from so many different majors, I studied Economics at that time, some studied Architecture, some studied Laws, some Political Science. Students also came from different spots in the world: Israel, Spain, Germany, UK, Italy and USA. So... one semester with dozens of students coming with their different cultures, all at the age of 20-27 was a recipe for a great period of time, and it was actually awesome...
As a sports fan, it was a great opportunity to watch Italian calcio, meaning Italian soccer. At that time, A.C. Venezia was playing in Serie A versus all great Italian teams. It was very rare for the Venetian team to play in the top league, as few years afterwards, A.C. Venezia went on bankrupts so we were lucky to watch probably its best time ever...
Further to soccer, all the Israeli group went together to watch Macabbi Tel Aviv vs. Benetton Treviso (basketball) and I think there was a guy who even went to see Formula 1.
So we had great time together and now that we have Facebook it's even easier to keep in contact despite the geographic challenge. We all remember that time as an amazing experience!
Last but not least, I really hope that we'll manage to arrange a union meeting sometime during 2011, 10 years since the unique experience of once upon a time we shared a semester in Venice... : - )
- Roy Mondschein,Tel Aviv University