I spent the second week of March taking part in a course organized by the Local BEST group in Supelec Paris. Around fifty students from various engineering colleges across Europe gathered in Paris to spend around ten days attending lectures, workshops, company visits and various other activities.

For me, as the only non-European, it was a great experience in terms of the cross sectional cultural view that I got to witness. I learnt so many interesting tidbits about the different European countries and their people.

The French do eat the long baguettes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well atleast the students we stayed with did. And French students love to sing during parties while getting drunk. And their songs sound really cool in French. As long as you don’t know what they mean. Then it just becomes embarrassing. You can spot Italians by a mile with the way they talk with their hands. And they are probably the only ones in the city wearing sunglasses on the cloudy, overcast Parisian days. The Romanians hate it when you pester them to sing ‘Numa Numa’. However after persistent badgering, they eventually give in and sing the song with you. They don’t like it, but they have simply accepted the fact that they have to live with this song as a symbol of their identity. And they don’t like that at all. Another important thing I learnt - never come between a Hungarian and their paprika. Also, after having been asked a million times already, they don’t find the joke “Are you Hungary?” funny anymore. I, on the other hand, found it hilarious every time.

Seriously though, these kinds of events are really great because you get to meet a lot of different people from diverse backgrounds and it broadens your understanding about the world and its people. Especially if you are a foreign student, I would highly recommend taking part in such courses. It gives you a good taste of student life in this part of the world. And you can find out for yourself if all those stereotypes one reads about are true or not.