travel

European Architecture Student Assembly: Belonging

my last EASA will always be my favourite

dedicated to all the people I have ever met at EASA

and to dear friendships that began to exist thanks to it

It is the summer of 2019; I barely know where the plane is taking me. One layover in Kyiv, and from there - directly to Geneva, where, after a long walk, we will head out to a village I never heard of. Freshly out my first year, the only thing I know is that we need sleeping bags and that I will encounter a lot of architecture students. That was enough to convince me to come.

We arrive. The night is dark, I can almost read the stars as if they are written on my palm. This is the first time I meet Sasha: he already knows our team, so meets us downstairs, helps us drag the suitcases up the mountain, and I am surrounded by a lively chatter of those who got to meet their old friends.

After the first night at the circus tent, I wake up to the postcard view of the Alpine mountain peaks. Incredible. “I will never get used to this”, I think to myself.

It is my first EASA. They told me it is a big gathering of architecture students from all over Europe, and I am slightly lost; excited yet overstimulated. I am told to choose a workshop; something I will be following for the next two weeks. What stands out to me is the ambiguity of the presentations: why did someone just come out on stage, spray something and left? Odd.

I often wish to have more thoroughly documented my days, written down memories and encounters, that evening of drinking wine with an Italian guy, ginger soups we used to eat every single day; jokes about the queues that took hours, a long hike to the second camp, and escaping the storm by following the railway with my team, coming back to the circus tent.

Back then, right after EASA, I quickly became a National Contact and expected to tell all architecture students of Moldova about it. First EASA was followed by the first INCM, an event where everyone takes decisions about future events; no voting, full consensus. It strikes me how people stay until three in the morning to contribute to this world where the main reason for everyone coming together for forty years is simply passion. Across the lake in Trpejca, I see Albania; on this side, the Macedonian village suddenly has lively chatter from all its corners. This is just the beginning, I think. Back home I give presentations, write social media posts, personal stories - the life of EASA was just starting for Moldova.

Instead, the world of 2020 has shut down.
Pandemic.
Lockdown.

For the assembly, it meant complete uncertainty; online meetings, and the main question of “is that actually it for us?” For me, it meant that I was somewhat stuck in a limbo. I was a part of EASA, while still new and feeling detached from it; and I let this detachment take over, joining the online gatherings less, only coming back to Leuven in 2021.

I step back into EASA in 2023 in Sheffield. Since the last time I visited - 4 years, and I am happy to see faces that recognize me. I am still an NC, but my life has moved from Moldova to the Netherlands. This time, it is just me on my own team, and my sleeping place is on stage; next to Angela, with whom we spend every night talking until 2 am about life, love and the in-betweens. Somehow, this EASA feels like the first one: first one where I am comfortable in English, where I consciously choose a workshop, find a balance between the chaos, go on hikes to the Peak District and test my red raincoat daily. I end up in a bit of a drama and leave EASA with a bitter aftertaste of stirred up and unresolved feelings; and think to myself: well, I did get the most out of it, I guess.

Welcome, EASA, I am so back.

From watching the sunset with Simon in the Dolomites, to the heat of Benidorm that we escape by dragging our structure into the sea, at nights chatting with Jonne on a cooled down concrete parapet. While continuing with EASA throughout the years, I notice: the generations of EASA have been flowing, and I often felt in between them, like a spider web that doesn’t quite manage to attach.

Thinking back to my time at EASA often left me with some kind of “I wish”: I wish I had gone to Romania, I wish I had socialized more, I wish I had been to SESAM in Cyprus, I wish I had become better connected to more, I wish-I wish-I wish.

***
In the middle of a Finnish forest, we stay in the sauna at night. Our sweated-warmed bodies run, step-step-step on wooden boards and whoop! into the lake, cooling down – and repeating it in rounds. I meet Hana and feel like we are instantly friends; deciding for a workshop we can do next year in Ireland.

Several buses later, Wiktor, Rikki and I are in Central Finland, on a mission of completing an Aalto hunt. The conifers stretch their hands up high and are as tall as what my gaze can reach. Glimpses of a lake, and I remember something about the boat — they say, Aalto built it himself. "He definitely knew what a perfect location for a summer house is", and I pick up another pinecone from the ground.

Our giggles are loud, and they appear on the pages of my notebook which says: Säynätsalo. This is our first Finnish hitchhike — for a very modest distance — but the Finnish woman who drives us wishes we’d stayed longer. The ring on my finger matches the grass beneath me. I am carried by the bike and the wind, both of them in a symphony, and we are all orchestrating around the Finnish lakes.

I often hear people say that their first EASA remains their favourite; a previously unfamiliar magic potion. For me, that time in Switzerland was the reason I knew I wanted to come back - yet, it never was my favourite. The more I came to EASA, the more I appreciated a “hi, I am so happy to see you again” - and new memories with the people I had already known. To me, it was not the novelty that made an EASA the best, but the increasing comfort of coming back to the place that makes me most present I can ever be; a small world that expands beyond the two-week stay in a country and spreads its roots around the entire European continent. The world that has its own rules, traditions, and memories of biking in central Finland next to the lake with Rikki and Wiktor. The world where I’m running around with the camera in the Newtown school of Waterford with Hana, filming the organized chaos.

In 2026, I got to meet Sasha again; this time in Liechtenstein, long after our first encounter. Five of us spend time downstairs, spilling tea and beers, gossiping about our observations. This year, I chose to step outside of all the “I wish” I’d accumulated and embrace acceptance. Perhaps, I have never managed to attach myself to a specific EASA generation or group; yet I’ve observed its life through uncertainty, cherishing even more each personal bond I have made. And I know: my last EASA will always remain my favourite.