Six members of the SB Passau visited the IEEE Region 8 Student & Young Professional Congress in Krakow from August 5th 2014 till the 10th.

riving to the SYP2014Thursday’s schedule was filled with many
events: After breakfast, we walked across the big campus to attend the plenary session. Following lunch, the first round of workshops took place. Unfortunately, the schedule was very tight: Therefore, we had to hurry back to the hostel in the evening to quickly get dressed for the gala-dinner. Before the dinner, we walked down a very long staircase into a former salt mine. Our tour guide showed us huge caverns decorated with sculptures chiseled from rock-salt. After this impressive tour, we arrived at the gala dinner hall at a depth of 130 meters. The hall was decorated beautifully and the food was delicious. During the dinner several awards were handed out to different student branches. Fortunately, we used an elevator instead of the stairs to get back to daylight after the dinner.

roup photo of all SYP2014 participantsWorkshopDue to the extensive
partying on Friday, some conference participants missed breakfast and visits to local technology companies. After traveling through Krakow in a hot and crowded bus, we finally arrived on the outskirts of the city. Here Nokia and Motorola have their offices. During the tour we learned about the company, its products, engineering practices, and even managed to take a look at some unreleased projects in their lab. In the afternoon, one more workshop took place. However, we were all excited about the multicultural evening that followed. This is one of the most anticipated events of every congress. Every visiting country set up a table with local delicatessen. The Germany Section offered a well-cooled 30 liter keg of beer, obatzda, Jägermeister. Many congress visitors stopped by and enjoyed the food. Unfortunately, the multicultural evening was ended too early by the organizers. Therefore, the party continued in front of the hostel until sunrise.

After breakfast on Sunday, the closing ceremony took place. During this event, the winners of the Best Poster Award were announced: The IEEE Student Branch Passau achieved the third place. In the afternoon we started the trip back to Germany. We arrived in Passau at about 20:00 and ended our exciting trip with dinner at Va bene.