In the study programs of the Europe Forum, there are at least two study excursions every year.
The excursions are courses that give credit points.
The students pay a participation fee, but the Europe Forum heavily subsidizes the cost of the tours.
Here are some of the excursions we have gone on in the past:
Study Excursion to the EU Institutions in Brussels (held once every two years)
Two multilateral institutions in Brussels – the European Union and NATO – are the focus of the study tour. While the European Union is a supranational "unique beast", and NATO is a pure intergovernmental organization, both are looking for new goals to justify their path. This is especially true at a time when both are suffering from multiple crises. The excursion focuses on the integration process and making collective and binding decisions. It allows the students to deepen their understanding of how the European Union and NATO work, and to add an experiential and experiential layer to the academic understanding. It brings the students together with the decision-makers and the factors that advise and influence them and allows the students to present questions to them and discuss general and current issues, especially specific issues that are of research interest to them.
During the excursion, meetings and discussions are held with politicians, diplomats, officials, experts and lecturers working in these institutions or experts in them, as well as with Israeli diplomats who serve in the Israeli delegation to the European Union and NATO and with a pro-Israeli lobby organization. We visit the Council of Ministers, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Foreign Service, and NATO headquarters.
Also, within the constraints of time, the tour brings the students together with Belgium, a federation divided between the Walloon and Flemish communities, whose capital is Brussels, and perhaps one of the factors preventing its disintegration.
New Challenges for Liberalism in the Old Continent – Study excursion to Switzerland, France, and Germany (2023)
Across Western Europe, long-established political arrangements are under attack. Far-right parties gain ground leading to increased polarization and fragmentation of society. But how do liberal democracies try to uphold and fight for their core practices, norms, and values? The study trip will explore the various responses to the crisis by visiting and engaging in dialogue with institutions, representatives of intellectual and cultural circles, officials, decision-makers, journalists, and other experts in several bordering countries.
Vienna: A Biography of the 'World's Most Liveable City' (2023)
Prof. Joseph Patrouch, University of Alberta, Canada
Is Vienna indeed the 'World's Most Liveable City'? What makes it so?
This course introduced students to themes relating to the histories of Vienna and its surrounding area from prehistoric times to the present. After studying in the classroom in Jerusalem, we flew to Vienna and visited the sites discussed, to understand them in context: palaces, churches, the UN headquarters, monuments, gardens, residential neighbourhoods, and more.
Germany and France: From Wars to Reconciliation and Beyond. A Study excursion from Berlin to Paris (2022)
Throughout their long history, the relations between French and Germans have been mostly marked by embittered wars and enmity. It was only after 1945 that a process of reconciliation started to take place. The founding fathers of this process shaped not only what would then develop into a strong alliance at the heart of Western Europe, but also the core of the future European Union. Albeit not without difficulties, the Franco-German friendship has become to symbolize a successful way to overcome history through peaceful bilateral cooperation. Such transnational interactions include a wide range of activities including state-financed youth exchanges, municipal partnerships, and a host of bi-national institutes and associations. Rather than directly affecting domestic political affairs, this kind of Europeanization connects French and Germans in various ways, transforming their partnership into the driving force of the European integration.
The study excursion explored the historical traces as reminders of the former enmity between France and Germany, as well as current transnational practices of cooperation. It provided the participants with a wide range of encounters and experiences showing how, on the one side, collective memory as well as political, cultural and linguistic differences can be continuous challenges to the bilateral relations, but also how processes of reconciliation were able to shape a lasting alliance, on the other side.
Social and Cultural History in the Heart of Europe (2021, in collaboration with the University of Innsbruck and AIANI - Austria-Israel Academic Network Innsbruck)
Prof. Kurt Scharr, University of Innsbruck, Austria
The Ötztal Alps are a range in the Central Eastern Alps, in Tyrol, in western Austria and northern Italy.
Hiking the Ötztal, we delved into the following topics: the history of settlements on high Alpine areas, and the history of state borders; the Alps as a national loaded landscape; Länderkunde: a story of landscape and national ideas, the (Eastern) Alps as a scientific agenda; Alps as a cultural landscape and the human impact; genesis of Alpine cultural landscape; elements of Alpine cultural landscape; energy input and spatial changes; history of Alps in selected historical paintings; the Ötztal: history & structure: an insight, history of tourism in Tyrol; Innsbruck at the crossroads: a history of an Alpine city.
Troubled Landscapes: Collisions, Turmoil, and Attack – A Study Trip to Munich and Nuremberg (an international DAAD excursion, 2017)
Prof. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann
Throughout the course of history, the city of Munich and other parts of the Federal State of Bavaria were fundamentally shaped by political turmoil, revolts, and the outbreak of political violence. The 20th century as a “century of violence” in particular still affects ongoing political and cultural life in Germany. The memory of political turmoil, ideological collisions and terrorist attacks left significant traces in the landscapes of German cities. Besides Berlin the Bavarian capital Munich might be one of the most shattered metropolises in contemporary Germany. Events such as the “Bavarian Soviet Republic” in 1919, Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Munich’s characterization as “Capital of the Nazi Movement” during the 1930s and 1940s, postwar terrorist attacks such as the hostage crisis during the Olympic Games in 1972 and the bomb attack on the Oktoberfest in 1980 and two murders of the National Socialist Underground in 2001 and 2005 create a fabric of ‘resonating violence’. Munich’s neighboring Franconian metropolis Nuremberg was similarly shaped by the experience of political violence. Once, during the 1930s, the city hosted huge Nazi party conferences. Today the former convention center, fragmented ‘brutality in stone’ (Alexander Kluge), hosts a museum. After the war Nuremberg was place of several trials against Nazi perpetrators. In 1973 the radical left wing terrorist group “Revolutionary Cells” targeted the ITT Corporation, in 1979 a member of the Red Army Faction was arrested in Nuremberg. Between 2000 and 2009 the NSU committed three brutal murder and several bomb attacks in the city.
The study excursion explored different cultural, historical and geographical traces of this troubling history.
German Presence in Sicily and Southern Italy (2024)
In this study excursion, we explored the enduring, entangled engagements of Germans with Sicily and Southern Italy. We visited and learned about the German presence of medieval times, especially the impact of the Hohenstaufen dynasty from the twelfth and until the fourteenth centuries. Indeed, as we saw, the dynasty’s kings: Henri IV, Frederick II, etc. left a dramatic impact on the largest Island of the Mediterranean. We also explored in depth the fascination of German romanticists with Sicily and Southern Italy, delving into the romantic admiration of figures such as Goethe with the Island’s rich Greek and Roman pasts. Eventually, we also dealt with the troubled past of the Nazi presence in Sicily. The excursion included lectures by local scholars and guides, as well as presentations by the students.