| | Fall 2019 #13 | November 18, 2019
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MUDEC will celebrate Thanksgiving this week, one week ahead of the US. Thanksgiving and a month after the Canadian one. This uniquely American holiday being very confusing for the rest of the world, I investigated the matter and here are my findings.
From elements I have gathered, it is about a religion. The very word “Thanksgiving” indicates it, as it means the act of thanking a God. However, worshippers mostly thank others for their good deeds, and businesses for their sale prices.
It is also about a pilgrimage, taking place in Massachusetts. The first recorded pilgrimage is supposed to date back from the 17th century, with Europeans as the first pilgrims. This is very bizarre, since at the time Europeans had barely heard of the existence of the continent. Why did they go on a pilgrimage to a place they knew squat about?
Rites are said to celebrate the harvest, hence the consumption of corn and cranberries during a ritual meal. Notwithstanding, strict observance requires the sacrifice of a turkey. This is probably why turkeys are not hunted but harvested in the frozen goods aisle of grocery stores.
The ritual meal itself is called a “dinner”, but most of the time consists in a late lunch.
It is a tradition to have guests for this dinner-that-is-not-a-dinner, and records show that it has been so since the first celebration of Thanksgiving. The custom of invading your guests’ home and killing them in the aftermath is no more considered as part of the ritual, except in rare cases of food poisoning and grave indigestion. Cases of self-immolation called “deep fried turkey” have also been reported. For the most, violence is nowadays contained to the symbolic realm: worshippers follow a complicated and brutal liturgy called “American football”. This designation is another Thanksgiving mystery since priests mostly discharge their duties with their hands.
While Thanksgiving stays opaque to most of the world, it has given way over the last years to a new, quasi-universal, cult called “Black Friday”, which includes mass frenzy and large donations in money.
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Dr. Thierry Leterre is the Dean of MUDEC
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~Study~ - MGT Classes Visit Major Luxembourg Bank
- MKT 291 Amazon Visit
- Claude Fourcaulx: Fighting Terrorism Lecture Preview
~Engage~
- Glow Run 5K Recap
- Beyond the Château Walls: Maddy Stanger and KelseyHopperServices
- MUDEC Alum Kelsey Hopper's Journey to Small Business
- Taste of Luxembourg in Oxford November 22nd
~Travel~
- 30 Year Anniversary of the Berlin Wall-MUDEC Testimonials
- In the Footsteps of the Greatest Generation-Discovery Tour Preview
- Travel Photos (and a misadventure!)
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MUDEC Students Learn About Management at Major Luxembourg Bank by Jack White
On Monday November 11th, both sections of MGT (lead by Michael Schweiger) visited the Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL). The Bank is headquartered in Luxembourg and has offices in Switzerland, Denmark, the Middle East, and China. The students were able to tour the headquarters and see first-hand corporate management practices. The class met with Bernard Mommens, Secretary General and Member of the Management Board, who explained the core values of BIL and the importance of transparency and communication for managers. The class also met with Veronika Stepanova (Head of Business Partnership, People Culture and Communication) to discuss recruiting talent and employee motivation. All majors were able to gain a better understanding of how immersive cultural experiences can be of great benefit to a career in international business.
Having the opportunity to tour and meet with an international company based in Luxembourg provided an authentic perspective on how business functions worldwide. Students also had the chance to catch up with Pierre Rodenbourg, who studied at Miami’s Oxford campus for a semester, and learn about his career progression within Corporate Banking and Real Estate. MUDEC and MGT 291 are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to learn about BIL, which is one of the country’s largest employers and has always played an active role in financing Luxembourg’s economy.
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MGT 291 students in front of BIL
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Management class students with their hosts
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MKT 291 Visits Amazon EU Headquarters By Dylan Tober
Wednesday, November 13th, MUDEC’s Marketing 291L class (led by Professor Daniel Tesch) paid a visit to Amazon’s European Headquarters located in Luxembourg City. Today Amazon employs over 800,000 individuals globally and is the world's largest product search engine. Once on the grounds, the class met with Mark Bohn and members of his Online Marketing and Traffic team. Students were walked through the business structure, marketing tactics, hiring process, etc. The meeting was followed by a student-driven Q&A session.
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Marketing class visits Amazon in board room
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Students with the Miami flag at Amazon
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Distinguished Lecturers Series Fall 2019
Claude Fourcaulx: Fighting Terrorism
For the final lecture of the Fall 2019 semester, Claude Fourcaulx will share his thoughts on a subject that never leaves us indifferent as it has been part of our lives for twenty years: Terrorism. Building on his personal experience, he will show how his country, France, heavily hit by terrorist attacks, has chosen to reinforce its judicial response, reorganizing police and developing new laws while not abandoning military responses to terrorism.
“Station Saint Michel (Paris): 8 dead, 117 wounded ... The Armed Islamic Group had struck Paris in his heart. I remember my amazement but also the one of our leaders, whether political or operational. Who is involved with this dossier? Who does what? Who is leading the investigation? And the most crucial question… Are we at war ?”
Claude Fourcaulx, 50, is a police officer in the French Ministry of the Interior. He has been working for many years in the anti-terrorist department of the French Direction for Homeland Surveillance (DST in French), within the DCI International Cooperation Direction. Captain Fourcaulx was posted in Lebanon for 5 years, in Mauritania on behalf of the European Union for 2 years, and has participated in several missions in Niger, Egypt and Afghanistan as chief analyst with a French Special Forces detachment.
He is also a doctoral researcher at Paris Seine University – Cergy Pontoise in contemporary history of conflicts on a subject related to the fight against terrorism.
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MUDEC Students participating in the Run in the Dark
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| Run in the Dark 5K
This past Tuesday, multiple MUDEC students participated in the annual Run in the Dark in Luxembourg City, part of a global network of runs in over 40 locations worldwide. This charity run sponsors Mark Pollock's Trust, an organization fighting to raise awareness of ongoing physical, psychological and financial impact of catastrophic spinal cord injuries, while also encouraging others to pursue his personal mission to cure paralysis in our lifetime. There was an option for a 5k and 10k and all proceeds go to a charity. The route was through the streets of Luxembourg City and across the bridge. Since it was at night, everything was lit up which made the route very scenic. The event was sponsored by ING and there was a DJ and pre party with a smoke machine, lights etc. Students also got a race package with a free drink token and other sponsored gear. The race isn’t timed so everyone can do it. A very encouraging event, there were crowds of people cheering on the runners as they finished the race.
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MUDEC student Maddy Stanger in front of one of the corporate buildings where Kelsey Hopper teaches yoga.
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Beyond the Château Walls: Maddy Stanger and KelseyHopperServices
Interning at a startup can be challenging in and of itself, especially while being abroad. An intern may wear multiple hats in a company that is just getting its feet wet and may not truly know what purpose he or she serves. Luckily, in Maddy Stanger’s case, her internship hits a little closer to home. Stanger gets to work with a fellow MUDEC alum, Kelsey Hopper, who has just recently become a Luxembourg citizen and has started a small business venture focusing on health, wellness, and music.
You can read more about Maddy's "Beyond the Château Walls" experience here: https://www.miamioh.edu/global-initiatives/news/2019/11/mudec-beyond-walls-maddy-stanger.html.
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Kelsey Hopper teaching a yoga class
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| MUDEC Alum Kelsey Hopper's Journey to Small Business
Kelsey Hopper, MUDEC alumni and small business owner, has enlisted students Clare Quinn, Kevin Hansbauer, and Maddy Stanger, over the past three semesters as interns helping her with promotion and content creation for her independent yoga and music businesses.
As a MUDEC alum, Hopper participated in the Luxembourg program for an entire year, compiling a multitude of courses for herself and made it her own. She studied music at the Columbia College Chicago and the Conservatory of Luxembourg. Find out more about her personal journey and the opportunities that she provides to MUDEC students here:
https://www.miamioh.edu/global-initiatives/news/2019/11/kelsey-hopper.html.
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Taste of Luxembourg in Oxford
Luxembourgish students at Miami (LUAM) is hosting a second edition of "A Taste of Luxembourg“ on Friday, November 22nd from 6-7 pm in Oxford. Coordinators decided to prepare Gromperekichelcher this year, another traditional dish that is often served at fairs and Christmas markets. Translated to English, Gromperekichelcher are called Potato Pancakes, and will be served with homemade applesauce.
Last semester, LUAM had a lot of fun cooking Bouneschlupp and Kniddelen for the Miami community. They had an outcome of about 60 people that loved the event and in the end motivated them to do it again.
They had people from the Oxford community, professors, MUDEC alumni and Miami students attening their event. They ususally give a little background presentation and then open up the buffet.
LUAM loves to share their unique culture with people that respect it as such as Luxembourg is small and different from its neighboring countries. They try to connect with MUDEC alumni as they love to hear what students liked and disliked about Luxembourg.
All in all, they hope that poeple come out and try and enjoy their free food. They’d love to get to know students that have a particular interest in Luxembourg, as through them, they feel a little closer to home.
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30 Year Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall-Part 2
MUDECers sent an overwhelming number of contributions for the Berlin Wall edition of the newsletter. This week you will find the contributions that didn’t make it into the newsletter last week, along with a scan of the Berlin page from the MUDEC 1989-1990 yearbook!
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Mary Stephenson Schroeder-MUDEC 1988-1989
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MUDEC students in front of the Wall
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The Wall from the west at the Brandenburg Gate
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Chris Hermann-MUDEC 1988-1989
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|  | A View over the Berlin Wall, April 1989 Study Tour | |  |
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In terms of memories - one that stands out from this trip was meeting the delegation from West Germany and one of the questions I asked was about the possibility of unification. I remember they said that is was a goal of all Germans to unite the two Germanys and that they hoped it happened in this generation, but that it was a slow process and would take the right conditions in the future. Then in a little over six months from that conversation, the wall fell!
Several others include the fences, guard towers, and train sweep that occurred at the East German border to travel to Berlin and the realization that we were traveling into the communist block. In East Berlin, I couldn’t get over the buildings that were still pockmarked with bullet holes and bombing shrapnel 45 years after WWII. Those are captured in some of my pictures. Also the fascination with things like the restaurants, food, and cars in East Germany. It felt like I imagined the 50s in the US. Another stark memory is seeing all of the babies, children, and families in East Berlin. They were more apparent in East Berlin than West Berlin. One other memory that hit me, we rode the subway to one of our meetings and I believe it was Dr. Stiller who commented that part of the line we were on went under East Berlin. I remember we passed through closed, darkened “ghost” stations that led to East Berlin that were frozen in time from when Berlin was divided. It was so stark and sad to me, yet a part of Berliners daily lives. In looking at maps (something I did - I think we all did - all the time in Europe), it was clear that Berlin was an amazing city with waterways, transit, parks, etc. designed to work together as a wonderful system, but were less than the whole at the time because the city was divided. I am so glad the walls came down!
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Mark Davis and Dr. Stiller's nephew putting fingers in bullet holes still left in a building
| | | Building full of bullet holes from WWII in East Berlin, April 1989 Study Tour | |
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Traci Stuve-MUDEC 1989-1990
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All in all it's just another chip in the wall
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Photos in a frame, including a piece of the wall
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I was very fortunate to be at MUDEC in the fall of 1989. It was an amazing time in history, with the ‘crumbling’ of the East block and the fall of the Berlin wall. I had travelled to Berlin in August, just before starting the Fall semester in Luxembourg. I saw the desperation of East Berliners at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, and heard terrifying stories of people attempting to defect to the West.
On November 9, 1989, we heard the plan to open the wall that separated the communist East Berlin and the Republic West Berlin. This meant that people were able to cross freely from the East to the West for the first time since the wall was built. The students at MUDEC were excited. Many were planning to go to Berlin to experience history first-hand.
One of my biggest regrets is that I did not go.
My friend, Kit (Catherine Hadley) and I had plans (and train tickets!) to go to Dijon, France that weekend. We discussed scrapping that plan and heading to Berlin, but we were imagining hordes of people from East Germany flooding the West. We were concerned that we would not have a place to stay (it was cold!) and would not be able to get back to school because the trains would be overrun with people trying to ‘escape’ to the West. We had a fun weekend in France, but when we returned, found that several of our friends had amazing experiences in Berlin.
I was lucky enough to return to Berlin at the end of the semester, in late December 2019. By this time, Checkpoint Charlie was open, and we were able to travel into East Berlin and explore. We had an amazing time, met some nice people, and because of the exchange rate at the time, we were able to have a fairly luxurious meal (we were poor college students, after all!). We were also able to rent hammers and spikes and chip off pieces of the Berlin wall from the Western side. What a souvenir!
So regardless of making the mistake of not being there for the actual weekend that the wall “came down”, I have some pretty amazing memories of being there for the fall of the Berlin wall 30 years ago, and I am eternally grateful for my experiences at MUDEC.
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Traci and Julie Heinrich at Checkpoint Charlie
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Kristin Hirst Riegel-MUDEC 1989-1990
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Gina chipping at the wall
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My only regret from my year at MUDEC was not going to Berlin to be there when the wall fell. There were rumors, and a group of kids planning to go to Berlin in case the wall fell, but we also had some kind of a big exam. I don’t remember all the details, but I remember I chickened out and didn’t go. Wasn’t willing to take the risk, miss my test when it wasn’t a sure thing. How lucky were those that went to experience that historic event first hand. One of my roommates (Gina Bykowski Gelinas) and I hopped on a train and went to Berlin a few days later. There was still plenty of excitement in the air. I remember capitalism had already sprung up everywhere you looked as the Berliners had set up garage sale-like tables everywhere and they were renting out anything that could possibly be used to chip away at the wall. If you wanted a piece with colored graffiti on it, you had to look hard to find it. Those areas especially were going fast.
And I remember people standing on top of the wall, along with East German soldiers with their machine guns. The soldiers looked troubled that everything was out of control, but they could do nothing about it, as people danced and sang all around them. Gina and I found one section of the all where the steel rebar was visible and a hole big enough to squeeze through. I went through to the former East Germany and Gina took a picture of me. I blew that picture up, framed it and sent it to my Grandfather who had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate concentration camps and German villages. The caption on the poster read Arbeit Macht Frei. Even now, thinking about it brings goosebumps to my arms. I can’t believe it has been 30 years, I remember it like it was yesterday.
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Jonathan Murphy-MUDEC 1989-1990
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I had been to Berlin, and saw The Wall in June 1985, when my high school German class took a tour of the Germanic lands, including my first visit to Luxembourg (airport & American cemetery only). Oddly, when the Wall was being opened, I did not get to visit and witness until my Mom came to visit in June 1990.
My photo albums of the time, show just returning from our Autumn break where our class went to Munich, and I went with friends to Vienna and Venice. A few days later, "big surprise" with the Berlin Wall -some xerox copies of friends who went then to Berlin. I went that weekend to Hamburg, with another MUDEC student, Mike O', to see the Irish band The Pogues. When we got to Koblenz the next day, we encountered other MUDEC folks with chunks of the Berlin Wall, in hand,...lack of social media then.
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Student pictures from the weekend the Wall fell
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I was asked by MUDEC, as the only student of Art to paint a mural, over the Christmas break. I was paid in paints, and provided lunch. The original sketch, and photo of the painting, is in my Art Portfolio.
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Jonathan's amazing artwork from 1989-1990 which became
an integral part of the Cave at MUDEC on 45a avenue Monterey
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|  | In sculpture class, back at MU, I made this tribute to the Berlin Wall. I used bronze, for the person, with face of the Bauhaus symbol. The Wall was a block of cement-brick, with rebar, and a red-painted church of the actual Wall, I got on visit in 1990, like a religious relic. I was later gifted with the black bag of Wall fragments.
| |  | The Reunification pin, I wear every year, on November 9th -knowing too that Kristallnacht, and the Beerhall Putsch happened the same night, years apart.
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Berlin page from the 1989-1990 MUDEC Yearbook
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| In the Footsteps of the Greatest GenerationDiscovery Tour Preview
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The Battle of the Bulge was the largest single battle in World War II for the US Army and took place in northern Luxembourg and southeastern Belgium. Less than a month before the 75th anniversary of the battle, we will take a day trip to Bastogne on Friday, November 22, visiting the Mardasson Memorial, the Bastogne War Museum, and the 101st Airborne Museum, as well as several sites and monuments around the area, including the foxholes in Bois Jacques made famous in the Band of Brothers. It was in Bastogne that the American General McAuliffe famously answered “Nuts” to a German request to surrender. We will return to Luxembourg after the visit.
On November 23, we will leave by bus for northern Luxembourg, where will be staying overnight in Clervaux. We will first visit the Family of Man photo exhibition in Clervaux Castle. This exhibition was created by Edward Steichen, a native Luxembourger who was Director of Photography at the MoMA in New York, in the 1950s and traveled the world. Clervaux has been its permanent home since 1994. We will also visit the Abbey and church.
Later in the afternoon we will head over to the village of Munshausen for the Thanksgiving 1944 re-enactment and celebration. US Ambassador Randy Evans recently mentioned how excited he is to be part of this event.
Following dinner, we will head back to Clervaux for the night before returning home Sunday morning.
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Independent Travel Photos Take a look at where our students journeyed to this weekend!
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Travel Misadventure: We spent 5 hours traveling to the Brussels airport to find out our flight was at a different Brussels airport and that we were gonna miss it so we had to buy $500 tickets each to book another flight to Budapest!- Oliva Bianco '21
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~Birthdays This Week~ Wishing a very Happy Birthday to:
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Rebecca Fjeldstad- Nov 23rd
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Elizabeth Music- Nov 25th
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We wish you the best birthday yet! Cheers to another wonderful year!
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Monday: Classes
Tuesday: Classes
17:30 Mandatory Lecture Series-Claude Faulcaulx on Fighting Terrorism18:30 SFC Pizza and Cider night after the lecture
Wednesday: Classes
Thursday: Classes
18:00 MUDEC Thanksgiving celebration
Friday: Discovery Tour-In the Footsteps of the Greatest Generation-BastogneSaturday-Sunday: Discovery Tour-In the Footsteps of the Greatest Generation-Clervaux + Thanksgiving 1944 re-creation in Munshausen
Sunday: 17:30 Music Weekend rehearsals
Monday: 20:00 Mandatory Concert at the Philharmonie
Staff Absences: Andy Adams (Tuesday pm), Philippe Briot (Friday), Joseph Vari (Friday after 15:00)
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Château Hours
Monday-Thursday: 8:00-22:00 Friday: 8:00-17:00 Saturday- Sunday: Closed
Administrative Hours
Monday-Friday: 8:00-12:00 and 13:00-17:00
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