Trip to the European Parliament

Recently, as a member of Blaenau Gwent’s ‘Talk it up!’ Youth Forum, I was very fortunate to have the experience of going on a trip to Brussels to visit the European Parliament (and taste some of Belgium’s famous chocolate of course!)

On our first full day in Brussels after a long day of travelling the day before, our first stop was to the European Parliament. The Parliament is a magnificent building, with an airport like security just to get in…!

We were then shown to a conference room, where an elected Parliament member spoke to us about the history of the Parliament, which he then opened the discussion to questions. As a current university law student, I found the opportunity a great experience as I was able to question him on the current situation within Europe and European law.

Afterwards, we were then free to go shopping in Brussels, where most of us spent a lot of time in the many chocolate shops that the city has to offer! Luckily, despite the chocolate being expensive (but extremely nice) a lot of the shopkeepers gave us free samples, so we saved a lot of money in the long run!

The next day, despite everybody starting to feel the tiredness of the trip (!) we were looking forward to our surprise trip to Holland, where we spent 3 hours on a coach to go to the well known theme park: Efteling.

With the sunny weather on our side, the group experienced some fast rollercoasters, water rides and embarrassing ride pictures, which I’m sure none of us will forget!

On the whole, it is safe to say that the Youth Forum thoroughly enjoyed their trip to Belgium. Some of the many highlights for me were listening to some of our forum members from ‘The Rock School’ play some acoustic songs, which the whole top deck of the Ferry to France enjoyed. Also, it was great to see what the European Parliament does for Wales, whilst also getting to know new forum members, and representing Blaenau Gwent’s youth.

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