Author Archives: mzf5093

And So It Begins.

Well here I am at Newark International Airport and this is not the way I thought I’d feel at all. If someone sat me down and said, Mike, we’re gonna put you in a giant metal cylinder that weighs multiple tons and hurl it a couple hundred miles-per-hour across that Atlantic, I’d probably be pretty anxious. And for the past few weeks I thought that I’d feel that anxious as I sat in the terminal waiting. But I don’t feel that way at all right now. Talk to me in a couple of hours and I’m sure you’ll hear a very different tune.


Airports are incredible places. The best kind of people watching. A true melting pot of Americans, Europeans, Africans and more coming for a multitude of reasons. And the wealth of emotions is contagious. Everyone in here is feeling something, and if you tune yourself to just the right frequencies, you might be able to sneak a peak into the life of a stranger. 


Regardless, if there’s one thing that being in an airport reminds me is that human’s no matter what color, size or gender are really all driven by the same things, good or bad. Hunger, love, greed, acceptance, friendship and so on. This is sometimes unpleasant, but I think it is always comforting. 


But I digress. This is awesome, I’m gonna go and find some food for my backpack just in case I get myself into a Cast Away situation. 


And so it begins. With the addition of a two-week trip through the south of Europe accompanied by my brother, so begins my journey to the other side of this rock. 



Location: Newark International Airport

The Precipice of the Next Great Adventure

Hallo everyone! My name is Michael Frieber, I’m an International Politics major, a rising Junior and a fantastic American. And, in just under one month’s time, I’m gonna be on my way to study abroad at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

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As someone incredibly interested in exploring the world outside of what I know, I jumped at the opportunity to go on an adventure in a distant country before my junior year of college. I had no idea, however, that I would discover a program so reflective of my goals as a student, and of my interests as an individual.
There are two halves to the “Maastricht, Netherlands: The Politics of European Integration” program. On the first half of the trip, I will be going, along with other Penn State students, on a ten-day study trip, visiting important international institutions in Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Paris, and Brussels. Some examples of these are NATO, the Council of Europe, and European Parliament. 
Once the study trip is over, we will begin phase two of the trip, on which I will be taking a class called “Political Aspects of European Integration” taught by a professor Alexander Hoogenboom. The basic goal of this class, and of the study trip, is for us students to examine how European governments are negotiating with one another via these institutions, oftentimes sacrificing degrees of their own autonomy, in the interest of reaching higher levels of efficacy, security and prosperity. And examine we shall!

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But don’t worry folks, these blog entries aren’t going to be centered around European politics. No one wants to read that. Not even European politicians. Rather, I plan to tell the story of a young man (ME) traveling halfway across the world and losing himself in the adrenaline rush of wandering through the streets of the old world. We’re gonna have a ton of fun.
Unless that guy in Irving’s exaggerated. See, on the last week of classes, I was in the basement of a bagel shop back at school eating some breakfast, and I saw a student wearing a Maastricht University t-shirt. I called out to him and explained that I was going on a study abroad trip there this summer. As it turns out, he took the same trip last summer. I was left with his words echoing in my head: It was the best six weeks of my life.
That could be a critique of his life just as well as it could be of this trip, but I’m just about completely positive this is going to be one of the most exciting, important things I’ve done in my life thus far. Whatever it is, a statement like that can make these next four weeks until June 19th seem like four months. So, for now I’ll continue to bide my time at my home in New Jersey, living on the precipice of the next great adventure: Maastricht.

Location: 71 Riverwood Avenue, Bedminster, NJ USA 07921