Mensa Slovenia Skiing Weekend |
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Early in December Mensa Romania received an invitation from Mensa Slovenia for the "Mensa International Skiing Weekend" to be held at the Vogel Ski Hotel in Bohinj in the second half of January. Upon hearing the word skiing I became immediately interested.
Fast forwarding through the events that actually lead to my taking part in the adventures to come, Thursday morning, the 21st of January, saw myself and fellow mensan Radu leaving Bucharest, heading for Slovenia. Radu drove through Romania, I drove through Hungary and 18 hours later, around 1 am, we arrived in Ljubljana. We experienced a bit of the night life, slept for a couple of hours and visited Ljubljana by day on Friday.
We got to the Vogel Ski Hotel on top of the mountain well within the cable car closing deadline, we got cleaned up, rested for a while and went on to interact with the other mensans. The discussions were engaging and culturally enriching, there were games to be played and fun to be had.
We skied for most of the day on Saturday. The weather was as beautiful as you can ask for on a skiing day, the sun shining bright on a clear blue sky, highlighting the cold and the clouds below us. Just after mid day the Mensa International Grand Slalom Open was held, with three categories: women's skiing, men's skiing and snowboarding. It was all in good fun and everybody seemed to enjoy the competition, the weather and the company quite thoroughly. I won first place in the snowboarding section and, although there were only four of us competing against each other altogether, I am still very proud of the achievement.
More fun and games were to come during the evening as well as a presentation of a study by Serbian mensan Goran Tomin about the link between intelligence and depression. After the presentation an award ceremony for the Grand Slalom was held. On Sunday we woke up, packed our bags and skied some more. In the afternoon every mensan left for home or other destinations.
Besides the fact that the entire adventure was very enjoyable it also helped me understand a lot more about Mensa and what it is really about. When I decided to take the test and signed up for membership I did it only because I was looking for another badge of honour, another decoration, I wanted to add another little line on an already extensive resume. As I approach the end of my first year as a member of the organization I now believe that I got more value from membership than just the shining Mensa badge.
Mensa is meant to bring people together based on a very simple criterium, that of IQ. It's meant to provide members with contacts of other people with minds to match. It's not meant to be an ivory tower where bright minds can lock themselves away and shun the rest of the world nor is it an organization focused solely on the intelligence of its members. Rather, it's a means of bringing people together to find new ways and new purpose to put all that intelligence to use. It is a way for people to interact, work, learn and have fun.
I left Slovenia with one question in mind: what should Mensa Romania's first international get together be about?
There are a couple of albums on Picasa worth seeing:
Ljubljana and Beyond
Bohinj Skiing Weekend
If you don't know what Mensa is give www.mensa-romania.ro a try for some answers.
If you're interested in becoming part of Mensa the next test will take place on April 11th in Bucharest.
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