SPIMUN Review by Neris Aydemir

SPIMUN Review by Neris Aydemir. St. Petersburg, for me, is one of the best cities in the whole world that I had the opportunity to go and participate in a very nice conference which was SPIMUN’18. The conference was in March and as I had been to Russia before, I knew that weather in Russia, in March is like the weather in Kars in December. Although I knew that it would be so cold, I was even more motivated by the fact that St Petersburg is a city that should be visited in the winter. Talking about St. Petersburg, I want to give you some cultural information about it. Thanks to SPIMUN we travelled and learned a lot.

Starting off our first day, we went to our hotel, after 3 hours of flight and rested a little bit. As our hotel was very close to the centre, we decided to go out and see what St. Petersburg offers to us. We couldn’t travel a lot as we were going to see very important places and tourist attractions of St Petersburg the next day. On the second day, they took us by bus and took us many places. Our first stop was the St. Isaac’s Cathedral which was built by Auguste Montferrand. Then we were taken to the Church of Resurrection after the cathedral and ate lunch at a local restaurant. I knew that food culture is very different to Turkey’s back then, but I didn’t know it was THAT different.

We couldn’t eat anything but I am sure they were all so delicious 🙂 After all, that we finally went to the Hermitage Museum which was a museum that I had always wanted to go to. Hermitage is a very huge museum; we couldn’t find each other many times and was impossible to see all of the artworks in there just in 3 hours. Thanks to our guide, we saw a lot of important pieces but I am pretty sure that we missed a lot as well. The last thing we did that day was seeing a ballet, Swan Lake. I had watched a lot of animations and movies about Swan Lake and seeing it live was just very fascinating. Then, we went to our hotel and discussed each other’s resolutions.

Our hotel was really nice and was inspired by Dostoyevsky’s novel: Crime and Punishment and each room had sections from the novel. The other day ( Day 3) we had the opening ceremony at the Nikolaevsky Palace. My dearest friend, Miray Ayyıldız was our ambassador and she made her stunning speech out there. The SPIMUN team organized a short concert for us who included singers, drum show and dances. They took us to Gymnasium 157 and to our committees. In our committee which was Baltic Forum, we were supposed to write 2 resolutions all together. Our agenda items were about creating an underwater archaeological museum and brain drain situation in the Baltic regions.

Before the conference, I wrote 2 resolutions about both of the topics because I didn’t know that we were going to write it in there altogether. But thanks to those 2 resolutions I became one of the main submitters in both of the agendas. On the first day, we just talked about the issues but did nothing about the resolutions. After the last session, we went to a very beautiful restaurant and had an amazing lunch there. On day 4, we had 3 or 4 – I am not sure about the number – very long sessions and we finished all of our resolutions. That night we had a lovely dinner at the Palma Palace and we had the chance to watch some dancers doing their cultural dances. It was very fun and enjoyable. On the last day of our conference, we had fun sessions just like all other MUN conferences and played some games.

We took a lot of pictures and talked to each other. I met with a lot of people at this conference both from different countries and from Turkey. At first, I thought that it was just impossible to keep in touch with them after the conference – with the ones abroad- but I still talk to them almost every week via social media. Attending an international conference really gives you a lot. You meet new people from different countries and if you keep in touch with them, you learn a lot about their cultures, you improve your skills, talk to international students and you gain experiences.
I received a special thanks award at the closing ceremony.

I was very happy because it was my third conference and my first award. In the evening, right after the closing ceremony we went to an Italian restaurant, ate some delicious food, and had a very nice- long conversation. Next day we went to the airport at 1 pm and shopped a little bit. I really wanted to stay more in St. Petersburg because this journey really meant something to all of us and strengthen our connections. I am much honoured to urge you all to attend some MUN conferences abroad. It is going to be awesome, trust me!

Neris AYDEMİR

The Writer of MUNTurkey.com

neris.aydemir@munturkeycom

Note: Pictures are taken from SPIMUN Facebook