Hospitality Exchange Movie Mondays

Three of the most active Hospitality Exchange Communities (Hospex) are getting together every Monday in Brussels to watch a movie. Afterwards they meet at a café downtown to discuss the movie and much much more.

Members of BeWelcome, Couchsurfing and Hospitality Club are meeting in front of the UGC De Brouckère around 19h30/7.30pm every single Monday. We try to offer a healthy mix of Blockbusters, arthouse movies and local films, but we always try to involve as many people as possible. This means that mostly the movies will either be in English or have English subtitles.

You can read the reviews of some of our recent movies in our BeCultural blog

Do you want to know more or do you want to subscribe to our mailing list : just send us a message asking for access to our Hospitality Exchange Movie Monday Google Group

A Visit from Vishnu

Two years ago my wife and I visited Coimbatore in the South of India, and were invited by a fellow BeWelcome member called Vishnu. We had a great time, and he invited us to an Indian Wedding. His Hospitality was amazing and we felt really at home with him and his mother.

So you can imagine our happiness when Vishnu decided to pay us a visit this year. He came at the end of January, when our daughter was exactly one month old, and we took him to see Aachen. He also stayed with a Polish friend of ours, and even though the weather was not wonderful, I trust he had a good time. He spent three nights at my place and he brought us some delicious tea which we enjoyed a lot since my wife and I are both big tea-drinkers.

After Brussels he went to Champagne area in France. I trust he drank moderately and made it safely back to wonderful Coimbatore.

The Linux Hotel and the Unperfekthaus

On June 7-8 BeVolunteer organized it's second General Assembly at the Linux Hotel in Essen, and partied afterwards at the equally incredible Unperfekthaus. Both locations were perfect for our purposes, and we would like to thank the owners once again for their support in making this weekend a success.

You can read all about the General Assembly of Bevolunteer (the organization behind BeWelcome, an open source hospitality exchange network) in our internal wiki pages.

So what are the Linux Hotel and the Unperfekthaus, and how can they fit into your projects?

First of all, the Linux Hotel is a luxurious location that offers inexpensive training courses and seminars about OpenSource-software. They have all the know-how, the material, virtual servers and all the equipment you need to create your own conference rooms.
On top of that they are a hotel, and can provide you with top-quality accommodation, sauna, a wonderful park and garden, and much much more.

What's more, they offer something called "FreakTime" where you can stay with a whole group of programmers at cheap rates and have a hackaton. Check our their website (in German, but you can contact them in English) at Linuxhotel.de

The Unperfekthaus is something completely different, but very complementary to the Linux Hotel. It is litteraly an Open House, a place where everybody is welcome to use all the facilities (a walk-in sauna, huge television/computer screen, computers, workshops etc.etc.). They even have a hotel that consists of common rooms (like kitchen, living room) so that guests can come together in the evening. It is a place where there is always something going on, from concerts to movie screenings and art exhibitions.

Greetings from Essen

Greetings from the Linux Hotel, an amazing place where Open Source meets dedicated volunteering and cultural exchange. This wonderful oasis of peace and technology is the perfect place to host the second General Assembly of BeVolunteer, the organization behind BeWelcome.org

We will be here 3 days, electing a new Board of Directors (delegates elected by all the members of BeVolunteer), approving the budget, talking about the general direction we want to take with BeVolunteer.

You can read all about it on our open Wiki pages, because transparency is important to all of us.