Duke University Global Education Office for Undergraduates

Program Schedule

Travel Arrangements

Students are expected to make their own flight arrangements to and from Geneva. Students need to be at the program site on July 1. For students departing the U.S., this means leaving on June 30. Students can leave the program site on August 11. Given the intense nature of this program, late arrival and/or early departure is not permitted. 

Excursions

In addition to day trips around Geneva, there is an expense-paid excursion to Berlin. There, students can gauge the commercial, cultural, and political impact of the transition from state centrally planned economy and a socialist welfare system to a free-market economy and reduced social safety net. Students have the opportunity to become acquainted with the art, music, cuisine, and history of this famous European city and capital of a reunited Germany.

 


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Postcard from Abroad

Dear Global Education Office:

During my six weeks based in Geneva, I traveled to major cities almost every weekend. We sat at cafes in Paris, straddled democracy and communism in Berlin, looked out over the Charles River in Prague and tramped the avenues in Zurich during Street Parade. But perhaps my favorite weekend came far away from a city, ducked in between the Swiss, French and Italian Alps in Chamonix-Mont Blanc, France.

We went on two hikes that weekend. I'm not much of a hiker or an outdoors man (and, lucky for me, the daunting Mont Blanc itself was not on our itinerary), but I was able to appreciate the sheer beauty and scope of the scene, to the point where I understood how people could feel at home in the serene mountain air, find peace in the solitude.

The first day's hike was particularly grueling, my new and stiff boots notwithstanding. We stopped for lunch -- cheese, bread and wine at 2,000 meters -- before making our final ascent, an hour-long uphill journey to a glacier. My quads burned and my calves ached but once we reached the glacier itself, the pain evaporated from my body as the ice dripped down the side of the massive figure. It was a beautiful sight, one that I could only seen on this program, on this trip, on this hike -- it was an unforgettable scene that no city, not even the largest metropolis, could match.

 -Ben Cohen

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