Anyone following Eurovision was probably anticipating this post: We hosted Vienna Intervarsity again this year on May 12-14. Because we like a challenge, we stuck to our guns and kept the tournament as big as last year with over 200 participants form all around the globe, with our convenors Aleks and Theo at the helm. As always, though, managing this was a team effort to keep everything running, at times at the cost of our own sleep schedules – thanks again to anyone who helped out, be it for a few hours or the entire weekend, as well as our lovely Chief Adjudicators, Equity officers and, last but definitely not least, our tab master Miruna!

After a workshop and a pubquiz on Friday evening, the tournament started in earnest on Saturday at the GRG Astgasse – a nostalgia trip for Theo since this was his old high school! With perfect debating weather (i.e. near constant clouds and rain, so you’re not missing anything outside by spending all day inside), we had a wonderful Saturday of inrounds with motions about psychoanalysis, spies and more, followed by our brand-essential Eurovision schnitzel social.

On Sunday, we even had a reason to celebrate ourselves at the break announcement – with Marina (who was also one of the Chief Adjudicators), Paula (who was one of the Equity officers) and Liam breaking as judges!
After most of the other inrounds, we switched to the ballroom at the “Orthopädisches Spital Speising” (Orthopedic Hospital Speising) for a fancy final – with champagne to celebrate! Congrats to “Naomi and Alek” (Naomi Panovka, Alek Selveliev), Technion W&W (Guy Wolf, Yael Wolff) and EDS Garam Masala Pretzel (Elisa Laures, Shivyaa Kumar Shrivastav) for winning the Open, ESL and Novice finals, Maria Matcheva as best Open and ESL speaker, Ema Vlajčević as best Novice speaker and Karin Matkovski as best new judge! Feel free to peruse the tab if you want all of the details.

Lastly, we’d like to thank our incredibly gracious sponsors that make VIV possible, among them Educom, Red Bull, Wiener Linien, Ströck Brot, Xocolat, Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna, Jaeger Tee, and J. Hornig. We especially want to thank Baker McKenzie Austria, who has been DK Wien’s longest and most generous sponsor.