Your Passport is Going to Be Rocked!
Are you someone who prefers to do more rather than less? Do you often question why you should settle for one option when there are many? On The Catalyst, your community awaits. Together, you'll embark on an adventure across Europe, exploring vibrant neighborhoods in London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. As your classes take you through these amazing cities, you'll connect with the diverse cultures and people of the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Poland, and Germany.
Imagining London's hustle and bustle before visiting is nearly impossible. With hundreds of languages spoken daily, this city was ancient even when Shakespeare thrived. Each summer, Catalyst takes over Bloomsbury for a week, just 10 minutes from the theatre district and world-class museums. Enjoy the leafy squares where you can relax, just like Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf did in their time, amidst the vibrant music and art scene that makes London unforgettable.
When it was their turn, Thomas Jefferson, Van Gogh, Picasso, Hemingway, Joyce and Baldwin all went to Paris. On The Catalyst, you will see why. Our base is the edge of the Bastille neighborhood. Meaning the Seine River, Notre Dame and the famous Latin Quarter are all 15 minutes away by foot. In life there are places and things you return to over and over. But to come to Paris when you are young and hungry to meet the world? There is only one time to that. Now.
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Generations of adventurers have agreed that Vienna is the most beautiful city they've ever seen. This summer, you'll likely agree. The Catalyst calls central Vienna's historic quarter home, a monument and café-rich setting that was once home to Sigmund Freud and Paul Klee. It's a place where you'll become an expert in your own right. So that when you cross the Danube River for the last time as a Catalyst student, you'll say what countless adventurers have before you: "The Earth can have my body but my soul is staying here."​​
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No city in the world has been discovered anew more than Berlin. In the 1920's, the "lost generation" partied here, until Hitler and the Nazi's machinery of murder buried that Berlin in rubble, bones and ash. You'll see it all, from the pock-marked walls where American bombs pummeled this city in 1945. To the century-old biergartens and dancehalls that once entertained Stalin and his Iron-curtain cronies. Like the smells of amazing street food and the swirling ferocity of Europe's most outrageous graffiti artists, Berlin's brutal beauty is everywhere.
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