Here bellow is a report of my first week in Rotterdam. Copied from my personal blog. The link is bellow.
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Either I’m gonna love it or I’ll die here. That was my first thought, when I stepped out of the car after a 20 hour drive. The drive that was following a 3 hour sleep. After 20 hours of almost constant rain. At least I got to be the navigator and I still admire the driver, how he managed to take it. The navigation thing was a challenge itself, since we only had a Adriaroute on the Garmin (though it still had major roads throughout the Europe) and my mobile phone had European maps only partially loaded – but the locating didn’t work for some reason… Anyway, after we pushed ourselves dangerously close to our limits, we finally arrived to a city that only had to offer, and we only had to take. How the hell did we end up here? It’s real, isn’t it? So, Rotterdam will be our home for the next 6 months (myself) or maybe even 3 years (Miha, the driver). So much stuff that’s going around us now, when we finally reached the destination, and we didn’t even get to sleep yet.
The next few days were mostly in a matter of the trivial things. Getting mobile phone up and ready, inquiry at the city hall about the registration, eating all the sandwiches I didn’t on my way here, surviving and such. Coming here out of a country where probably more than 98% of the people are exclusively Caucasian I – though I hate to admit that – was pretty honestly scared. There are so many people… so many different races… different cultures… someone’s gonna see a weakness in you and you’ll wake up with one kidney less… No, wait. It’s Rotterdam and that’s how it’ll be thorough the next 6 months. If the rest of them are not afraid, why should you be? So, that’s how I became one of them, too.
Tuesday was a day to hit the well-known (and apparently well crowded as well) market and meet some of my future schoolmates. The market is more than enough big to find about anything you could possibly need for the week to come – except for the pasta it seems. Instead of it you can get all the other kinds of dough-based products, dairy products, fruits and vegetables; also some textile and other daily needed stuff. In the evening we went to a party meant for the international students. In my manner I left at about 2 o’clock in the morning and apparently I wasn’t the only one. Probably my head, my liver and my wallet are all grateful. And I don’t listen much to the other parts of my body anyway…
Wednesday was a day off for pretty much all of us. Since some had to get themselves together from the day before and the rest of for the day to come, that seems reasonable. In the end, I was still suffering the consequences from the Sunday torture. I’m not that young anymore, it seems.
So, the Thursday, the big day. We were all summoned to the school. Of course a few of us were late (Olek – my schoolmate and my flatmate – and I, we blame it on the girls!) otherwise it won’t be in our style. A trip around the school. I don’t really have much experience as I still haven’t been on so many schools yet – much less outside Slovenia – but Willem de Kooning is enormous if I was to judge. Consisting of two buildings linked together by a bridge or a few, 3 stairways up and down it’s plenty of space for its scholars. Or so it seems, since I did not see many of non-erasmus students there yet, in the end it might turn out to be crowded as well. At the end of the forthcoming week I’ll be able to tell. In the evening we went to a jam session in a jazz bar, but since I’m not a fan of jazz music I didn’t stay long.
We had a trip around the Rotterdam on the Friday. We got to see some remarkable buildings which we would get to see eventually anyway, but it was still good to hear the history about them. A few rather interesting facts, but I guess every city has some of them.
Today Miha and me went to a market again (it’s every Tuesday and Saturday) to get some everyday products and in the evening I went to the open air cinema with schoolmates. We saw the film Argo, and it was fairly cool. Or maybe I just thought it was, since it was my first open-air cinema experience in life. It was also the first time in R’dam I felt cold. So, the autumn is here… And for the first time after 5 years I get to start school in September.
And we basically finished our first week, so, this is it as far as it concerns my first blog post. Well, I know many of you want to know more about my schoolmates (the erasmus students are mostly girls on our school. By far), but let’s just leave that part for the next post, okay? It’s not like you get to choose…
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More from Rotterdam: http://blog.quitreality.com/
