Only memory remains..

Good-bye to you, beautiful Belgium. Good-bye my Erasmus friends.

My first Easter without my family.

I know that in this special moment for Christians, it’s a family meeting, but this year I skip this meeting. We did our best to prepare a similar party.

I passed my first exam! Intensive Dutch

“Here we certifity that

Costin Oane

Erasmus student from SNSPA, “College of communication and Public Relations”, Bucharest

Followed the EILC course between 28/01/08 and 15/02/08 totalising 60 hours of language tuition and including cultural activities, sat an oral and written exam and passed the test successfully.”

My mark is: B

Here I come Germany !

Tomorrow afternoon I will be in the train, on the way to Gelsenkirchen. I hardly wait to meat my Erasmus friends from Germany.

The people of Amsterdam are Amsterdam.

If someone asks me to make a sum up of Amsterdam, I will say that, Amsterdam is by far, the true city of tolerance and diversity. And I think that you must have some background, some training to understand this kind of freedom. The people of Amsterdam are Amsterdam.

Maybe you will say: millions of tourists can’t be wrong! Amsterdam. Can be true. But this place is not my type. People look very strange; you can smell marijuana from the street. Amsterdam is very very crowded and gives you anxiety feeling.

Amsterdam is one of the greatest cities in the world, a city which still receives millions of tourists every year. Is one of the most visited places in the world, after London, Paris and Barcelona. There are not to many things to visit (maybe I’m wrong) in Amsterdam, the main attractions for most visitors are:

Red Light District

You might be surprised to discover that this sex-for-sale zone occupies a handsome area of 16^th century canals and the “ordinary” people still leave here and go on with the daily business of life. If you are a boy, I am sure that your eyes will be for a moment focus on women behind the red windows. The whole area of town called Red Light District is always invaded by large groups of tourists walking in the streets and looking at the windows with the girls. I don’t recommend you to visit the Red Light section after dark. It’s more sinister and can be dangerous. According to statistics there are now over 25,000 prostitutes in the Netherlands. Prostitution has been legal in the Netherlands from 1815 and in 1996 the Dutch government started to tax it. By the way, no cameras in red light distict!

Coffee shops.
Here you can buy small amounts of cannabis. Coffee shops must not sell to anyone under 18 and they must not sell more than 5g to any customer. Hard drugs are strictly prohibited. Walking around the city I’ve seen a social campaign, that more and more kids under 10 years old, started to smoke and not everthing they started to smoke marijuana. In the midnight, we will find people asking you if you want some „ecstasy”.

Sex Museum. Erotic Museum
You will find a great collection of erotic art. The Erotic museum reflects what it is all about in the Red Light District.

You can be sure that Amsterdam is more than this, and you can get a most authentic experience from it. It was nice experience. It’s totally different from everything I’ve seen by now.

If you are in relationship, take your girlfriend and go in Amsterdam. Nobody will disturb you.

I can bet for this.

Happy birthday, Can !!

A nice and friendly person like you deserves the best that each day can bring. Happy Birthday!

After beer tasting

One day you discover these exceptional beers. After that, on each new occasion, all the meetings will be a pleasure. All the beers have made a big impression on me.

Another 10 mark for Katho University. They prepared a short presentation of the most famous Belgium beers. And then, we supposed to taste 3 different kinds of beers.

The first one was “Kriek” a light beer, and the taste was like a cherry juice. The name is derived from the Dutch word for this type of cherry. If you ask me, I can’t say that Kriek is a beer. But it was nice to try.

The second beer “Chimay”was a strong one, 9% alcohol. Very nice battle, interesting taste. Good to try it next time.

The last one was “Duvel”, another strong beer again, 8.5% alcohol. If you are new with this beer you can have some problems how to pronounce “Duvel”. The flemish pronunciation is “Doov’l”.

Beer tasting with our teachers!!

Yes is true. Beer tasting with our teachers. And it will be tonight. First time when I heard I thought that it’s a joke, but in fact is not. In my country it’s quite impolite to go to a pub and drink with one of your teachers at the same table.

P.S. By the way, the invitation came from them. And all the drinks are free.

Drinks for everyone! From the house..

Erasmus students from every place, let’s start to share what we have!

 

From now on my motto will be: “Erasmus students from every place let’s start to share what we have”. It’s not fair if we keep all these great moments only for us. There must be heard.

Now and Here.

 

Belgium. Here I come

There are many reasons why I start this blog (a kind of journal). Don’t’ take me wrong, it won’t be like a journey book, it will be full of photos and some of my opinions about the Erasmus experience in Belgium.

I’m having the chance to learn to one of the most powerful Erasmus University. It’s about Katho University from Belgium. It’s quite a young country, but I think that they are having this Erasmus program from the beginning and also they are from those who promoted this nice idea.

I arrived in Kortjik 3 days ago, and since than I continue to be surprised, in the good way. It’s pretty hard for me to express what I’m felling right now, because I think that I should write a book about them.

Some short opines from my short experience, since I landed here:

1. Briefly, they are pretty far from most of the Eastern countries from Europe. We should try to work harder if we still want to have a chance.
2. As far as I can see, everything boils down to education. If you want to listen a good English you should come here to see by yourself.
3. For most of the people, the weather won’t be so friendly because it’s changing a lot: for instance, the sun is shining and it may be raining, after 5 minutes. In my case, I don’t find it unfriendly; actually I really enjoy this kind of weather. But it’s up to you…
4. If you had been in Sibiu* and you really enjoy it, you should come in Kortijk because here you can find something like that. For those who don’t know, Sibiu (Romania) was elected to be one of the “the capital of European Culture” for 2007.
5. For such a small country, Belgium still has many problems and one of them sounds like this: the Flanders and the Walloons don’t fit together anymore. The Flemish live in the North of Belgium, Flanders. They speak Dutch. The Walloons live in the South of Belgium. They speak French. From their point of view, this problem doesn’t have a solution, and it won’t stop.
6. Here, everything has a meaning, it takes sense. They don’t do anything if they don’t need it. It looks like that all the buildings were erected from yesterday.