Travel stories

Arrival and Orientation Weeks

On Wednesday at 11:20 AM, the plane took off from Barcelona and landed in Hamburg at 2:00 PM. To reach my destination, Emden, I had to take the subway from the airport to Hamburg Central Station, then a train to Bremen, and finally another train from Bremen to Emden Central Station. When I arrived, the buddy assigned to me by the university was waiting at the station and accompanied me to the apartment where I would live for the next two months. That same day, on the way to Barcelona Airport, I had verbally closed the rental deal with the landlord. Once we got to the apartment, she came upstairs and acted as a translator between the landlord and me so we could sign the contract. Once everything was sorted, they both left, and I met three of my flatmates: Nazar, Marco, and (check the Indian flatmate's name with Nazar). Not much else happened since it was late and I was tired, so I went to sleep to be ready for the start of the orientation weeks.

The first morning started with brunch at 11:00 AM where we met the Erasmus students, some buddies, and the university staff. There were students from Belgium, China, Spain, France, Italy, Morocco, and Portugal. Two university students, Felix and Claudius, gave us a tour around the campus as they were assigned to support us during the orientation weeks. Then we had some free time until 7:00 PM, when we all met at the Parish Hall to eat pasta together and get to know each other better. After dinner, everyone went home, but the Spanish students and Miguel, a student from Portugal, wanted to keep the party going. So, we went to a bar called Einstein and had a great time.

Work

Our boss was Menno Ternieden. He works at a company but also teaches at the university on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so we saw him in the office on those days to update him on the progress of our assigned project. The project involved setting up a couple of servers at the university: one LDAP server and another running Snipe-IT, an asset management tool. The goal was to connect both so that students could log into Snipe-IT using their LDAP server credentials. It wasn’t my favorite project since I would’ve preferred to develop an application, but it was pleasant to work here because Menno gave us a lot of freedom to work from home or at the office, and at any time of day — as long as we made progress.

Trips and Events

One afternoon, we went to Bremen. On the way to the city center, we crossed a bridge from which we could see a windmill. At that point, we split up — the girls went shopping at Zara, and the guys went for a walk around the city. After a while, we met up at the top-rated Spanish restaurant in the area for dinner. Later, we headed back to the station to return to Emden.

Emden Coast

After lunch, Xavi and I had our first meeting with Menno, where he assigned us our tasks. Then I went with Oumayma and Rim to help them with a problem they had. After that, I went to the Emden coast with Xavi, Jon, Manex, David, Pablo, and Dani. Once we reached the end of the coastline, we stopped for a snack. After a while, we started competing to see who could run the fastest.

Utrecht

That afternoon, I took several trains to get to Essen, where I met up with a friend from Frankfurt. He picked me up by car, and we drove to Utrecht. Once there, we met up with a good friend of mine and her sister, and we went to an amazing Halloween party. Most people were in costume — it was really cool. The venue had several themed areas: game zone, karaoke, ping-pong, bars, an ‘80s-themed nightclub, a lounge area, and my favorite: the Silent Disco. It was a room with multiple DJs, and with the provided headphones, you could tune in to whichever DJ you preferred. At 4:00 AM, the party ended, and we all went to sleep at my friend’s sister’s house. The next morning, we had breakfast, said our goodbyes, picked up the car, and Hans drove me back to Emden.