'A crazy house', the film based on the Erasmus scholarship
1) The nerves of getting off the plane / train / bus / an infernal combination of the three things knowing that you were starting from scratch, unaware that that adrenaline rush of everything to do was not going to be a recurring companion throughout your life.
2) Flee from the Spanish at the beginning to end up joining them because they are the ones who understand you when you say "fistro".
3) Become a highly sought after chef. No matter how lacking your culinary skills are; There is always someone who requires your services to make a potato omelette and the result, no matter how disastrous, will be highly applauded.
4)Erasmus orgasmus . When someone first spoke of the richness that cultural exchange brings, I was thinking of this.
The orgasmus concept, pure wealth of cultural exchange
5) The “Where are you from?” conversations. Living in an eternal conversational loop in which you talk about where you're from, what you study and the price and conditions of the houses you've lived in so far on scholarship.
6) Have the social life of an Ibizan DJ in high season. Enter the residence or class as Tony Manero at the disco, greeting everyone and promising to attend events you don't plan to attend.
7) Learn tacos in all possible languages. We already know, they are the first words of a language that are learned and the last that are forgotten. Kurve.
8) Organize a gymkhana every weekend to traverse all possible destinations along a course. Or plan a month in the following parameters: the first weekend to London, the second to Belgium, the third we go to Hamburg and the fourth I think they celebrate a very good sausage fair in Rotterdam.
9) Paperwork and bureaucracy. Pursue your scholarship coordinator until you end up treating him like you and asking him about his children. Count thousands of times the credits . Make potagia magic with subject conversions to end up getting rid of the worst subjects and manage to attend interesting classes. Ending the certainty that that episode of the 12 tests of Asterix in which they have to obtain the A38 form and they go progressively crazy would not resist you.
The 12 tests of Asterix, pure paperwork and bureaucracy
10) Innocence. For many the Erasmus year was the first time they lived outside the family home and for many others the first time they lived in a foreign country. Yes, you could be so young and virgin to so many things. How not to remember it with a smile.
eleven) Make friends that in a month become the most important thing in your life. Many disappeared after the last exam but others continue to make you bless the day you checked the box of the destination university.
12) Have a lot of energy and never be tired. Sign up for plans that in your life before you would never consider. Class-party-travel non stop for nine months. You still wonder how you could put up with it so lush.
13) How dimwitted you feel when you do your first purchases at the supermarket , looking for fried tomato or struggling to identify what that unknown brand soup is made of.
14) Get hooked on new culinary products , brands of beer or varieties of non-existent snacks in your homeland.
fifteen) Being a millionaire with your monthly scholarship or (more likely) being poor as a rat . Make economic comparisons with the amount of the scholarship in other countries and freak out.
16) Feeling very sorry for those who leave in the middle of the course for having a scholarship for only one semester. And think a little "but what fools" too.
17) Tear down all the clichés and preconceived ideas, and create unexpected new ones.
18) Understand much more your country of origin, society and culture. There is nothing like taking distance to see your reality with different eyes. And let's not say if you look at your own life.
19) Celebrate all regional/traditional/professional festivals in the past and in the future: from Saint Patrick to the Day of Andalusia, from the pattern of Medicine to the day of Advertising , no party was left uncommemorated.
Any excuse is good for... PARTY
twenty) Compare experiences with your Erasmus friends in other countries: What at the University of Mainz do you have to study a lot? Ah, to have put an Italian city in the first option.
twenty-one) Being received when you return from your sporadic stays in Spain like an underground hero that passes black market penicillin, but instead of medicines you bring vacuum-packed envelopes of ham.
22) the intensity of living more experiences in 9 months than in whole years of life (and which results in the famous post-Erasmus syndrome) .
23) Tour the same tourist spots in your city over and over again to show them to visitors. Knowing the founding date of the cathedral, the funny anecdote of the King of the day or the dramatic episode of the Second World War better than any tour guide.
24) Having a lot of free time (you didn't know how precious that good could become in the future) to dedicate it to your true passions and even be able to discover new ones.
25) Compare different curricula and university structures and that almost always the one of your home university is the worst.
26) Theme dinners in which you try a thousand German / Finnish / Polish products whose existence you never suspected and that lead to endless gastronomic conversations about the differences between chorizos and sausages.
27) The absence of fear. Dare with everything and that everything gives a little equal. That concept of "let's go on an adventure", that no mattress will be too hard , no flight will be too late, no roommate will be too crazy if you have " a little help from your friends ".
28) The drama of the farewell parties. Attend sentimental breakups and friends between tears and oaths of eternal love. Say goodbye to the closest acolytes with Ryanair tickets already purchased for the next meeting.
29) Going back to your old life a little stunned, making you hate yourself for your friends who didn't share the Erasmus year; your university and your classic life seems pocha, routine and gray . Trust us, everything happens.
30) The awareness and security with which you realize that you have returned home. Not only do you have a diary full of Swedish, Danish and Italian names and a tango nostalgia bordering on depression ; along the way you have become more adult and you feel more capable of everything.
**31) ** The assortment of anecdotes, stories and jokes that you have nurtured and will be able to tell for the rest of your life. Erasmus is the military of the 21st century. *This article was originally published on March 17, 2014 . As a result of it, Lunwerg editions proposed the elaboration of a book with text by our collaborator Raquel Piñeiro and illustrations by Amaia Arrazola, on sale from February 17, 2015.
Follow @raestaenlaaldea
*** You may also be interested in...**
- 38 things you will always remember about your Interrail
- Arriving in Madrid: chronicle of an adventure - 22 things about Spain that you miss now that you don't live here
- 46 things you'll only understand if you're from Barcelona - 30 things you'll only understand if you're a pro from San Sebastian - You know you're Galician when... - Advantages of being Spanish - All humor articles - All articles by Raquel Piñeiro