First trip be­hind the bor­ders – Lanaken in Bel­gium

It's sunny Sat­ur­day, ideal time for some bike trip to ex­plore the neigh­bour­hood of Maas­tricht after our first week at SBE at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity. The one of the clos­est Bel­gian town to Maas­tricht is Lanaken, so let's ride there.

I've been in Maas­tricht for al­most 3 weeks now, but I have a bike only for a week. I wanted to use the first free Sat­ur­day with sunny weather for a trip. I con­vinced my fel­low Czech stu­dent Zuzka to come with me. Bára had to do some stuff for school, but she said that we should stop by on our way back. Great idea, bike trip and then din­ner to­gether when we could dis­cuss our first week at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity. I was not sure which di­rec­tion to take, so why not to the nort-west to Bel­gium? I was cu­ri­ous if I could spot some dif­fer­ence there.

We met at 2 p.m. at my place and with a sim­ple map in hand, we started out first bike trip. Bik­ing in the Nether­lands is fun and easy. Traf­fic is made for that, cy­clist have enough space. No the case of Bel­gium. First dif­fer­ence spot­ted. But on the other hand the only other thing that sig­nal­ized that we crossed the bor­der was the sign. Later on the build­ings we dif­fer­ent too. In Maas­tricht and gen­eral in the Nether­lands the ar­chi­tec­ture of reg­u­lar houses is very sim­i­lar and sim­ple with mostly dark colours used. The sub­urbs of Lanaken were on the other hand were full of large houses and each of them was dif­fer­ent to the oth­ers. Like as rich peo­ple would live there, a bit more sim­i­lar to the Czech Re­pub­lic but there you can­not see any trees close by.

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La­bels: Beer, Bel­gium, Bike, Czech peo­ple, Eras­mus, Sight­seen­ing, Weather

Pe­riod 4 at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity – sum­mary

In Feb­ru­ary I started my sec­ond se­mes­ter at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity. The dif­fer­ence to the pre­vi­ous time spent there was, that I was no longer an Eras­mus ex­change stu­dent, but I got ac­cepted as reg­u­lar mas­ter stu­dent into studypro­gramme called In­fo­nom­ics.

The fact, that I changed my stu­dent sta­tus didn't change much in the re­al­ity. As I de­scribed be­fore no­body at SBE makes dif­fer­ence be­tween ex­change and reg­u­lar mas­ter stu­dents. You have the same work­load and du­ties. There­fore it was just an­other pe­riod, new courses and new peo­ple. I de­cided to go for In­fo­nom­ics mas­ter pro­gramme. Even thought there were only 4 stu­dents who started this pro­gramme in Sep­tem­ber, I didn't have any course with them this time. But I met my new fel­low In­fo­nom­ics mas­ters – we were 4 again. We had ICT, In­no­va­tion and Eco­nomic per­for­mance course to­gether as this one is a com­pul­sory for our pro­gramme. For the elec­tive course I was the only In­fo­nom­ics stu­dent who de­cided to enrol in In­for­ma­tion Eco­nom­ics the rest 7 stu­dents went for IT pro­ject man­age­ment. I am glad that I de­cided that way, fi­nally I got was I was miss­ing – a bit of math again. Well, I was re­ally ex­cited about the new pe­riod. Even if the stu­dent sta­tus change is ba­si­cally only some pa­per­work it meant a lot to me. Es­pe­cially be­cause about a year ago, it didn't come to my mind that I would ever be­come a reg­u­lar mas­ter stu­dent abroad. Isn't it awe­some?

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La­bels: In­fo­nom­ics, MSc, Salsa, Study, Uni­ver­sity, Weather

Going home for Easter and my first couch­surf­ing ex­pe­ri­ence

I got a bit of free time after my exams and it is good to go home from time to time. Un­for­tu­nately I had only one week­end for this short visit, but even in a short time a lot could be done - es­pe­cially when it's Ester.

This time I do not want to write sep­a­rate ar­ti­cles about trip there and back, as I al­ready de­scribed fly­ing to Brno and trav­el­ling with the Eu­ro­lines, so I will only focus on what was new. I should start with how I planned the trip. Fly­ing is the cheap­est and faster way how to get to Maas­tricht and back, but I was going back with the bus. Why? Well, the same rea­son why I stayed only one week­end in the Czech Re­pub­lic. Change of plans – I needed to be at the uni­ver­sity on Tues­day, April 10 at 9 o'clock as I had some du­ties sched­uled. Be­fore I knew this, I had a plane ticket booked from Brno to Eind­hoven on Fri­day March 13. This would mean one whole week for meet­ing friends and ar­rang­ing some ad­min­is­tra­tive stuff. As uni­ver­sity changed my time sched­ule, I needed to adapt and there­fore the bus back. I wanted to seize Mon­day at least, as it was Ester, so I re­jected tak­ing plane in the morn­ing and in the af­ter­noon, as get­ting to the air­port also take some time. Bus goes at 17 and at 23 o’clock. The sec­ond one would allow me to enjoy the Mon­day, but it ar­rives to Eind­hoven at 12 o'clock which would be too late. Ac­tu­ally, look­ing at the whole pic­ture, there are a lot of pos­si­bil­i­ties, how to get from the Nether­lands to the Czech Re­pub­lic. Nice Now you know what I had to go through while plan­ning my stay home.

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La­bels: Cel­e­bra­tion, Czech peo­ple, Easter, Eind­hoven, Eu­ro­lines, Tra­di­tion, Train

Pe­riod 3 at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity – sum­mary

Pe­riod 3 lasts only 2 weeks and you have a skill course. This in­ten­sive train­ing was the last part of my ex­change se­mes­ter in Maas­tricht.

Most of the ex­change stu­dents do not at­tend the skill course in Pe­riod 3, be­cause com­ing back for 2 weeks does not make sense if you live far away. The exams for pe­riod 2 are sched­uled be­fore Christ­mas and pe­riod 3 be­gins in the mid Jan­u­ary so only those who need the cred­its come back after 3 weeks hol­i­day. The sec­ond fac­tor is the course se­lec­tion pos­si­bil­ity. As most of the mas­ter pro­grammes lasts only one year, the only skill courses pro­vided at mas­ter level are the­sis con­nected and as Eras­mus ex­change stu­dent, you are not al­lowed to en­roll and of course it does not make any sense to do so. Your choice is then re­stricted to the of­fered skill courses at bach­e­lor level.

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La­bels: Eras­mus, Excel, Li­brary, MSc, PBL, Study, Uni­ver­sity

Mov­ing into a new flat in Maas­tricht

Chang­ing from Eras­mus to reg­u­lar mas­ter stu­dent is time for change - my sub­let con­tract ex­pired with no pos­si­bil­ity to ex­tend it, so I had to move. I got lucky so I found ex­actly the same room from the same land­lord just a new steps away from pre­vi­ous place of liv­ing.

I was not very fond of the fact that I have to move. Great thing is that I got ac­cepted by the Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity for mas­ter pro­gramme which could be also taken as time for change, but I think we had a good thing going with my flat­mates and I also got quite fa­mil­iar with the place and the room. Idea of mov­ing was also a bit scary be­cause I was wor­ried about find­ing a new place – I re­mem­bered the pre­vi­ous search­ing process I done in June and July. In the mat­ter of a new place I got lucky – the land­lord of the flat owns more places and he of­fered me a place to stay since Feb­ru­ary – also a sub­rent as the girl liv­ing there was going to the world for an in­tern­ship. Cool thing was that it's the same block of flats so I do not have to take all my stuff to the other side of the Maas­tricht.

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La­bels: Bu­reu­cracy, Eras­mus, Flat hunt­ing, MSc, Uni­ver­sity

The best Car­ni­val? In Maas­tricht!

Car­ni­val - spe­cial event when peo­ple dress up into funny and colour­ful cos­tumes, drink and have fun. Ex­actly this hap­pens in Maas­tricht every year and as I am here, I could not miss it. I ex­pe­ri­enced some­thing in­cred­i­bly cool and at­mos­phere in the whole city was just fab­u­lous.

I was never a big fan of Car­ni­val as I never had a rea­son to be. Maas­tricht is fa­mous for hold­ing up to the tra­di­tion so the only thing you can do to avoid Car­ni­val is to get out of the city. Not my case. I was cu­ri­ous what it's gonna be. As I re­ported in No­vem­ber in ar­ti­cle The be­gin­ning of the Carneval sea­son, the Car­ni­val in Maas­tricht changes the city. Re­ally. And it was just a small in­tro­duc­tion in No­vem­ber com­pared to cur­rent event. Prepa­ra­tions took sev­eral days – shops with big show win­dows put wooden boards for pro­tec­tion, dif­fer­ent stuff coloured green-yel­low-red dec­o­rated in the whole city. But what you could not see were the prepa­ra­tions made by the peo­ple – they cre­ated cos­tumes, masks and car­ni­val ve­hi­cles. I in­vited a friend who is now for ex­change in Brus­sels to see it and she came with 5 other friends which was awe­some. Hap­pi­ness is real when shared So let's have fun!

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La­bels: Cel­e­bra­tion, fes­ti­val, His­tor­i­cal place, music, Pub, Sight­seen­ing, Weather

Hol­land trip – Ni­jmegen, 's-Her­to­gen­bosch, Utrecht

Trav­el­ling and walk­ing sight­see­ing of cities is more fun when you are in a group. We were five - four Czech stu­dents and one French stu­dent and de­cided to see the city of Ni­jmegen. But we seized the day and vis­ited also 's-Her­to­gen­bosch and Utrecht. Let's dis­cover Nether­lands!

I have been to the Nether­lands for 5 months but dur­ing that time I didn't travel much. I wanted to ex­plorer the sur­round­ings of Maas­tricht by bike and I also vis­ited some cities a few years ago. I like to travel, but I pre­fer to do sight­see­ing with friends, as it's more fun than just walk­ing alone. Nether­lands is not a big coun­try and it takes about 5 hours to get by train from the south to the north. But trains are not cheap for for­eign vis­i­tors, so you care­fully have to search for spe­cial of­fers. One of them is the "Dagkaart" (Dayt­icket) that you can buy in some shops from time to time. As reg­u­lar price of such ticket is 48€, in spe­cial offer you can buy it for 13€. As I had such a ticket and it was about to ex­pire I was glad that we agreed on a trip. Let's dis­cover the Nether­lands!

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La­bels: Beer, Czech peo­ple, His­tor­i­cal place, Sight­seen­ing, Train

Pe­riod 2 at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity – sum­mary

As I al­ways did on my blog when I wrote about my bach­e­lor stud­ies, I am now going to sum­ma­rize the exams and my courses I took in pe­riod 2 dur­ing my stud­ies at SBE at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity. But not only the courses are de­scribed in the ar­ti­cle, we can­not for­got the over­all ex­pe­ri­ence.

After I got ac­quainted with the rules at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity dur­ing the Pe­riod 1 I was no longer wor­ried about the local school sys­tem. As an Ex­change stu­dent I en­rolled my­self for courses not from one mas­ter track and there­fore in sec­ond pe­riod at SBE I also met com­pletely new peo­ple in my tu­to­r­ial groups (there were a few In­fo­nom­ics ex­cep­tions ob­vi­ously). I first thought about writ­ing sep­a­rate ar­ti­cles about each course but than I re­al­ized that it's not nec­es­sary and also it's more in­ter­est­ing to have a shorter sum­mary. Also the exams were very sim­i­lar this time – both writ­ten at MECC, which is also a quite in­ter­est­ing story for some­one, who is not fa­mil­iar with prac­tices at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity. Well, as I re­cently got to know, there are dif­fer­ent prac­tices at dif­fer­ent fac­ul­ties and even study pro­grammes, but let's gen­er­al­ize it for the case of writ­ten exams As I may have (or also not) men­tioned, I at­tended In­tel­lec­tual propety law and In­for­ma­tion So­ci­ety (EBC4027) and In­ter­na­tional com­pet­i­tive­ness and An­titrust pol­icy (EBC4026) courses.

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La­bels: Bu­reu­cracy, Eras­mus, In­fo­nom­ics, MSc, PBL, Study, Uni­ver­sity