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.

Good bye to my old room, source: my picture

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.

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.

Exams at MECC, source: my picture

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.

Short summary of my winter holidays

Christmas break is over and it's time to get back to Maastricht to continue with studying at SBE. Today I will talk about the time I spent in the Czech republic and than about my superb weekend in Maastricht before period 3 started.

My favourite Maastricht University hoodie, source: my picture

I was home for three weeks and now it's time to return to Maastricht University. I really appreciate the fact, that all exams are written before the Christmas break. I could enjoy my holiday and relax. On the other hand, waiting for the results has an opposite effect – getting more and more nervous whether I passed and how. As I didn't fail any exam in the first period, I had now 3 weeks of free time. As I only visited my country – Czech Republic – for a few days at the end of October, I was looking forward to seeing my friends and family again. Christmas is an ideal time for stuff like that and after spending the New Year's Eve with my university buddies, time was going faster than I realized. I enjoyed great Czech beer, which is one of the things that I really miss in Maastricht. I spent during last two weeks quite a lot of time in pubs despite the fact that I am definitely not a big drinker.

Free Dutch bank account for students – Rabobank

Are you a student and do you need dutch bank account? My experience with the process of getting bank account in Netherlands. What looks like an easy and fast thing can at the and be pretty annoying and long-run deal.

Rabobank, Source: en.wikipedia.org

I have several czech bank accounts, as I am quite sensitive to the services provided by banks. I hoped, that I will not have to create another one, but I had to. Reason was quite simple – I worked for the university at Master's open day. If you are forreign student and you do not have Maestro card, you will not be able to pay with your card in the shops, so you also would like to create a bank account. At Rabobank, there are bank accounts for students totally for free. The only problem – dutch bureaucracy and time horizon of several weeks. In order to be able to have a bank account, you have to have BSN/sofi number (social security number, unique identifier of you in Netherlands). Another complication for most of the foreign people will also be the language – everything is in only Dutch. Including Internetbanking, so be prepare for that. But let it take step by step, how the whole process looks like and what is an alternative to Rabobank.

Registration at municipality in Maastricht

In order to be able to get my bank account at Rabobank and get tax discount I needed to get Dutch social (BSN) number, which requires registration of my stay in Maastricht at local municipality. The meeting was scheduled for today.

Workers, source: my picture

The first strange thing is, that you actually need to make an appointment for that, and it can scheduled minimum 3 weeks after you ask for it. As I was there on the 3^rd of October, I was offered the 24^th, but I had planned my visit in Czech Republic for that date, so we scheduled it for today Monday, 31^st of October, 9 a.m.

As I missed the green light at the traffic light near my place, I wanted to use the way around as usually so I could save time, but there is some construction work on the street. So I wanted to ride with my bike over the footpath for about 2 meters, and there was a fence on the road. An old nervous guy stopped me, that this ia a place for pedestrians and forced me to get of my bike for these 2 meters. I was really pissed off, because I was in a hurry, you cannot see anyone in a range of a few hundred meters except of these 2 guys, each of them on the other side of the construction (about 20 meters long), forcing people not to ride on bike on the sidewalk. Aahh… This has nothing to do with security as they do not protect anyone, it is only a big waste of money and people get annoyed. But these guys think, how important they are. They also are not pleasant to ask you kindly or reason why. So after this small incident, the rest of my way was ok.

Timetable for second period

Timetables for next period are published and can be opened on the internet. No more waiting, everybody can make their plans till the end of the year 2011. It's nice, that deadlines here are met.

Organizer, Source: www.dreamstime.com

My new timetable! Second period of the fall semester including exam week is from 31. 11. 2011 to 22. 11. 2011. There can be small changes, but still I finally have the idea, what my schedule will look like. I really liked my time table in the first period, because I had only three days of school and one tutorial after the another, so no blank space between them. In addition to that I started at 8:30, which made me get up and I had the whole afternoon free. I also had free Mondays, longer weekend is always good If I get something like this now, I would be happy.

Every student can find his personal student time table via My Portal -> Web Timetable -> My Student Timetable ->select period and view button. I clicked on it and… well, it could have been worse Again 3 days of schools, no blank spaces between tutorials, but everything is in the afternoon! Two times a week from 4 to 6 in the evening? That's completely reversed to my schedule in the first period. At least I have free on Fridays.

In anybody interested, there is complete Academic Calendar 2011/2012 for SBE.