Trip to Am­s­ter­dam and Queens­day

Mon­day, April 30 is des­ig­nated to na­tional hol­i­day called Queens­day. The whole coun­try goes nuts, every­body dress in or­ange, drink and enjoy them­selves. I used the long week­end to visit my friend in Am­s­ter­dam and spend the Queens­day there.

I Am­s­ter­dam, source: my pic­ture

I was in Am­s­ter­dam in July 2008, but to be hon­est, I do not re­mem­ber much. I made a lot of pic­tures, be­cause I had my cam­era for a short time and was re­ally ex­cited. I don't re­mem­ber any more, where we stayed, just that the weather was not so good and I liked the bridges and canals in the city. That was 4 years ago, now I have been in the Nether­lands since Sep­tem­ber 2011 (I went back to the Czech Re­pub­lic three times) and I haven't been in Am­s­ter­dam. I post­poned my visit until Katka (my fel­low stu­dent from Charles Uni­ver­sity) went there for Eras­mus ex­change so I have a place to stay, a guide but mostly some­one to walk thought the city and spend the time with. I planned my visit for long week­end in­clud­ing the Queens­day. In 2012 it's cel­e­brated on Mon­day, April 30. So let's go to Am­s­ter­dam!

The Hague, Schevenin­gen, Rot­ter­dam

A friend of mine came to visit me to the Nether­lands for four days and as she was never in this coun­try I planned a lot of trips for this week­end. As this would be my last chance to travel be­fore I leave Maas­tricht for some time, I also wanted to visit some cities I have never been to.

Me at the sea, source: my pic­ture

Kate flew with Wiz­zair from Prague, so I was sup­posed to wait at her at the train sta­tion in Eind­hoven at 8 a.m. Well, I set up only one alarm clock and switch it off sub­con­sciously, so I woke up at half past 7 and re­al­ized that I had fallen asleep. I man­aged to catch a train from Maas­tricht at 8, so I got to Eind­hoven just one hour later than planned. Kate was wait­ing for me al­ready. We bought some break­fast at a nearby su­per­mar­ket and then got on the train and spent slept for a while. Were we ar­rived at 11 a.m. to The Hague and our trip was about to begin.

The Hague

When we got off the train, it was slightly rain­ing but stopped after a few min­utes and slowly the sun was com­ing out of the clouds. Ac­cord­ing to the weather fore­cast it was sup­posed to be partly clouded that day. Bet­ter than any day in the last 2 weeks in Maas­tricht. I had only a vague idea what is worth see­ing in the city, so we just walked there and there. The city was busy only in the shop­ping areas, but oth­er­wise it was quiet which was a bit un­ex­pected. The at­mos­phere there was nice and newly built up houses were not dis­turb­ing the old ones, like the city kept its look. Even newly built up sky­scrap­ers near the train sta­tion are nicely com­posed into the over­all view. We wanted to see the sea which meant walk­ing about 3kms to Schevenin­gen. I should have printed this map for tourists, it would be very help­ful, but my map in GPS was enough.

Schevenin­gen – Panorama, source: my pic­ture

IESN Traf­fic Light Party

Traf­fic Light Party or­ga­nized by IESN at the end of Sep­tem­ber in Stu­dent­café De Beurs. Let's go out on Thurs­day and party!

Traf­fic light party, source: my pic­ture

Peo­ple from In­ter­na­tional Eras­mus Stu­dent Net­work or­ga­nized the­matic Traf­fic Light Party and as I had noth­ing else to do, I joined. The theme sent a clear mes­sage – your re­la­tion­ship sta­tus. Like on the traf­fic light, you were of­fered at the en­trance 3 colours – green, yel­low and or­ange. Green sig­nal­ized that you are sin­gle, or­ange peo­ple are off lim­its (well, there is a say­ing that boyfriend is not a fence nor an in­cur­able de­cease, but let's leave this now) and yel­low… how knows, maybe se­cretly in love with some­one or in com­pli­cated phase or a ro­mance. Quite easy, no need to get a spe­cial out­fit. I hoped that my fel­low Czech ex­change stu­dents would join me, but I didn't man­age to con­vince them. The party was sched­uled to start at 10 p.m., so I was there like 10.30, at the en­trance picked up green bracelet in ex­change for my ticket I bought for 2€ at the ESN of­fice a week be­fore and I en­tered the pub...

Maas­tricht – Eind­hoven – Prague – Náchod and back

I have a week free from uni­ver­sity, so I de­cided to go home and visit my fam­ily and friends. Let's fly to the Czech Re­pub­lic from Eind­hoven, but this time not to Brno but to Prague. As the route is al­most rou­tine, I had more time to look around and ob­serve the world around me.

Wel­come in Eind­hoven, source: my pic­ture

At School of Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics is the exam week fol­lowed by the resit week and I didn't have to re­peat any exam from pre­vi­ous pe­riod, there­fore I had a free week. In my case not ex­actly, be­cause I still needed to solve a take home exam with due date on Fri­day July 15, but there was no need to be in Maas­tricht for that. Since I want to stay in Maas­tricht in July, going home for a week seemed like a good idea. I pre­fer fly­ing with Wiz­zair, as Eind­hoven in close, it's fast and it's cheaper than going by bus. Even if you book the bus ticket more than a month be­fore, one way bus ticket cost me the same as re­turn with a plane. Crazy. The only prob­lem is the de­par­ture time for flights to Brno (8.30 a.m.), but that is not the case of flights to Prague. Plane takes off at 12 and there is enough time to get to Eind­hoven from Maas­tricht with a train. Great.

Salsa danc­ing lessons on Tues­days

I got a link from a friend of­fer­ing free salsa in­tro­duc­tion les­son. I de­cided to check that out as danc­ing lessons would be nice to at­tend. After the first lec­ture I can say that from now on, my Tues­day night is the salsa night.

Salsa Brisa logo, Source: www.​salsabrisa.​com

Let's dance Salsa! I never danced salsa be­fore but why not give a try? Niki posted link on her pro­file and I checked the web­site of www.​salsabrisa.​com. They have also an Eng­lish ver­sion which is pleas­ant. Not that I have any prob­lem with un­der­stand­ing basic writ­ten Dutch but still, I ap­pre­ci­ate that. The web­site stated that the first "Open les­son" started at 8 p.m. I was not sure what I should ex­pect, but they wrote that no part­ner is needed. I hoped there would be more girls than dur­ing my last danc­ing course of Zouk, but later about that. The lo­ca­tion of the lessons is near the Hoge Brug on the left side of the river in club D'n Hiemel, which is about 10min­utes bik­ing from my place. I also found an­other Salsa lessons in Maas­tricht, but the place was a bit far away, so I wished that I would be sat­is­fied with this one.

SBE In­tro­duc­tion day for Ex­change Stu­dents

There are a lot of ex­change stu­dents at School of Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics every year and in order to pre­sent the Fac­ulty of the Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity and to pro­vide peo­ple with con­tact with other ex­change stu­dents, SBE or­ga­nizes In­tro­duc­tion Day.

My group, Source: www.​facebook.​com

As I men­tioned in the last ar­ti­cle about SBE Mas­ter's In­tro­duc­tion Day, I kind of took this in­tro­duc­tion day at SBE twice. But I am re­ally glad as each of those two days pro­vided a bit dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ence and as a re­sult, I know more and I also had some­thing in­ter­est­ing to do and I met a lot of peo­ple. Ob­vi­ously I made the same mis­take twice – I can't find any any pic­tures of the day, but I def­i­nitely took some and there are only a few pro­vided by the Uni­ver­sity so the de­scrip­tion has to be enough.

In­tro­duc­tion day for Ex­change stu­dents is com­pul­sory – you have to be there to get your Stu­dent card and let the UM know that you ar­rived and also to get all nec­es­sary in­struc­tions. And you also get a plenty of ad­di­tional stuff in­clud­ing quite use­ful stu­dent hand­book. You can also find it on­line, but printed ver­sion is more handy.

Mas­ter’s In­tro­duc­tion Day at SBE

Today is the last day of Au­gust and my first of­fi­cial day at School of Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­sity. Let's talk about how was my first im­pres­sion of the Fac­ulty, PBL sys­tem and the peo­ple I met today.

Slide from wel­com­ing pre­sen­ta­tion, source: my pic­ture

First I have to men­tion that I am an ex­change stu­dent, but quite an ac­tive one. I took part at , which is more for reg­u­lar stu­dents and also today – it's in­tro­duc­tion pre­pared for reg­u­lar mas­ter stu­dents, as will be to­mor­row But I've al­ready signed in and it's bet­ter to have more in­for­ma­tion and see the school from dif­fer­ent points of view, don't you think?

The whole day was great, ideal in­tro­duc­tion to the uni­ver­sity and also to the city. Great thing is, that you are the whole day in a small group where are also your fu­ture fel­low stu­dents – ideal for get­ting know each other a bit. You get the in­for­ma­tion about the most im­por­tant things and also how to get along. If you still have any prob­lems with the stu­dent card, miss­ing doc­u­ments or are you just not sure about some­thing and do not know where to ask, than In­tro­duc­tion day will help you! Well, I had a great tutor so I can only give a very pos­i­tive feed­back and I hope that also other stu­dents had the same ex­pe­ri­ence.

Trip to Brugge – pop­u­lar city full of tourists

It's Sat­ur­day, ideal time for some trav­el­ling. My friends sug­essted that Brugge would be nice place to see, to we agreed on trip to Bel­gium by train. Brugge showed up to be nice city that at­tracts a lot of tourists.

Brugge, source: my pic­ture

And and two of mine czech speak­ing Eras­mus friends agreed to meet at the train sta­tion at 8 a.m. We couldn't buy the tick­ets be­fore, be­cause there train peo­ple on strike in Bel­gium. But in the morn­ing looked every­thing fine. There is re­ally good offer for young peo­ple – younger that 26 years – one day re­turn ticket to Bel­gium costs only 15€, but be­cause it was bought at the cash desk it cost 50 cents more! I do not know why, but next time I will buy at at the au­to­matic ma­chine.

I also met a friend from Canada – I have the An­titrust course with her, and guess what, she also wanted to go to Brugge! I of­fered her, that she can join us, as I would be more fun. Now we were group of 4 peo­ple going to dis­cover Brugge, we had no exact plan, no map but a nice sunny day and open mind. There is no di­rect train from Maas­tricht, we first had to go to Liege and there change the train. It was the first sur­prise and nice begin of today's trip for me.