INKOM 2011 – Week of fun begins

There is special week for incoming student for the whole Maastrichtu University. Four days to get to know Maastricht a bit more, get some friends before the school starts and also get some information about the university. That's what INKOM is about.

Before we get the the programme of today – I should mention, what the INKOM is about. It's organized with support of the Maastricht University and it's orientation week for all incoming students and freshmen to the University. It starts at the Faculty of Medicine, Health, and Life Sciences, which is on the other side of the city that School of Business and Economics. The reason is clear – here is much more space for everything including loud music. The target is to present the university, student associations, student life, city of Maastricht and getting to know some people before the school starts. It's good, because most of them are also lonely here. You can register and pay before, it's cheaper

The registration for the INKOM started at 10 a.m., so I wanted to arrive there for about this time. My brother our our friend drove me there and I was astonished by the building and all the people. Wow. There were so many people waiting in a queue, obviously everybody wanted to be there on time. I had to wait for about an hour in a line, so I had time to observe people around me. A lot of German speaking people – I didn't know before, that there are so many of them, but it's understandable, as Maastricht is close to Germany. Then you can clearly distinguish people from any student association, as they wear colourful costumes or are just united by some kind of uniform.

Tuesday 23.8. – Opening and Pub crawl

After about an hour waiting for registration, I got a brochure with the programme for the week, wrist bank for identification INKOM participants and later on also swag bag with some information, several fliers, discounts and a toy. My group of master students got number 306. We also had two mentors – young girls – who would guide us for the rest of the week. They were part of SV Koko, which showed to be really good later on. Well, they were great, because they really took care of us. We played some introduction game, but it was a bit of no sense, as I hardly could remember the names of my group members and pronounce them correctly was even more difficult. Introduction game was about Maastricht and most of us had no idea about the it. Well, so we moved to the DiMi Festival that took place in front of the building.

We wanted to buy a beer, but first you have to buy a COIN so you can pay for the beer with a coin. Strange system. So we bought coins, but when we arrived to the beer stand, that had no more. No beer left! WTF? At least we can use this coins during the whole INKOM. Fortunately Lisa und Izzy had beer in cans, what a smart move, nice At 14:30 the whole crowd moved – Parade begun. It meant walking to the city centre, that is on the other side of a river. There we had a pie and actually not that much to do, we talked and waited till 5 when we wanted to get the dinner. Well, we waited another about an hour! for the dinner. I was a bit angry, definitely wrong organized, but what the hell.

After dinner, pub crawl was on the programme. It means walking from one pub to another and everywhere drink one or two beers. It's not cheap here (About 2 for 0,2l), so we had in our booklets coupons, so we paid for 1 beer 1 coupon and 1€. And we had fun. Most of the people moved back to the MECC, where was a party, but I stayed with a few people from my group in the city and continued with getting know the pubs so I got home at about 3 a.m. If this week will be like that every day, than I will be deadly tired on the weekend

Photogallery – INKOM 2011 - day 1

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