Short summary of my winter holidays

Sunday, 15^th January 2012 – Free time – permalink

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.

Short visit in Prague

Time in a pub, source: my picture

The last week of my holidays was full of travelling. To Prague and back and a day after that to Brno where I waited before I got on the plane to Netherlands. I needed to visit our study department and the head of my study programme at the Charles University because of my decision to stay in Maastricht as a regular Infonomics student. Also a great possibility to meet my friends in Prague. January is an exam time so it's not that easy to get to see everybody I would like to. Some of my university classmates are leaving for the summer exchange semester and one of them was also having a birthday – great time for making a goodbye party and luckily for me – I was in Prague exactly at that time I was also very fond of meeting a good friend of mine, who studies in St. Gallen in Switzerland. One of a few who decided to get the master degree abroad. He filled me with motivation and I also finally get to know more how is he doing.

Maastricht question time – how to study abroad

When I realized that some of my good friends didn't know that I am studying abroad, it made me think what is wrong. I have to throw a goodbye party next time, before I leave because it's a great notice for everybody. I also should have started writing this blog sooner. Actually, it was nice to see, that somebody is really reading this stuff Most of the people get the link via facebook – obviously. But I hate the fact, that facebook cancelled the support of RSS and I have to put link to every new article manually. But back to the questions about my studies. Studying abroad is getting more into a fashion, which is good. I am willing to help as much as I can, but repeating the answers again and again is a bit boring. I will sum up the admission process at SBE at Maastricht University soon. Ok, so far I am technically only a bit experienced Erasmus student, but while studying in Maastricht I got into the contact with regular students and I am quite curious and as a result I am very well informed.

This reminds me of an interesting event that happened the first school day in 2012 at my former high school – I went there with other alumni to inform the students who are about to graduate about the life at universities. I expected a bit more questions about Erasmus programme and studying abroad (not only about studying in Netherlands), but on the other hand most of those people are (exactly as I was) unsure where to go and what to study, so too busy to think about fancy stuff like getting degree in another country than in the Czech republic.

Time's up, Maastricht is waiting

As I did before, I described my <34;trip from Brno to Maastricht>. This time it's a bit more detailed as I like the process of travelling and I used my laptop while sitting in the plane and train. After I arrived to Maastricht and got a bit settled after the trip, I wanted to meet my friends and not only stay at my place the whole weekend. Also a great offer came to me from Anna, so Saturday evening home party and on Sunday Geocaching.

Saturday evening

Beer and Pizza, source: my picture

I do not usually write about every home party, but this evening was special. I met new people and spent with them the whole evening that was full of fun. We had several different kinds of pizzas for dinner and then we continued with drinking game based on cards. If I remember correctly the name of the drinking game, we played the ring of fire. The game is based on creating meaning for cards and then picking them and acting according to the created meaning. I am glad we played that only with beer (and wine) and not shots, because I got drunk anyway. I also got to know that my blog articles are too short and my English sometimes doesn't sound like real English (I am aware of this fact, but writing of this blog helps me improve). i

About 1 a.m. we moved to the town – five people, three bikes and nobody had to walk It's typical for Netherlands that one is riding and the second person is sitting on the carrier. I am not sure, if the bikes are constructed for that, but everybody does it. My second time that I used this kind of "taxi" and again the chauffeur was a woman, what a luck We tried several locations, but the club near Vrijthof very just totally full and we were forced to try the Market. We found a place, but the were the oldest guests there I realized this fact also sooner in town, but sometimes it was not that bad as here. Whatever, we just want to dance a bit and have fun. The music was not good, so we moved to dancing club called De Alla. Very known place with relatively good music for dancing. It was crowded but not that much. At about 3:45 a.m. we decided to leave for good. I was tired, expecting the next day geocaching trip and I had to walk home for about half an hour. I saw a police car at the Market, so I gave them the wallet we found earlier of some 17 year old girl (according to her ID card). Nice closure of day, I got to bed really tired and looking forward to next day.

Geocaching in Belgium

Geocaching in Belgium, source: my picture

When I talked to Erwin on Friday, we planned to go geocaching on Saturday, but we changed our plans on Saturday morning and postponed our trip on Sunday. Sunday was a sunny but cold day. We met at 11 a.m., put the rest of the coordinates of geocaches into GPS, met Nils in the city and reached the Belgian border at 12:15 a.m. But we found the first geocache from the power trail series as far as half an hour later, because we still needed to rice a few kilometres. I was not sure about the quality of this series, but I was nicely surprised. The location for it is great – along the canal which is great place for biking as the road is fine and the place is flat (as expected in this area). Sometimes it took us some time to find the box with the logbook, but I really enjoyed the whole afternoon. The result was 43 found geocaches and almost 41km on bike (according to Google Maps). We wanted to be back sooner, but we utilized the maximum of the daylight for finding the boxed so we got home when it got dark already. We also didn't gather all the stages of the Lanaker Canals Trail series which means that we have good reason to repeat this great event. I am already looking forward to it.

Map of our geo-bike-tour in Belgium

When I was leaving the Czech Republic on Friday, I had no plans for weekend and this all happened. I hope more weekends like this will soon follow My question would now only be, if my blog articles are short of not. What do you think?