Student Stories
Luke Bacon spent 11 months studying at TU Delft in the Netherlands
My Erasmus placement was from 21st August 2010 – 5th July 2011. A fantastic introduction week from the international team started the year with a massive welcome. Settling in was fun, living with an Azerbaijani and a Hungarian was a great start to a very international year! Once I had started my course and got used to the Dutch humour I was away but without one vital thing, a bike. A call to some friends from the introduction week quickly saw me fixed up with a classic Dutch ladies bike, with failing brakes going for €30. Now I was really living in the Netherlands!
With semester one studying Sustainable Design, I found myself working with Philips and living without a fridge for 3 months. My Dutch language skills did not have the time to progress from greetings and a few other words, once someone knows you speak English, it’s English all the way. On the way home from shopping one day the front wheel fell off my bike! It was time to get a new one that would last me to the end of my studies. A South African was moving back to Africa and sold me his beautiful bike for €100. The year 2010 saw my first year celebrating two winter holidays, the Dutch celebrate Sinterklaas on the 5th December and Christmas on the 25th December. Pepernoten is now my favourite Christmas sweet! It was a cold time of year with lots of snow, also a time for learning how to ride your bike in the snow.
The end of semester one meant moving onto a new group of course friends and the chance to study master electives in semester two. With an international church in Delft, football matches on Monday nights and IKEA’s half price meatballs on a Wednesday the schedule got fuller and fuller. My enthusiasm and awe for IKEA showed in parts of my course, I wrote an essay on the power of their meatballs and wrote a report for the potential of IKEA in India. I convinced an Italian to teach me how to make tiramisu and two Indians from the North and South of India to teach me how to make their favourite dishes. I have gained an international cookbook!
Design Visualisation with marker rendering kept me very happy and got me practising my drawing skills. The course has improved my abilities and given me greater confidence for the future. With exams every ten weeks, the work-load was large but spread out evenly. The lessons of a failed exam were learnt and I went on to get one of my highest grades at Delft in the re-take. The last ten weeks went so quickly I didn’t have any time to stop and realise the amount of work I had taken on. Thanks to the enthusiastic and helpful professors and tutors I was able to prepare for exams and hand in reports on time and at a good standard. The once reluctant and cynical person I was when it came to mathematics in design has been transformed into a person eager to get in touch with an engineer with my problems and tackle the calculations myself. This is thanks to Zoltan, my tutor for mathematical modelling.
The end of the year came suddenly and quickly, before I knew it I had my Eurostar tickets booked for home and I was loading my suitcase up. It is now recommended to any persons wanting to load a large Samsonite suitcase that; pulling it while heavily loaded behind you while riding your bike is not a good idea. Due to the frictional force from the road, the soft wheels deform within their casing and stop acting at wheels but more like a brake. At 00:40 on the last night of my stay in Delft, I was dragging my suitcase to a friend’s house next to the station. The beautiful canal was reflecting all the colours of the city up into my face, I was sweating and exhausted from walking a mile with 30kg stubborn suitcase. It felt like my belongings didn’t want to go home and the truth was, neither did I!
Sonja is a Social Anthropology (BSc) student who chose to take part in an exchange to Paris through the Erasmus programme. Here she talks about a few of her experiences...
In 2008 the Erasmus exchange programme led me to Paris. I decided to spend 9 months in Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris and was housed in the International Hall of the Université Paris 8. Surrounded by other Erasmus students, within a short period of time I had found friends who became like a second family. Additionally, it helped to live with other Erasmus students because we could help and support each other when taking our first steps at University and around the city.
The first two weeks at University were orientation for us all. In the morning we had language classes and in the afternoon our lecturers showed us Paris through their eyes. The fortnight really helped me to settle in, and to start enjoying the atmosphere of a new culture.
Paris is a very romantic and artistic place, full of music, museums, history and flair. It offers many free events to attend and even free food. On Friday and Saturday nights many restaurants in several districts offer free couscous to passers by! Public transport is inexpensive, which motivated me to explore many new places. I liked going for a walk and seeing how the Parisians appreciated the day. I saw people collecting fresh baguettes from the bakery, and having fun in the many parks and green spaces; picnicking, playing football or simply enjoying the moment.
Throughout the year the university offered students free tickets to a variety of plays at various theatres, and organised many trips for students. All of which meant it was very hard to be bored in Paris.
Life at uni was exciting, too. The first months I had to work hard on my French to understand everything, but still I had fun. Once a week I attended a dance class in order to get away from staring at a dictionary all day. After the first semester I had mastered enough of the language to understand most things, but then the lecturers went on strike! It was a little bit tricky but I still managed to attend enough classes to gain the needed credits. It was an interesting experience to be in the middle of the passionate debates though.
For everyone who is interested in travelling and meeting new people, learning about a new culture and mastering a new language I would definitely recommend the Erasmus Programme. It is an easy way to study in a foreign country and in addition every Erasmus student receives financial aid, which I found really helpful. Paris captured my heart and I would like to thank Angela Koh for her encouragement and administrative support, Dr. Eric Hirsch for his academic advice and my personal tutor Dr. Andrew Beatty for tutoring me on a distance. Finally, I want to highlight the real personal growth and sense of independence that my year abroad gave me, and say thank you to Brunel University and Erasmus for making the adventure possible.
