Sweet Erasmus

It is difficult to understand how is to live an Erasmus without experiencing it oneself. It is like living in a bubble where everything is possible: What happens in the Erasmus, stays in the Erasmus. In other words, all the crazy stuff that happens abroad will surely remain as one of our most precious secrets. A secret that one isn't willing to share, since nobody else could understand it. Maybe that is the reason why there is such a special bond between those who shared all the unforgettable experiences that an Erasmus has to offer. Maybe that is the reason for recalling every single person we met on our stay abroad, even if it wasn't a close friend, with some kind of tenderness...

Revisiting Amsterdam

Going to Amsterdam meant that summer holidays just started and that I was about to experience my friend Sara’s Erasmus from the inside. I already experienced it from the outside through the bunch of anecdotes she had explained to me during our skype conversations. So, when I got to personally know her friends it was as if I knew them already and the feeling was comforting.

Sara and I hadn’t seen each other more than five days in a row for the last 8 months, since she left before I came back from my own Erasmus. For this reason, I was excited to spend six days living with her and getting to know the city with her. I had been once in Amsterdam four years ago and the Dutch capital remained exactly as I remembered it. Nevertheless, this time was different. Besides the touristic spots, I got to visit the places where native people hung out. I always thought that it is very interesting to visit a place more than once: the first time one has to visit the historic and cultural places and from the second time on, one can get to know the essence of the city by visiting the most remote and cozy places.

Amsterdam is popularly known by the omnipresence of sex and drugs, and it is easy to understand the reason while walking through the Red Light District, smelling marihuana and being offered all kind of different substances. However, this is just a small part of what Amsterdam is. Riding the bike through Vondelpark in a sunny day, having a barbeque there, watching how the children swim in the fountain and the young people sun bathe is a really enjoyable experience that few cities offer.

Architecture is also very interesting and peculiar. The whole city is built by extremely thin and tall buildings, which have to be really deep if someone has to live inside. I was told that the façades are this small because the price of the flat depends on the width of the front.

All in all, I consider that visiting a city guided by someone who knows it well is much more enriching than reading any touristic guide. And I really was surprised by how Sara moved with her golden bike through the city almost without the help of her map.

The old lady and the young girl

This article is inspired by the conversation of three friends sitting at a terrace of a small and cosy bar of Le Marais in Paris and enjoying a glass of white wine. The French capital was their meeting point, since the three of them were spread around Europe:

Putting Lugano aside (where I spent 6 months of my life), Paris and Berlin are the cities I’ve visited most. But it is not a simple coincidence: one can never get tired of either of them, both are incredibly startling cities that cannot disappoint.

If these cities were people, Paris would be an old lady whereas Berlin, a young girl. The French capital is melancholic and old but keeps its beauty intact. In fact, it is the kind of city that gets better as time goes by. It is the perfect haunt for couples, since everybody –even the ones who haven’t seen Casablanca— bears in mind the phrase: “We will always have Paris”. For this reason, walking by the Seine or having a trip on a bateau-mouche is one of the most romantic and calm situations one can have. Even if the river crosses the city centre, it is easy to let one’s mind wander and forget the stress and strain of big capitals. Moreover, Paris is a huge city so it is impossible to know every spot travelling there just once. There is always a new bar, shop or alley worth visiting. And getting lost through Saint Germain or Le Marais is priceless. These two neighbourhoods are like two little villages alien to the rest of the city. Furthermore, Parisian babies must be born with a fashion magazine under their arms, since people in Paris are the most stylish ones I’ve ever seen.

On the other hand, Berlin is the complete opposite. It is a quite new city that it is being rebuilt since the end of the Second World War. It is the perfect place for young people and there are all kinds of attractions for them. There is party assured every day of the week and all kinds of musical events to discover new talents. Because this is what the city of Berlin tries to do: discover new things and create a city identity formed by the perfect mix. Walking around its streets one can find all kinds of people and styles: an old woman with purple hair and ripped stockings, a punk guy with his baby wearing Baby Dior or the most posh girls trying to be like Paris Hilton. And the most astonishing thing is that nobody will turn to see them better because this is how Berliners are. In Berlin everybody can express himself without being ashamed of it.

So, considering all of their differences, one has to bear in mind that going to Paris or going to Berlin are two kinds of totally different trips. It is important to know when is the right time to travel to one or the other.

The power of Zibelemärit

When one lives in Switzerland for 6 months it is almost compulsory to rent a car and go on a road trip around the country. Driving from Lugano to Gèneve –which is the longest distance-- shouldn’t take more than 5 hours. Furthermore, Swiss highways have really picturesque views, which makes the trip by car even lighter.
We had just 5 days to enjoy our road trip around the country, but we knew this wasn’t going to be the only one. That’s why we decided to visit half of the cities we were interested in. Since Switzerland is a country made up of different cultures and languages, the experience of changing language almost every time we changed city was amazing. In 5 days we had to switch from Italian, to German and to French, although almost everybody was able to talk to us in any of those languages. Our relationship with the natives also seemed to change during the car trips: warm with the Italian speakers, cordial with the French speakers and a bit colder with the German speakers.
Nevertheless, one random morning we woke up in Bern (German speaking part) and everything was different. It turned out that it was an insignificant day for us but a very important day for them. It was the fourth Monday of November, which meant: “Zibelemärit” (Onion Market). Everybody was in the streets of the city centre. There were no lessons at school nor University and workers finished their work day earlier than usual. It was crazy! People wore necklaces made of sweets or small coloured onions (for the ones who wanted to spend a bit more money). Children threw confetti and hit total strangers with toy hammers. There were also big tents where they sold food and drinks (we even found one which provided Sangría). It seemed that their cold character had stayed at home. And it was great.
For one day one could see that they are not always strict and straightforward people. Sometimes (even if it’s just once a year) they act almost like Latin people enjoying the party and letting themselves not think. Now, I would like to ask Switzerland to establish a Zibelemärit once per month.

“South of the Border, West of the Sun”

I didn’t know much about Japan, just what Manga Series are willing to let us know about their country and inhabitants. This is why the news of going to the Land of the Rising Sun excited me so much. I was going to spend 15 days travelling around the centre of Japan, a country with a totally different culture and traditions.

During those days I tried to learn as much as possible about their character and I found out that Japanese people are extremely polite. So much so, that sometimes it makes you feel uncomfortable. It didn’t feel right to me to leave a shop and have a row at each side of the front door made by the shop assistants bending their backs 90 degrees.
This politeness goes hand in hand with their inability to say ‘no’ as an answer. We didn’t find anybody during the whole trip who spoke English –not even anyone who understood it-- nevertheless, when we asked if someone could talk to us in English their answer was ‘yes’. After that categorical answer, the conversation couldn’t continue. This made it pretty difficult to solve our problems and sometimes we got exasperated, but, much to our surprise, we ended up developing a quite detailed sign language.
However, these extreme good manners that sometimes seem strange to us, show that –in many aspects-- they are a more civilized country than we are. For instance, they are an incredibly trusting population. At the shops it was costumary to see that there was no shop assistant because he had to excuse himself for a while. And nobody stole anything! Every time this happened I wondered: if this was Spain, how many people would have stolen at least one little thing?
Moreover, if they make a mistake they don’t try to blame someone else (in fact, they feel so guilty that sometimes a tiny little mistake has a fatal end). It is not strange to hear that a train that didn’t arrive on time ended up with the driver commiting hara-kiri.

In short, every community has its own character. We may like some things more and others less, but people who like to travel around the world should try to catch the good things of every different culture.




“These people who live smiling, who quickly forget sorrow and misfortune, who are sober like any other, who take childish delight in tree blooms and landscape ornament, who know how to find in life thousands of tiny little things which they love and which make their existence carefree and peaceful, are at the same time those who easily depart this world by a voluntary act under the impulse of the most frivolous pretext.”

Wenceslau de Moraes

Next stop: Svolvaer

August of 2007. Three friends carrying backpacks and an interrail pass. Everything perfectly planned: Barcelona-Copenhagen, south Sweden, Norwegian coast, north Finland and down until Helsinki to get the plane back home. No time to improvise. Almost no time to breathe. But, suddenly, a setback changes the schedule.

It is on an old wooden train that joins the cities of Myrdal and Fläm where we met the person who was about to deviate our journey. She was a Spanish journalist who had to write about Norway for the magazine she worked for. She was the one who almost obligated us to go to the Lofoten Islands. We felt that we had to go there even if it meant spending some days less in other cities. But the Islands were quite far North; we had to cross the Polar Circle. So, it wasn’t until we arrived in Bodo when we could take a ferry in the direction of Svolvaer, capital of Lofoten Islands.
The breeze of the sea caressing our faces, the codfish smell, the looks of the other travelers wandering nervously up and down the ship trying to guess what they were going to find at the islands… There were signs everywhere telling us that we had taken the right decision.
We arrived just in time to catch the only bus in the city, which was also the only way of getting to the camp (besides hitchhiking). Finally we got there and I cannot describe the feeling when we saw the wooden bungalows by the fjords. It was an impressive image with the best soundtrack: absolute silence. We felt really small surrounded by huge mountains, a blue cloudless sky, and two endless fiords. The next morning, the campground owner suggested we go with him to sail around one of the fiords (Trollfjord) in his boat. We were the only human existence around the place. After a while he challenged us to jump to the sea… and we jumped! Twice! The water was freezing, so much that I couldn’t breathe until I got up to the boat. Nevertheless, I knew that this was the only chance to do it and I wasn’t going to miss it. I just wanted to live every second we were spending on that island.

After this experience, I learnt that even if one has everything perfectly planned, it is really important to save some space for improvisation.

The essence of travelling

Travelling is a way of life. Someone who enjoys every trip tries to always have the next one written down in the agenda.
To me, knowing that I have something prepared in advance, for some days or even months, makes me feel deliriously happy. Even if it is a quick escape that won’t last longer than a weekend. It is not a matter of time. It is a matter of predisposition to submerge oneself as much as possible in the foreign culture and traditions. One can live in a foreign country for years and know very little about the place one’s living in. More often than not, people tend to form ghettos when they are abroad. I guess they feel a bit more at home. Nevertheless, in my opinion, feeling at home is understanding the new environment and trying to fit into it. The day one achieves this is when one can say out loud: This is home! And the feeling of considering different places around the world as one’s own home is something simply amazing.
Moreover, travelling makes one forget one’s problems or worries. Because not only the body but also the mind travels. From the moment one starts to plan the trip the mind starts fantasizing about the experience of what that journey will mean. Every trip makes us change in some way.
When I arrive back to my bedroom in Barcelona I usually go over the whole experience in my head and think about what it has meant to me. It is a great exercise that helps me understand in which ways the journey was worth it. I consider that even if I didn’t enjoy the experience very much, every cloud has a silver lining and there will be a great moral hidden somewhere. It is just a matter of reading between the lines.