Finding home away from home

Hello, world.

This is me and the plot of what is soon to be yet another Erasmus experience I will most probably try to convince all my friends with that Erasmus is definitely worth at least 5 months of your (student) life!

I have never been so keen on travelling and, surprisingly enough, I have never been that adventurous either, but I have always appreciated opportunities when they were given to me. I embraced every chance to be as far away from home as possible, yet still having the comfort of some friends or family close to me. A few years later, living in a mundane hometown that was slowly but surely drowning in consumerism, you can probably fast forward to what motivated me to step away from the usual soul eating comfort zone and seek for the raw traveling experiences I could have with a little more creativity.

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Wrapping it up – running far from the bucket list to check on holiday, I was lucky enough to discover Erasmus and call home two amazing cities of our old European continent and maybe even wise enough to have been able to understand the raw beauty of a Sunday afternoon spent in one of the ‘not so touristy’ Amsterdam’s flee market, enjoying a typical meal with the famous herring and onion sandwich, followed of course by a sweet caramel filled Stroopwaffle.

Then of course, the second city I know almost too well is Palermo – a city that has offered me just as many unforgettable moments as pebbles on the beach (yes, I take the risk of this cliché). I could say that after one winter semester in Amsterdam, Palermo was by far a more personal experience given the warmth of the locals since I was also supposed to work with them daily during my summer traineeship.

From two amazing weeks spent living with a Sicilian musician family that (amazingly enough) had a music studio in the basement, travelling around and meeting their musician friends coming on holiday from the States, to the coziest Palermitan flat we managed to create, Palermo was without a shadow of a doubt 'a home away from home'. I have already fallen into a borrel of nostalgia just thinking about our late summer night talks on our flat’s balcony, watching our Palermitan neighbors eat and dance in the street when the most of the neighborhood was long gone to sleep... What a vibe!

These are the kind of experiences I am trying to find in Portugal too, and even more thoroughly since I have discovered the word 'Saudade' and the translation that unfortunately doesn’t exist in English, but in Romanian does – making it much more personal to me.

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So what now? What is there ‘oh, so special’ about the Portuguese soil and why would I choose a country at the very West of Europe when I come from the far and ‘oh, so full of stereotypes’ Eastern Europe? Well, you could blame it on the weather, or on the amazing reputation this country has managed to build in the past few years... but mostly on the weather.

After 5 months in the cloudy Amsterdam and 2 months in the sundry land of Palermo, maybe I was (un)consciously choosing a preferably warm place again. Don’t get me wrong - autumn months are upon my home country with rain and leaves turning shades of red and orange every year with suddenly dropped temperatures and indecisive rains, yet, I have learned to appreciate the hygge or gezelling feeling of being indoor on a bad weather because Amsterdam has already taught me that, but there’s such a satisfying contentment in knowing that in Porto the temperatures will never drop below 10 degrees and that your cortisol levels will never be too high due to the 300/365 (mostly) sunny days you can enjoy freely on the nearby beaches!

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Choosing Porto, after two Erasmus experiences I didn’t really plan again to hang out with as many internationals as I know by now that you won’t end up with a very local experience this way and you’ll simply fall into the never-ending Erasmus cliché of being at every party instead of discovering the beauties of the city.

Still, in the beginning I simply wanted to do what I haven’t managed to do so well before: to meet locals, to speak the local language and simply divulge myself in the Portuguese culture – be somewhat of a local myself, you could say. After one month, I am happy to say I am doing most of these while also enjoying my temporary but not so short term home and I’ll have to admit that this all wouldn’t be as great without the other 12 exchange students I have met in our Erasmus house.

Trying to make a point, you see, before leaving, people tell you you’ll be on your own, feeling lonely or down sometimes, and you do: new culture, new language, new kind of people to get used to. You’re on your own now. Except, you actually aren’t. There are loads of other Erasmus students who go through exactly the same path. All the ‘wow, this Bachalau is so delicious’ to the ‘oh damn, it’s my mom’s birthday and I’m not there’ feelings. So you tell them about these, about feeling tired or lonely, and you naturally get closer and closer and ridiculously fast because everyone needs that community safety net. You suddenly realise how they become your ‘surrogate’ best friends, because yours at home are, well, at home.

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I’ve just passed the first month of them all 9, the first mark of my latest Erasmus experience and I am surprisingly not dreading going home, knowing that, in a way, time there has stood still. I will have experienced so much after one year and I’m in a way afraid nobody there will ‘get’ it, because you know that these experiences were made for you to live and learn from, nevertheless understand in their raw and pure form.

I’ll be so grateful that my flat mates here are always ‘here’ to call up and reminisce about that one late autumn afternoon in Algarve when we ended up walking so much to the lighthouse in Lagos only to watch the sunset together. And they will be special exactly because you had true friends there with you, not just ‘surrogate friends', honest friendships built on trust and ‘being there’ when you need a night in or a night out, a Christmas away from home or simply some people to call when you need to talk freely about how it’s like to feel the blues. It’s moments like these you will recall with so much joy... and with so strong saudade.

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