The Erasmus Guide I: Friendships

Hi everyone again. Erasmus students from all over the world. Here I am again to continue entertaining you with my endless posts, I would love to write more but because of some issues (such as time and my will of doing it) that's not possible. Anyway, I'm here one more time to give you this useful post so you will be able to handle your Erasmus in the best way possible.

Because you already know me well, at least the ones who follow me! The stuff I use to write here is all about my trips, life experiences, adventures or parties. Sometimes just describing clubs and party places of the cities I visited, or even my daily life, things to see or places that are worth to visit as a tourist. However, today is not going to be like that, is it weird right? This time I'm not even going to talk about cheesy stuff like I did on my latest post (I'm sorry I was so melancholic). From now on, but not exclusively, I'm going to give Erasmus advice, something like a "guide" from my point of view for you to have the best Erasmus ever, how to manage the time you have there and finally, a "help" for you to do everything you wanna do there so you won't come back to your country and realize you regret those things you could have done but you didn't. Overall, this post is going to be the first one from a series of posts. Posts focused on giving any kind of advice and orientated in Turku (where I was on my Erasmus) and Badajoz (the place where I live and now I'm more interested in the city after coming back from Erasmus).

I just wanna say that everything I'm going to write here and other following posts related with "giving advice" and so on is from my own opinion and point of view, I mean, all of these are going to be advises from my experience, taste and thoughts. Of course I don't wanna say that the habits I had are the correct ones in order to have a good Erasmus I don't wanna say that any other different point of view or habits are the bad ones. Each one is different, and no one has the same tastes or characteristics so is normal that different people will have different behaviors in the same situation. So, these advises are just to live the Erasmus the same way I did, the way I consider the best and without any intention to offend anyone or telling you the way you should live. Although, (and here is when I loss all my humbleness) I consider that all the things I'm going to write are really useful in one way or another for specific situations.

There we go to the main subject. Today I wanna start this first post telling you about something which is really important no only in Erasmus but in all aspects of life in general, I'm going to talk about friendship.

Well, everyone knows that having friends is not only something extremely necessary, but paraphrasing Manuel Hazaña "that made a man of us" (his opinion about freedom). Everyone has friends, that's clear, except in some bad situations. That's how I consider it, I'm sorry don't want to offend anyone but it's true it could be because someone is antisocial or maybe I don't know what kind of illogical reasons could have someone to not have friends. This opinion could seems low key radical, but well this post is written by someone who consider himself strongly social and thinks that every moment is good to make friends. The thing is, during your Erasmus you're going to meet a lot of people. Not only a big amount of people but people from a lot of different nationalities, cultures, races, languages, etc... This will make you face people very different. One of my friends, one day, he told me there was an advice his father gave it to him before a big trip, not the Erasmus but one of the first international experiences. He told him the following: "When you travel, you will meet people. Be prepare to face everything. " And with this he meant with everything, any kind of people. I think this advice is good enough to recommend it to you: Be prepared for EVERYTHING.

The second is related with the first one we just mention. If there is someone that you can't deal with in my opinion you should follow the next steps. First of all, you have to know that not every advice I give here is possible to use in real life because during your Erasmus you're going to communicate with other Erasmus for sure (there are cases of Erasmus people just having friendships with local people, but those are really weird) so that's it, and you have to deal with that. Back to which people you could not like, you have to think that you shouldn't trust your intuition the first time you meet someone, first impression is always wrong, there is no one who looks like a bad person the first time you meet. So, if you are going to meet someone forget about looking for that factor the first time and always try to meet as much people you can and make friends. Have that in mind, no one is undesirable, everyone deserves to be known and be able to get to know you too.

As you guys know, for human beings the most likely scenario to meet people is partying or a social event or whatever. The thing is during that moment you're usually with a beer and in a place with music so if you are not really shy you try to meet people you already knew in a deeper way or maybe they will bring other friends and you could meet them too. That's the only f****** way to meet people. So don't be stubborn and stop thinking there could be someone you could not like till you talk with everyone. In this case, go to the parties and meeting often maybe you're future next friend or the love of your life is there, who knows?

If you are someone dogmatic (in the good way) and you're interested in meeting people with similar tastes and things in common with you, don't doubt and ask people about their tastes and stuff. You can ask them if they like certain thing or maybe if they even have friends who could like maybe an specific place, sport, city, music... You can also try to discover their tastes maybe just looking the way they dress, etc...Is simple, if you see someone with a rock band t-shirt is probably that person could like that kind of music. If you see someone with a tattoo and you also like it in that case you have something in common. At the end, as people say hair and face are the mirror of the soul.

Anyhow, there is something I should mention, and it's that the majority of the cases when you arrive in your Erasmus destination you already know people. There are a lot of ways you can meet people before. First and basic, you decide go there with a friend (my case), or some of your classmates decided to apply for the same destination. However, nowadays the most useful is: social media. For example, this one Erasmusu I consider it the first step to contact people who are going to go to the same place as you. But, other network like Facebook are very useful, maybe this one is the most useful without doubt. In Turku for example every year a new Facebook group is born with all the Erasmus students in the city and there they talk about everything. ESN also do this in every city. Other social media such as: twitter (I don't enter often) or forocoches (they open a line about it too). Now that we are talking about social media I should say and it's actually a fact that Facebook is a really helpful tool for the social part of Erasmus. It's difficult to explain but everything that could happen in Erasmus will be in Facebook for sure. Completely everything!. Basically, use Facebook, that's important. If you don't have it make one and use it, you will need it really.

Apart from the parties, any place where Erasmus students decide to go is good to know each other and make friends. The joy and craziness of the clubs and drunk nights is like the end of the socialization and this should happen way after you guys already made strong and trust bonds. Anyway, there are some activities realized by ESN group and by students organizations (it depends on the city) and those are also good ways of meeting people. Even the same "Welcome Week" is a good moment, because during that period not only the university take care about their Erasmus students but also the ESN prepare a lot of activities. That why now I'm going to give you the next advice: be ready for all the organized activities and try to not lose any of them.

Although, in my opinion, if you do this then your daily life is going to be easier, try be closer with other people and specially to build a good relationship with your roommates. Think that you are going to live with these guys and you're going to see them everyday even if you don't want to so the best for you is to be friends. If you finally end like friends, those memories you share will be unforgettable ones. Also think that for sure you won't always be together all day long, because probably you will study in different universities or maybe different degrees which implies that you will be apart from each other every day. The university, and lessons are also places where you can meet people and through your roommates you can meet even more people. I can say here try to make good friendship with your roommates, that will be a big advantage.

Finally, and even knowing that I still have a lot of things kept for myself or at least that is my impression, I wanna proceed to talk about the basic unit of friendship which is the "group of friends". If you are someone that you like to have a static group of friends and you feel more comfortable with just few and well-known people having a close group of friends that you can share everything with is for you. You can share parties, food, dinners, trips, etc. In other hand, if you don't care about this and you're a really extrovert person who doesn't like to be part of just a small group and what you love is to meet as much people as possible, you should know this assignment could be more difficult to achieve because you will need to be really extrovert and open be available for everyone and try all of them to like you. Take care, there are people who this type of people who likes everyone or everyone likes them, they don't (remember the first advise: when you travel, you could find everything.

These cases I think are extremes and normally the first one is the most common. The second one is really difficult to happen by itself. The wide majority of the times when a person knows everyone, hang out with everyone, everyone likes him or her, etc...Normally that person also have a small group of friends as a base. I think is truly difficult the case of someone without a group of friends just walking around, hanging out with one group or another without real friends who really support that person. Which I recommend by my point of view, more like because I don't like those vibes not just because it could be prejudicial even if there are people who really like that and have more fun just being like that. What I want to talk about here is about the groups of friends from the same country. I could understand in this way everything is easier at the beginning, surround yourself with people from the same country. I can understand at the beginning this could be the most simple, because of the language. It could be people who like it and I respect that but the Erasmus experience is well-known because it's an international experience so personally I wouldn't like to expend it with people from my same country, culture, language, or even city. Maybe I could win friends for the rest of my life, but I'm sure in this way I would be losing a big part of the whole experience just because of these limitations, but everyone should have their own opinion about this and every opinion is important and it should be respected. Normally the group of friends you will have during your Erasmus will come by itself it's really stupid try to "build" one. It will simply happens. From all of those options, no matter which one you'll choose or practice have the following in count: The group of friends is very important, choose well and surrounded yourself by nice people.

And I think this is enough to end a post like this, don't you think so? So, that's all guys here ends my first article about useful recommendations for Erasmus, or how to have a "good" Erasmus. I hope you liked it, and that you find this helpful.

Best wishes, and thank you very much.