ERASMUS EXPERIENCE: A PERSONAL AND NON-TRANSFERABLE ONE

WHAT DOES IT MEAN THE MYTHIC CONCEPT OF ERASMUS?

Erasmus Program is the biggest and the unique opportunity given to university students for a different way of living which gives a wide vision about the world. Nobody should lose it.

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The proximity and influence of new and different working methods, as well as the processing of a nearly universal language, along with the learning of another, not least for the personal resourcefulness, were the main factors which made me consider the hypothesis of doing Erasmus. I thought that using this period of studies abroad could give me broaden horizons, as well as more discernment on the academic performance under the deepening of my course.

In Parallel, considering that my age is a factor which motivates the taste of knowledge and interest in the new realities and challenges, it became attractive the prospect of participating in the Erasmus Program.

I had on this Program the expectation that this would provide me the contact with different cultures, making it a rewarding and enriching experience at personal and professional levels. Further, it would be an advantage for inspiring career opportunities in the Course of European Studies.

WHY TO DECIDE FOR SUCH STEP IN OUR LIVES?

It was so boring going to college everyday, see always the same people, the same teachers, listen the same language all the time and so on that, interested on different and deeply challenges, I decided to try something crazy different, so I opted for Erasmus. It would be my last chance of doing that because I just had one more year until finishing my course, thus I had to decide quickly. Not that Erasmus is crazy at all, but my decision in the way it was taken was adventurous for sure. Anyway, after a lot of considerations and also of comparing advantages and inconveniences of all countries on the list, I decided about Poland.

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Why Poland? This was, and still is, the question which most people ask me. The answer is not that clear but at least I always say: because it was the farthest and the most different from Portugal and I wanted an adventure; I needed to change my life. However, there are further reasons that made me choose this country.

First of all, Poland has a great geographical location which could give me the chance to explore more countries around it. They are seven, the countries which do border with Poland: Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and the enclave Russian, Kaliningrado.

Also, a different education system with the straightness of eastern European countries could put me facing an academic challenge supplemented by the chance to improve my English.

Further, as long as Poland belongs to the last group of countries that became members of European Union, it looked a good option to me in the professional future perspective as Student of Europe. However, in a general context, I thought that the simple fact of a Portuguese young student have an experience in such different country and with some basis of such different language could be by itself a triumph.

As I have a long way in front of me, with great opportunities and chances to grow up, I cannot say that this period will be the most important of my life. However, I am sure that this will be the most striking for me because my life has changed from this fantastic and incomparable experience.

Further than the cultural enrichment, supplemented by several trips that I did, it was a test to my capacity of adaptation to other customs and to other forms of living that I scored to myself. I became a stronger and more independent person with a different way to see the world.

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In the beginning it is normal if the adaptation is not that easy, but it also depends on the circumstances and on the person. It is stronger and the challenge is too much bigger if you go alone as I did. Sometimes it is probable the feeling of unsuitability and solitude. However, it is necessary to have an open mind and an adventure spirit in pair with a big smile on your lips and the will to know everybody and everyone. At least just because the feeling of becoming more fighter, exigent, active and secure of yourself invades you at the same time.

I face this experience as the opportunity to leave home, to contact with daily and normal situations which normally are solved by our parents, to learn cooking, to learn how to deal with clothes washing machine, how to manage the money that is given to us and how to pay our bills, how to organize our routine and how to be responsible enough to be able to wake up in the morning at time to attend classes without anyone to call us, even if we had slept only two hours.

As I said before, if you are a quiet person and you decide to go alone you face a deeply challenge because the communication and the contact with the unknown is not a choice. The importance of meeting different people, contacting with different cultures and talking with everybody in any situation becomes bigger. Even if you don’t want to talk, to communicate, you have to. In my particular case, I was completely alone in a strange place, whose language I could not even understand, whose costumes I didn’t know, whose all life was being a challenge for me. I was a person who had never needed to do anything by herself without anyone to help.

Thus, I consider this is the social aspect of Erasmus Program in the way you must become adaptable about anything that might happen and that you have to face. Also, it teaches you to accept the fact that being different may also be the quality of something or someone.

ITS EUROPEAN CHARACTER

To be Erasmus Student, within the integration and feeling of the real Erasmus culture is a big responsibility if you consider that it is like to be a temporary ambassador of your country, but in this way it could not be more interesting and enrichment mission. It is essential the will to disclose our country, culture, habits and at the same time to know everything about the country where we are and where our new friends are from, trying to understand their way of being and to know how to deal with them.

Erasmus Program is no more than a vehicle to achieve a new Europe in the way it provides an unforgettable and unique experience which prepares young people for a United Europe. Nowadays, one of the biggest challenges is the creation of more competitive space on the world level which can be achieved by the existence of cohesion, technological capacity and the creation of a specific knowledge. This is a unique example of European Programmes promoting young people mobility and the meeting of ideas.

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To be a European citizen requires a lot of our capacity of integration in the other cultures which gives us more the European feeling than the national one. This proximity to Europe changes the perception of our country and makes us look at it more clearly. If those peculiar aspects that you didn’t like before became unbearable, there are others which we learn to value and before we had never noticed.

So, according with the new knowledge that we acquired, we discover that there are more common things between people and countries than different aspects. This made me recognize that my country can be bigger than it looks like and the world is both bigger and smaller than I could ever imagine.

By this perspective we could believe that if everybody in the world would try Erasmus experience, even in other ways, it could be too much more perfect. It is not hard to understand if we think that with this experience we don’t have any choice to keep our mind closed.

We are obliged to learn that everybody is different and we must respect it, which makes our differences from the others to be also respected.

THE TRAVELLING DISCOVER

To travel is also an important component of our Erasmus life. For me, to live in Polish culture means that I should go out from Warsaw and discover what the country has more to give me. I consider that I need to do that for acquiring more knowledge about the country and to find out how much different it can be inside between its regions.

However, as long as the travelling part of our experience can be considered the biggest one, which gives us the capacity to see the world in a fairly way, we need go further.

Besides the importance of knowing the country where we are living and studying, it is not less important, if not even more, to travel abroad. One of my aims there was to travel a lot – as much as both money and time allow me -, open my mind and give my heart for each city I go, each country I come in, and each person I meet.

I didn’t stop! One day after my arrival in Warsaw I was going to Olsztyn where I lived the best period of this experience since I came. It was a perfect month where I learnt to discover, to talk, to grow up, to try international tastes, to share – the room, the bathroom, the kitchen and even the fridge. And, the most important, I learnt to share my fears, my happiness, my sadness, my worries, my dreams and my wills. I knew the most different people from the most diverse nationalities: Germans, Turkish, British, French, Italians, Hungarians and even our neighbours Spanish. The day after my arrival there I knew everybody and one week later we were a big family, considering ourselves as brothers and cousins. It was almost impossible to see the group without any of us. We lived many emotions together and in the end nobody wanted to say goodbye. We let our contacts and anything more…we just left Olsztyn. Then, I came to Warsaw and the hard life started. I am going to explain in which way it was hard, but before I will give you a bit of my travelling discover.

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It started in Olsztyn when the coordinator of our intensive course prepared to our Erasmus group three great trips. The first one was to Olsztynek, one of the Poland’s biggest open-air ethnographic parks opened in 1938. Besides it started with copies of farm timber houses brought from Koningsberg, nowadays it features several dozen original and reconstructed houses from Warmia, Masuria, Powisle and Prussian Lithuania. It was great the possibility of seeing half-timbered houses, granaries, wind-mills, farm outbuilding, the country-inn and the Church. Further, the contact with animals makes the experience much more realistic.

Exited and also tired because of the great and summery morning passed in Olsztynek we went to eat an ice cream and earlier that we expected the bus was waiting for us. Thinking about to come back to Olsztyn and go to the dormitory, we were surprised when we recognized that something more was prepared for us. Some time latter we arrived to the historic and memorable Grunwald. It was there, on 15th July 1410, at Europe’s greatest medieval battle, that the combined Polish, Lithuanian a Russian forces, under King Wladyslaw Jagiello, defeated the army of the Teutonic Knights. We could see there the museum, which included a film about the battle’s history, and the Grunwald battlefield, which includes the granite monument and ruins of the Chapel raised after the battle and the Jagiello mound. We could also, in the museum, mint our own coin of that time. After that day we were dying of tiredness but it was a grateful trip.

The third trip was also very interesting and reminded to 1945. Although it was built by the Teutonic Order as an Ordensburg with Marienburg as its name, which means Mary’s Castle, since 1945 it became part of Poland, as Malbork. The Castle is a classic example of a mediaval fortress, being the world’s largest brick gothic castle and the on of the most impressive of its kind in Europe. As so, it is registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The castle is encircled by defensive walls with gates and towers; also the representative summer refectory is the most interesting chamber in it.

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These ones were the trips done in Olsztyn, however I tried to discover a little more of the place and I decided to go with friends searching for something. More than walking in the town centre, which is not that big, we decided for an adventure in the forest with such low temperatures and without shinning sun. My biggest challenge was try to establish communication with gooses, but after some minutes I perceived that they didn’t like me as I empathised with them. Anyway, we continued our walk towards the forest and some time latter, we admitted a new confrontation: we had got lost and we needed to find the way back. Ok, it was not so easy and it took like two hours, but at least we survived and arrived to the dormitory singing and ready to eat a great banquet which of course we needed to prepare.

Then, after my arrival in Warsaw the time started being occupied with other priorities and the trips gave their place to boring things and the weekends became the appropriate moment to study and get prepared to next week. However, and even considering the few available time, I was able to do one more trip: Prague and Vienna were my destiny. This was the greatest and the most beautiful trip that I have done, but it was also the most tiring because of the circumstances: a car travel, little money and little time to explore so many things and to go so many kilometres.

For me in Prague, the most beautiful is not the cultural level of museums but it is showed from outside. The Old Square is something admirable which gives us the feeling of peace. Anyhow, I also loved the magnified Castle and the Charles’ Bridge. In my opinion, the game of illumination colours and the magnificence of the old constructions are the key for such particular admiration.

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In Vienna the interest was other. I was fascinated about the museums and the variety of cultural places. Between them, what I mostly liked was the Schonbrunn Palace because of its sumptuousness. I also went to Belvedere and Leopold Museums that for sure I would like, considering my interest for art and painting techniques. To finish the weekend with a great perspective I went to Danube Tower for the panoramic view of Vienna in the night. In the future I want to come back to these places and see them with more time and more experience for being able to appreciate them fairly.

And this was my travelling discover until the end of first Semester. Nonetheless, I wanted and I got a second semester full of bigger opportunities to explore more and more about Poland and further, rounding these countries around it. So, coming back to the beginning of this part, I will explain how and why life is not only a soft and easy dream.

A LITTLE OF MY EXPERIENCE

When I arrived in Warsaw, I began facing situations of normal life issues which made me think of giving up and coming back to Portugal. However, as long as it would be craziness from the weak side of my personality I breath – more than once, to be truth – and then I went straight.

I am not a person who loves to party all the time and, even less, who has patience to go out everyday. I like to socialize with friends and to meet more people, but I have also some responsibilities while a student who is finishing her course. I want a lot to enjoy my Erasmus, however I have the notion that if I cannot do it like the others who are able to finish some lost chairs latter, I just have to live with that. And it is why I decided to choose as much courses as I could, to study a lot and to have little free time. As so, I also decided to prolong my stay in Poland, as well as my studies plan, which could give me the possibility to enjoy my opportunity in all senses. The conjunct of money – from the scholarship -, the free time – from the few college work and exigencies -, the fact of living in residence – as long as currently I am in a particular flat -, the better natural conditions – brought by the summer - and even my mental availability to have fun, it is the perfect juncture for the most deeply period of my life completed with a big percentage of adrenaline.

IN CONCRETE…

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…it is almost impossible to describe this experience with words: to give concrete existence to actions and feelings, to give a voice to sentiments and memories, it is not easy at all. It is way I choose this theme for my article…Erasmus is more than an experience; it is a period of our lives which is impossible to explain, to transfer for anyone.

Don’t say you cannot do it…with persistence and goodwill everything is possible, so dream. Dream, try and achieve what you want to live. When you recognize, your memories will make you see the images of your life diluted in a fiction and reality mix.

So, in this way, I finish my verdict saying that, the experience was so strongly important in my life path that I became a lover of discovering, of learning, of meeting, of facing new realities and challenges. I am getting ready right now to start a new step, going into an international internship adventure.