viktoritilburg

TIK-week started Monday, August 21. TIK is short for Tilburgse Introduktie Kommissie, Tilburg Introduction Committee, which is the organization that organizes this cool week. Enough about them, the most important organization this week was not TIK, it was I*ESN Tilburg.

The exchange students for this year met in the aula of Dante Building at 10.30 am. I didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out to be a presentation of what I*ESN Tilburg is, who is on their board, their activities and division in to mentor groups. My mentor group is group number six, also famous as “Goeiendagschotel”, a very Brabantian expression. Brabant is the region where Tilburg is situated; I have learnt that these Southerners have a different pronunciation of the letter G than people from north Netherlands.

My mentor group consists of over 20 members, from whom two are Swedish speakers, Johnny from Lund and Henrik from Helsinki. Yeah I should also mention are awesome mentors, Captain Kelly, Party Mentor Dan, and Brasil, the two latest have you already seen and read about, very nice people all of them. My first impression of the mentor group was that it was a shy bunch of people. I WAS WRONG. They were only nervous just like I was. Meet Goeiendagschotel:

We played some name games to get to know each other, it worked out fine, but you know have it works, one tends to forget most of them until you get to know the person behind the name. Then we went to the TIK-festival located around Stadshuis. We had lots of information there and got to meet lots of student’s organizations. I remember mostly that I met one of the goalkeepers of TSVV Merlijn who told me about the club, and that I and Aslan from Kazakhstan participated in a competition organized by SIFE. The winners of that competition would win a bike each. We had to find letters in the city that would give us the name of the person who said a famous quote. After we had found four letters Aslan guessed that the answer was Albert Einstein and we ran back to where we started. You will find out more about that competition later in the blog. Then we sat down at the corner of Willem II straat and Heuvelstraat for a glass of the local beer La Trappe.

Later we met up at Party Mentor’s place for a pre-drink and a game of Kings. Party Mentor and Captain Kelly ended up being my slaves, hilarious. The participants at this pre party were Dan, Kelly, Veronika from Hungary, Aslan, Kuba and Martin from Czech Republic, Henrik and some of Dan’s flat mates. Then we went to 013, a concert hall in Tilburg where they play contemporary music. It was really crowded, but most of Goiendagsschotel enjoyed it. We increased in numbers upon arrival, as Carlotta, Johnny and a few others where there. There was a cool sign in there:

Did the performers care about the sign? No! This day was a great kick start of the week, because I felt that I already knew lots of people in the same situation as me. This blog is right now only public to my closest family and on my home university’s webpage. It is scheduled to go public in Tilburg and on facebook tomorrow evening. If you like the blog, please comment my posts, if you don’t please tell me what I can do better, I’d love to get some feedback. Oh yeah, thanks to Martin for this post’s pictures.

Tot ziens.

Eight days ago, Sunday, August 21, I went for a city tour arranged by the fantastic student organization I*ESN Tilburg. It was supposed to start at 1.30 pm by Pathé Cinema, which is the biggest cinema in Tilburg. But we had to wait for like half an hour, because everyone was of course not going as a group. I met some nice people while waiting, Abel from Spain, Tina from Germany, Alaa from Lebanon and Nicolas from Chile, really nice and talkative people all of them. When we finally left we ended up having three guides, Lennart, Brasil and Rens. They showed us places like 013, Lollipop (he usually don’t tell people that, but it is Brasil’s favorite club), Piusplein and Korte Heuvel. When the city tour was finished, around 3.30 pm, the party started at Café Philip at Korte Heuvel. It went on a well and contained a prize ceremony for the winners of the city quiz (unfortunately not my group), one minute of free beer to everyone and free shots for a while.

After the party was over I found out that Brasil had Abel crashing on his couch for a few days until he had arranged his accommodation, a really friendly gesture from him. Then Lennart mentioned that there was something called Dance Tour in Leijpark. I joined in and so did Brasil, and Abel. It was a really crowded one day event with house music, with Afrojack as the main attraction. He mostly played other peoples songs and we left before he had played Give Me Everything. We had a good time anyway even though house music usually isn’t my cup of tea.

Tilburg as a city had this far provided me with a very good first impression. It is a small city, but it has lots of culture, bars, and shopping. The people are really friendly and all the exchange students seemed to be really excited to meet new people. Unfortunately Willem II was relegated from Eredivisie last season.

Tot Ziens.

So I just arrived from Merlinello, it is the training ground of my new football team, TSVV Merlijn. Based on todays training I believe that I will play for the Saturday team, which is their best team. I bought new football shoes today aswell Cruyff Match. I like them, Adidas and Nike make too tight shoes for me nowadays.

This blog is going to contain the long story about how I went to Tilburg for exchange studies and brought a few good memories back home. So, are you up for it? Alstublieft!

My story begins Friday, March 11, 2011. I was sitting at Espresso House close to T-Centralen with two guys I had met a week earlier during the course Power, Change and Resistance in Organizations. Their names were Mikael and Niclas. I found the course really difficult at that stage and we were discussing some articles that we had read for the course. I had not really understood most of the articles at that moment and Niclas had not had time to read most of them. Anyhow Mikael had really grasped the context of the articles on his train from Knivsta to his employment at The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, and was able to explain them to us in a really pedagogical way. Niclas filled helped him out when the topic was the parts he had read. So I was in an admiringly mood during this event. When Mikael had left I chatted with Niclas for a while, and he told me he had been in Berlin for one semester on exchange and he had really loved it. He also told me that he had been somewhere in Africa, if I recall it correctly in Dr Congo for a few months to collect data for his master thesis. He asked me why I weren’t going to go on exchange studies. My answer was that I had thought about it for a while, but I had my girlfriend living here, and I had changed my mind because it would be a really difficult situation. Niclas asked me:

“Do you love your girlfriend? Yes, I really, really do. And your girlfriend how does she feel about you? She really loves me. Then you should go. For me it was the best time of my life, although I had my girlfriend far away. It will be a memory for life, and if your relationship does not survive the distance, then it is not meant to be.

There were lots of thoughts going through my mind during Friday and Saturday that week. The application was due the upcoming Monday. I have to tell Ninni first, how do I tell her? I knew that it was going to be like hitting her in the face but I had to do it. So that Saturday night when we went to sleep I told her.

This was chapter one of my story, the first of many. It is now 5.19 am and I have not slept yet. The reason is TIK-week. Tonight was my first night sober since I arrived. TIK-week has been the craziest week of my life, and do you want to know the best part of it? If you keep visiting viktoritilburg.blogg.se you are going to get to know all about it. Yes there will be lots of pictures and a few videos as well.

Since most of my Swedish friends will read this eventually: Anledningen till att jag skriver på engelska är att jag har träffat otroligt många hysteriskt roliga och utåtriktade människor min första vecka här och jag vill dela mina minnen även med dem, sen är det väl antagligen ganska bra för mina språkkunskaper också.

Tot Ziens.