viktoritilburg

Back to TIK-week, it is now time for Wednesday, August 24. The day started off at Sports Center with breakfast. Most of the mentors were wondering, ‘who was that Mega Mindy-guy’? Me, myself were trying to regain some of that lost sleep. Party Mentor had posted this video on Facebook so by that morning I knew how to sing the Mega Mindy song.

Wednesday was Games Day in Leijpark. There were lots of air castles and different plastic pools, perfectly designed for people like me that don’t mind getting wet. It was a cold day though which made it more difficult for some people enjoying it. Johnny didn’t mind either, as you can see on the picture below, although the water he finally fell down into was freezing cold.

My jersey is a Djurgårdens IF jersey in case you wonder, Pride of Stockholm. After a few hours playing games, there was a surprise event organized by I*ESN Tilburg at Het Laar. It turned out that it was drinking games in teams of ten. My team consisting of eight people of my mentor group, Marjan and Sanne lost all of the games except one. It didn’t matter because we had fun while doing it. Here is me doing limbo, it looks surprisingly good, don’t it?

The pre party took place at Martin’s place and almost all of Goeiendagschotel were present, everyone really enjoyed it. Aslan scared the girls by passing out, but he was fine. Martin’s place were a great location for a pre party and his flat mate Balasz from Hungary joined in as we again played drinking games. The most popular one this night was introduced by Hannah from England and was called 20+1. Most of us went on to LG and I don’t know why but for me and a few others the party continued at an after party at Olof and a late night pizza. I went to bed at way too late, maybe not the best preparation for the week finale, including the beer cantus. But, hey, how many TIK-weeks will I experience? The last thing I did before I went to bed was reading my e-mail; I had an e-mail from SIFE Tilburg.  I and Aslan had won the competition we participated in earlier that week and I could collect my bike whenever I wanted to. I was by then the proud owner of two bicycles.

Tot Ziens.

So let us jump ahead a little and write about Tuesday, August 31. I had two lectures during the day, Business Dynamics and Dutch I for international students. I have a slight problem there because both courses have mandatory attendance and they partly overlap each other. Still I want to take both of them so I will try to figure it out. We learnt some simple Dutch phrases, some pronunciation and so on. The lecturer said I had good pronunciation, I think the reason might be that I’ve learnt some dirty phrases from my fantastic Dutch friends. The fact that Swedish shares the heritage of being a Germanic language with Dutch may be part of the explanation as well.

At night it was time for our first mentor dinner and the Welcome to Holland Party. We were together with group 13, so ours and theirs mentor cooked for us. On the menu was Andijvie Stamppot, presumably a typical Dutch dish, but one of the mentors who were there, I am unable to recall who of them that said that it was his first time eating this dish. The dish contains mashed potatoes, bacon, endives and a sausage; I consider it being pretty similar to the British Sheppard’s Pie. I promise you, it doesn’t taste as disgusting as it looks.

As it was a Holland Theme Party, most people were dressed in orange, the color of the Dutch royal family. Here is a picture of me and Sander from the dinner. Sander has actually visited the beautiful Stockholm suburb Täby, my home.

The party was at de Lamme Goedzak, LG. LG is the place where all the international students parties, at least until Jiska and her crew have arranged for the new I*ESN building to be ready for us.

The party was just like always a blast. They don’t mind us bringing the beer out on the street outside of the club, unlike in Sweden where there are tough restrictions on that.

Tot Ziens.

So Tuesday, August 23, the day started too early, 8.30 in the Sports Center. Most of the people were a little late, and we had to wait until 9.10 until our responsible Captain Kelly, arrived with the ticket so that we could get our free breakfast. Tuesday was the first of the exchange introduction days. We started off with the Official Welcome ceremony in the aula in Cobbenhagen Building. Then we went on a Campus Tour which was modified to avoid the rain as much as possible. My opinion was that it was a nice campus, pretty tight, and easy to find your way around. However the entrance to the Library is a little strange since it is by a long stair to a bridge that crosses the street before reaching the library.

After the tour we met our exchange coordinators who told us about the university, the courses, and that we are going to encounter cultural shocks. Then we went for lunch, which this week was the same thing as breakfast. I don’t mind it was for free, right? It was pretty funny though to tease the Dutch mentors for their cuisine. After lunch we had library course and academic preparation course.

Our mentors joined us again and we went for a sports evening in the Sports Center. We were supposed to try out Dutch sports, which we did, but most people included me didn’t get very excited until it was time for the Dutch national sport…

After the game, we had lasagna which was surprisingly good given that it was mass produced. Just like Monday, Goeiendagschotel had our pre party at Party Mentor’s place at Spoordijk. We were about an equal amount of people this time, given that more of Party Mentor’s flatmates showed up. Captain Kelly was the only girl though, given that we played I’ve never for most of the event.

This night the party was the Glow in the Dark Party. A very appreciated theme party. I told captain that I wanted a funny painting in my face, this is what I got:

So I guess that you can see I had a pretty good time this night, I believe that most people did.

Tot Ziens.

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.