Well, the 2nd year of the master’s study is upon us. Theses are being written and the light at the end of the tunnel gets closer and looks brighter- or does it?

It’s definitely getting closer, but seeing how a few of my friends (who studied at the same time I did) evolved, the balance is not completely on the positive side for everyone.

Some of those who came with a very firm idea of “escaping” their native countries (can people really be blamed for dreaming of living a better life, in another place, through hard work?) are finding that establishing a friendship with the locals is a very tough nut to crack. Then they find that their idea was not so firm after all.

While the stereotypes about the locals are simply broken, they are one thing: distant. They may be super nice, go to parties (not so many when there’s a lot of international students involved) and sometimes hang out. But having a real friendship is not so easy. In part they’re tired of the huge turn-over that are the Erasmus and international students themselves (it’s kind of .. emotionally wearing. Even for me. My friendship with this year’s Erasmus people was nowhere as deep as with the ones that came at the same time I did. I can only imagine the locals having this cycle every 6/12 months, for 5 years..). In part it’s their culture. In part, you could have a really good friendship with someone, and not even know it! It happened to me. Once I went to have a beer with my teammates for one class. The guy was kind of uninhibited by the alcohol - and then I realised how much of a friend he considered me. It was very surprising. In retrospect I don’t think I corresponded too well  (in retrospect I’ve done a lot of things wrong, taken a lot of bad decisions, but well, that’s what life is about. Now I’m slightly less stupid).

This invisible wall that separates us visitors from the locals is an unfortunate occurrence. I don’t think it’s necessarily something ‘wrong’ on their part, I think we’re just not being patient enough. And perhaps we’re not reading into their cues, which are so subtle.

Me, I don’t know. The balance for me is surely more than 93% on the positive side. I have a great capacity for not caring for so many things (the darkness of the winter months, the cold weather, the rainy weather during non-winter months,  the 2-hot-days/5-lukewarmish-days cycle during summer, etc.). The remainder depends on what happens next. We’ll see.