First-week Summary, or Byebye, 400 Euros!

Yes, exactly, I spent almost a month’s scholarship within a week. No regrets.

Last Sunday I went to Pepco and IKEA with my roommate (who calls herself Maria here) to get ourselves some stuff we needed for our dorms. Pro tip: write a list of what you need and stick to it or you’ll go home with 5 stuffed animals more than necessary (they’re really cute though so I don’t mind buying them at all). And I needed those clothing, and kitchen supplies, 5-months public transport ticket, the deposit at the dorms, and so one and so one, so it won’t continue this way, from now on I’ll almost only buy food to cook at home.

And everything really started on Monday… we had the first official drinking together (nicknamed “welcome drink”), and I was lucky enough to make some friends. Grab a notebook, I will write many new names from now and I will explain who they are only once. So, I went to the bar we were going to meet with each other, and I tell you I daren’t ask anyone if I could sit with them, all of the people at the tables seemed enjoying themselves, I didn’t want to bother them. And I also knew no one, how come that I just go there and ask “hey, well, I don’t know you, you don’t know me, we might not even get on well with each other, but can I sit with you please?” or any variant, so I just sat down to an empty table with my phone and talked with my friends on facebook desperately trying not to look desperate. I don’t seriously think it worked, to be honest… and then, all out of a sudden, a group of people arrived and I was sitting at the only free table so they just asked me if they could sit with me. Most of them were, surprise, surprise, Polish, and two of them were Lithuanians; and after they all introduced themselves I could remember like… two names, maybe? But we had a few beers together and I was accepted into the previously formed band easily (Polish people and Hungarians are like siblings after all), and after showing them my talent of drinking 0,5 liters of beer within ~12 seconds we were great friends. I also made friends with a French girl, Mazda, and a Czech guy, Peppa. He studies English as well and he’s gonna move to Sweden so it was our destiny to meet one another, or so I believe.

On Tuesday we had a “Welcome Ceremony” where we also played a game, between two (sometimes boring) presentations about Ostrava and the school itself (Did you know that those horribly looking ex-factories at Vítkovice are planned to be a part of the World Heritage? Or that they have an own beer with gingko-biloba in it?), where we had to figure out the performer of the song being played, and of course I would have failed the whole test if I couldn’t copy from my Portuguese neighbours. We could also get ourselves a few things for school (for example a plastic cup for beer, very useful, but at least very thoughtful, and it says “cheers” in 18 different languages!) and a Czech SIM-card (that I can’t use because my phone doesn’t support Vodafone) and a T-shirt as well. And, I will never forget this, all these things were in a textile bag like the one in which we usually kept our sports clothes at high school, and Karolis, the Lithuanian boy struggled with closing it properly, so I helped him, and then showed him how to fix it. Then I told him that it was sorcery and he was free to call me “the Hungarian witch” but I was so tired that I ended up saying “bitch” instead of “witch”.

On Wednesday we had a Czech National Evening with country presentations, games, where the French girl, Mazda danced with the Irish old man (what was his name?), and all games’ winners got gingko-beer; and we also learned some useful expressions in czech, such as “you have a nice butt” and “I am pregnant”. Then we went to Poruba dormitories to some party, because all of us wanted to dance already… and we ended up in the middle of a partner-finder party. WELL DONE, ERASMUS-PEOPLE! I had to nicely tell or show at least five guys to fuck off and I also had to save one of the two Lithuanian girls who are here, Aurelija, because when we told people we had a boyfriend (or, in my case, I said I had a boyfriend because it was easier than telling them that I didn’t like them because some just wouldn’t understand), they went like “Is he here? Because if not then he won’t know about it”. Pathetic. But while waiting for the tram after these fantastic encounters we were talking about similarities between Czech, Polish, Hungarian and Lithuanian languages (poor Mavi, Aurelija’s roommate couldn’t add anything, being Spanish), and I must say that you only realise how many Slavic words Hungarian has when you are encountered to those languages, either by starting to learn them or by living in a country where they are used and hearing it every day. And as I can see, there is a young, blooming bromance between Karolis and one of the Polish guys we went to the party with, Chris (who is Krzysztof, but we can’t possibly remember this name). You would never in your wildest dreams guess whom you will make friends with on Erasmus, and how deep those friendships may get.

But still I must say Karolina, a buddy is one of the best buddies ever existed (but I infinitely love my own buddy, Nela as well, who dad just called my “babysitter” some days ago!) because she took us all to the party, took care of us poor people who had no idea what was where (although she didn’t know it either) and took us home as well. Or, well, the other ones, because I, of course, didn’t get home easily, because the stop where I had to take off the tram didn’t simply exist and so I couldn’t change for the bus that was going to take me home. Hereby, I took off at the last stop after the bitch, who was driving, aggressively told me to get off (not speaking the language doesn’t instantly make me stupid, does it?) and I walked back to a stop I knew and I was sitting alone in the (I’m not kidding, kiddo) 6°C for 20 mins for my first tram back to the dorms, because best case I could have walked 2 stops of the 8 or 9 I had to take until I got home, finally, at 5. But I’m glad to report that I had a hot shower and didn’t catch cold! As I woke up at 1 p.m., Thursday didn’t really consist of anything other than finding food and cooking (I still take antibiotics so I can’t drink alcohol, no hangover, yaay), and the ratatouille I planned for lunch ended up being a dinner. BUT although I have small pots and the kitchen has only microwave, hot plates (no real oven) and a kettle, I could make lunch for 1 person for 4 days!

On Friday I was invited for lunch by the two Greek girls who are here, Denisa and Ntina. After trying Chinese (and struggling with it) they also tried sushi but I’m afraid they didn’t like it as much as I did… Then we spent the whole afternoon at the mall and went to play a laser tag game in the evening, with other Erasmus-students. Never before have I played anything similar, neither paintball nor CS on a computer but it was really awesome and I highly recommend everyone to try it if you have the time and money. We plan to go back once or twice. It turned out there that Aurelija (on the picture) and I both had 6 as our lucky number and so it was confirmed that we were sisters (and she’s only 4 days older than me). We were there until almost 11 p.m. and as I couldn’t drink any alcohol nowadays I decided not to go to the pub tour after this very tiring game.