By Charlie Nock, International Business Management
Welcome to my blog everybody! I’m Charlie, an International Business Management student who is extremely fortunate in being able to spend this year at the University of Amsterdam.
I had chosen the university based on previous visits to the city, where I thought to myself, naively, that I could see myself settling in to the ebbs and flows of Dutch life. I quickly learnt that that there’s never a spare second in which you can actually be settled in Amsterdam. Instead, you have to don your glamorously shabby city bike and explore as much of the city’s offerings as possible. The culture shock wasn’t as big as it would be in many other cities; but having the national cuisine be fried cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise lathered chips was a shock I think anyone would welcome.
I was anxious about being a fresher again and equally frustrated to be missing out on second year in Sheffield, but the international students are all in the same boat – mostly Masters or exchange students who just want to enjoy their year away. I regrettably chose not to take part in the International Students’ Week (ISN), luckily I was able to meet people through my flatmates’ groups but I would definitely recommend anyone going abroad to secure a place with their ISN as it seemed a great way to find cool new places and meet new people.
I instead spent my first week with friends from home, or on my own exploring the city by bike – I took the ferry to the Noord of the city (see the windmill pictures) and around the various parks of the city – everywhere is so flat and chilled out that you can literally cycle anywhere in the city in under an hour and sweat free.
Acc
ommodation can be hard to come by and expensive and I did have a questionable experience upon moving in, but I managed to secure a central, canal side apartment in a student building for a similar price to Endcliffe. Being close to town and the university is a huge help, especially as some of my classes don’t finish until 9 at night, but friends further out seem to be really enjoying their respective setups. The course started very early, on September 2nd, and the semester is divided into 3 blocks with 6 exam periods. Reading is surprisingly intensive and there is a big emphasis on presentations and involvement in seminars.
My first set of exams start next week, but the reward of spending your down time in one of the coolest cities in the world makes this a small price to pay.