22-23.08.2017: My first impressions of Amsterdam and the first introductory meetings

I’ve been in Amsterdam for four days now. The best thing about it is that, even though I’m in a capital city, I don’t really realise it: there aren’t nearly as many cars and there isn’t nearly as much noise as in Budapest or indeed in London! There are more bikes than cars here, and even now that I have been to the city centre, I still can’t complain about the quality of the air! It’s also wonderful to see how helpful people here are. I’ve only been living at Spinoza Campus for 4 days, but I’ve already made a lot of friends, both Dutch and international ones. As I still can’t find my way around the city, it really is fantastic that I always find someone to help me get where I need to get. Thanks to these incredibly nice students, I managed to get to the bank on Tuesday. My bank account became officially live the very same day, but I was asked to come again when I get my BSN. I also went to the introductory events of the university, exclusively for new international students. Althoough I HAD read their website more than once, and I also had a lot of knowledge of the Dutch system, I still found the information they gave us about the city, the university and Dutch culture invaluable. We also got to listen to current (international) students talking about their (mostly positive!) experience at the UvA. The only downside some of them mentioned is that they found their course a bit too intensive and demading at first. After that, we all went to a café, where we got to meet members of the student union. That's when I found out who would help me dring "intreeweek" (=freshers' week).

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