Week Two

Cultural

So after only a few days of classes I got a whole week off to celebrate carnival; it’s a festival mostly celebrated in the south of the Netherlands. Due to this holiday a lot of the Erasmus group decided to take this time to return home or to visit different places around the Netherlands and alas Eimear and I were left to fend for ourselves for a while.

Venray parade

Eimear and I were very lucky to be invited by an Erasmus student from last semester Joyce, to visit her in Venray where we received a very warm welcome and were looked after so well by her and her parents .  There is nothing I can really compare carnival to from back home, it's a wonderful cultural difference. Everyone comes together to celebrate, the young and the old dress up in costumes, houses are decorated and the village all comes together with a sense of community that is breath-taking to celebrate. We watched the parade as it made its way through the town of Venray; each village had made a massive float, some were more intricately designed than others, with moving parts, on top of these floats were the prince and princesses that each village had elected, they had a lot of people joining them as well in special costumes dancing and rocking to the carnival music. Even though I don’t know the Dutch language I could still appreciate the music and recognize some of the themes they had chosen for their float. The day ended with a few drinks in the tent were the band was playing, it was packed with people all in costume enjoying the music and fun, in the Netherlands it is legal to drink from the age of sixteen, I found this very strange but they do not have the binge drinking problems that we have back in the UK.

Fieke and I 

The next day we met another former Erasmus student Fieke who still maintains a slight Belfast accent, it was great to see her again after so long and to spend the day exploring the town of Nijmegen. We walked across the Waalbrug and took in the views of the city and then had a catch up over coffee, I hope to visit her again soon in her home village.

Amsterdam

The week ended with a two day trip to Amsterdam, I have been dying to go from the moment we arrived. The first day we settled into our hostel near the dams square and then began exploring the sights to see. It is such a beautiful city; I love the mix of old and new architecture and the canals that flow throughout. On one bridge I found locks with couple’s names on it, and I can understand exactly when walking through the streets and over bridges why people say it is romantic. On the second day after 10 years of waiting I finally got to see the Anne Frank museum, it was a heart wrenching and sobering experience to be in the place where she spent two years hiding from people who wanted to take her life because of her religion. There are a lot of lesson we can learn from the past and this museum brings a lot of those to mind. Her father Otto Frank the only one to survive after their betrayal dedicated the rest of his life to publishing Anne’s diary and to the museum to educate the future generations,I leave you with a quote from Otto.

We cannot change what happened anymore. The only thing we can do is to learn from the past and to realize what discrimination and persecution of innocent people means. I believe that it’s everyone’s responsibility to fight prejudice. Otto Frank, 1970.