Cold By Bike
Everyone I come across these days at the university has a cold. You just ask "How are you doing?" and then you hear a hoarse voice "Well, its okay". Maybe its the weather. No real snow here, but quite cold. When going by bike, the wind chill factor lets you feel the temperature even colder. The gear change at my bike desperately needs an overhaul. I can only drive with 2 or 3 out of 21 gears. The bike itself is also rather dirty, a lot of road salt is sitting on all kinds of parts.
First Dutch Lesson
Today I had my first Dutch lesson. It was quite funny, a really nice "international" group with many participants especially from Eastern Europe. It seems that the whole course focuses more on the application of the Dutch language and not so much on grammar exercises. I even got 90% of the homework done already which consisted mainly of transferring direct questions into indirect ones. In addition, we got a piece of paper with daily needed expressions like “Hee, leuk je weer te zien. Hoe was het in … ?” (Hey, nice to see you. How was it in…?). It is also very convenient that the Dutch and the German language are very similar and that for a German like me it is easy to learn and understand, nevertheless, the pronunciation can be quite tricky. We also learned the word for wheelchair, which is “rolstoel” or “invalidenwagen”. However, the latter one lead to some laughter amongst the German participants because if you called a wheelchair in German “Invalidenwagen” it would sound like an insult.
Helmut Kohl opened Academic Year
Last Monday, the Academic Year at Maastricht University was opened. Among various speakers was also Germany’s ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl. I luckily could get a ticket and attended the opening in the MECC, the Congress Center in Maastricht.
Kohl, often still addressed as “Herr Bundeskanzler” during the event, made a speech about the future of Europe and the universities in Europe. I found it pretty good, he told the audience that the European idea now belongs the younger generation. This younger generation should not let certain people "spooking around" the European media landscape destroy their optimism. Helmut Kohl’s speech was not translated into Dutch or English, so it was convenient being able to understand German.
The music at this evening was perfomed by the Willem Breuker Kollektief, a band from Amsterdam. The host of the evening was the Dutch news anchorman Philip Freriks.
When the speeches were over, a friend and I were even able to talk to Helmut Kohl. We were sitting at one table with him and he was very astonished that so many students from Germany are studying in Maastricht, especially at the Economics Faculty.
A report and the speeches are now online, as well as some video footage. Buzz-T has also taken some pictures. Sorry to say that the websites are only Internet Explorer friendly, I got some problems with Mozilla.
Somebody damaged my car’s rear window
Yesterday night, between 20 and 24h, somebody threw a trash bag against the back of my car. The result: The rear windows was totally broken and destroyed. Inside the car was a lot of garbage and waste, like potatoes, a beer glass and a nice smell. I directly called the Police non-emergency line (which is 0900-8844 in Maastricht and the Netherlands) and they told me to come to their headquarters. I went there and a helpful officer looked at the car and made up the report. After some 40 minutes it was finished and I got a copy of it.
This morning I called all kinds of insurances and automobile clubs, but as you might guess already, I am not insured against vandalism. So I had to pay the window by myself. First I called Carglass in Germany about the costs. They told me that it would amount to 350 EUR. Hui. Another call at Carglass in Maastricht was much better, "only" 139 EUR. Within 5 hours, the new rear windows was ordered and built in in the afternoon. That took 45 minutes. Carglass even cleaned the interior of my car which was really nice. Now everything is in order again, hopefully the suspect won't show up this night again.
The chances that somebody gets caught or is reported to the Police can be summarized by Donald Rumsfeld's poem:
[...] because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
Inkom 2004 Review
Here is my personal review of the Inkom 2004. I was an Inkom crew member and helped preparing the different locations.
On Monday, August 23rd, we had our crew instruction. We got one smaller book concerning the course of events and one “crew draaiboek” with the size of a telephone book that contained our shifts. Furthermore, we got our really nice crew shirts (picture here).
My first assignment was on Tuesday morning to set up stage barriers and blinds at the Market in Maastricht. Here, the official Inkom opening should take place with (next to other things) the performance of Boris, the winner of the Dutch Idols show, as the main attraction. From 10 o’clock on, the first die-hard fans of Boris were waiting for his 16 o’clock performance. I did not know him before and when I was sitting during lunchtime with some crew members in one of the cafes and told them that I have never seen him before they started laughing. They told me that I definitely must have seen him because Boris was sitting at the table next to ours. From 15 o’clock onwards, the first-year students began populating the market place and the opening started. At around 19 o’clock the opening was finished and we had to break down the stage barriers, the blinds and other things. When Boris leaved in an ordinary VW Golf, about 12 girls were following the car screaming “Boris, Boris”. This was actually very funny.
On Wednesday morning, I visited with two Inkom groups the “Kazematten”, an underground system of tunnels use during different wars. On Thursday, the “Preuvaqua” event took place in the MECC (the congress center) due to the bad weather. Here again, I helped building up the stage, lots of blinds and other fences and finally sold food coupons.
All in all, the Inkom 2004 was a really nice event. Nice people, nice “crew borrels”, where the crew members met for a drink, and lots of parties. Unfortunately, I have not taken photos, but there are a few on the web already.
On these sites you can find Inkom pictures and photos:
(hint: please make sure that the sound on your computer is turned off, some of these sites have an extremely annoying background sound :-) )
Euro2004: Netherlands – Germany
Last week I saw the first houses in Maastricht being decorated with all kinds of orange ("oranje") stuff, showing the support of the inhabitants for the Dutch soccer team for the coming European Championships "Euro 2004" in Portugal. Little orange flags in every street, a lot of pictures of lions on the houses. In every supermarket there are also special Euro2004 promotions.
The football match Germany - Netherlands itself will take place in Porto, Portugal on Tuesday 15th, 2004. In the university in Maastricht I heard several rumors saying that the game will be shown on the "big screen" in the lecture hall. However, I think that this will not be the case because the university might still need the lecture hall for the next academic year.
When the match actually takes place, this will be the first time that every German student comes to the city by bike and not by car which many often do. Some fear that in case of a defeat of the Dutch team by the German team (which is after the horrible testmatch by Germany today quite unlikely) their car is not safe anymore.
There are also special websites supporting the Dutch team and taunting the Germans. For example KeinRudi.nl (meaning "No Rudi", Rudi Völler is the coach of the German team) presents a song against Rudi Völler. Another site is schade-deutschland-alles-ist-vorbei.com, meaning something like "Too bad Germany, everything is over." Next to some rather heavy comments in the guestbook, the funny thing here is the German translation of the page which sounds as if Google had translated it. Another Goodbye-Rudi-Völler-song can be found at the DagRudi.nl site. There is also a page for the fans of the Limburg area, where Maastricht belongs to. The official Dutch football association KNVB can be found here and the German DFB here. I have not yet found any interesting and funny German fan sites, so if you know any post them as a comment.
The hunt for student rooms has started
With the next study year already in sight, many of my fellow students (me included) are starting to look for a new room.
There are various reasons for this. Your old room is either to small, to dirty or to far away from the city center. In my case, I had to make huge additional payments for the electricity costs. For half a year I consumed over 2500 kilowatt hours for a room of 20m² size. The reason for this is not that the computer was running 24/7, no, in my room is only an electrical heater that is not very efficient (= that means is was bitterly cold in winter). This thing just blows the hot air to the ceiling, there it is warm, but on the floor it is, or better was, extremely cold.
The second reason why I was looking for another room was the continously not-working internet connection. We share a connection with 4 people and have a 10 GB download and a 1.5 GB upload limit. The latter one seems to be the problem. Nobody of us is a mass downloader, but if you have to send a lot of power point presentation to your friends, or even use internet telephony services, this limit is reached very quickly. 40 students are living in our student house currently the internet is not working on nearly all four floors.
I now found a cheaper room directly in the center of Maastricht, 60 seconds* away from the university by bike (*requires that there is no heavy traffic on the roundabout), with a proper heating and an unlimited cable internet connection, provided by the university. The bad thing is, however, that I have this room only for half a year because the former inhabitant continues his study abroad during this time.
For those of you, who still need a room in Maastricht, take a look at the following sites:
Best Pudding in town
If you are looking for a nice chocolate or vanilla pudding try for example "Chocolade Vla" from the Albert Heijn , one of the biggest Dutch food store chains. Another nice tasting "vla" (the Dutch word for pudding) is made by Campina. The difference to German pudding is the consistency of the pudding and that you can get it in one-liter-packages. It also tastes much better.