The End of the Erasmus Experience

Dear friends,

As many of you know, Kristel and I returned home safely more than a week ago. You noticed just now that this blog, for the first and last time, is written in English. First time, because we want to let all our new made friends know how grateful we are for meeting them. Last time, because this is our last story. The Erasmus Experience has come to an end, and it was amazing.

During the last two weeks of our stay, our sweet and crazy Greek classmates from group 17 had their practical exams, so we didn’t have to go to the university anymore. Despite their exams, they still organized us a home-made Greek-food party at our place! These delicious dishes made us even bigger fans of the Greek, so we are sure we will see eachother again!! Faih, Alexandra, Panagiota, Chrys, Kostas, Dimokritos and Christos, thank you so much for everything! You helped us around at the university, translated for our patients, Christos even showed us around in his hometown Thessaloniki and above all this: you made us feel welcome and were our friends from the first hour!

With the ESN (European Student Network), which means, with 100 international students, we went for four days to Trigrad, a small village in the Rhodope mountains. On our way there we visited the Asenovgrad fortress and beautiful caves which names I forgot, but you can see them on the pictures we made. It was an ‘extreme’ weekend, which meant: climbing, rowing, hiking (for 7 hours in the rain), jeep riding, ziplining, abseiling and dancing until the early hours. This is as exhausting as it sounds, but we couldn’t have done it without gaining so much energy from all the sweet, positive and awesome people we met there. The Bulgarian students from the ESN organization did a great job! We met people from all around the world, who all happened to study somewhere in Bulgaria at the same time. I’m forever grateful for this experience, I know some people I might never see again, but I’m sure some I will meet again.

We decided very last minute that we wouldn’t want to leave Sofia without exploring it’s Vitosha mountain. So together with our ‘viking brother’ Vojtech (we were the only three people in Sofia with a long blonde haircut) we went to the Boyana waterfall.

The last weekend Kristel and I had a goodbye party. After some cocktails we went dancing in Biblioteka for the last time, with our new made friends from not only Bulgaria and Greece, but from South-Korea, Nigeria and Latvia (among other countries) as well.

As our stay in Bulgaria was coming to an end, we thought we’d better charge some solar energy before going back to grey and rainy Holland. Together with our Czech friend Vojtech and our Slowakian friends Marta and Romana, we went to the Black Sea, to Sozopol this time. And as I saw the sunrise from the east, I thought I wasn’t ready to go back west yet. But the past week has proven me wrong. It feels good to be back. But I know for sure I’m not done exploring eastern Europe.

As you know, it won’t take long before the both of us graduate. We cannot give you the exact time, but within 6 months we will be hard working grown-ups, with grown-up responsibilities and all that. But we can tell you that whenever we look back to our student life, these three months have been the best closure for the crazy and chaotic but extremely fun and fantastic era called ‘studying dentistry’. For 6 years we’ve been working our assess off, but in Bulgaria we got to benefit from all the hard work. We’ve learned that we can manage in a foreign clinic, how to improvise, and even to communicate with patients who don’t speak the same language. But dentistry wasn’t the whole reason to go abroad.

We’ve learned that Bulgaria is a beautiful country, and three months is too short to see all of it. We’ve learned that it’s easier than we thought it would be, to live on our own in a strange country. We’ve learned that it’s possible to meet new friends from foreign countries, from whom you have the feeling you’ve known them your whole life.

And Kristel, I have also learned that I wouldn’t have done this Erasmus with anyone but you!! :D

LOTS OF LOVE