The time is 4 in the morning and you hear the well known, but unpleasant sound of your alarm. It’s time for you to get up, to head to the closest airport and to launch yourself into the adventure called Erasmus. After a heartbreaking “Goodbye” with your family, although you won’t be there only a couple of months, accompanied with your mother tears, you realize that for the first time in your life you will be on your own. How hard can it be.
You blend with the crowd, everybody going to their destination – work, vacation or back to motherland. After some security checks and one wrong turn, which almost cost you the flight, you are finally on the board of the plane, waiting for everything to begin. You raise to the required height and drink the first wine of the day, although it’s just 8.30 a.m., relax in the seat, hoping that there won’t be any turbulence, because you fell asleep with another episode of “Air Crash Investigation“ (not the brightest idea you had). Arrive at the unknown airport and realize that you know only the city in which you have landed and ask yourself: “Now where to?”. After you asked multiple flying by, like a fast train, people “How to get to the buses that are going to the center” you finally manage to go through the first obstacle like an adult: the panic that you are lost in an foreign country (although you still haven’t left the airport).
You reached the dreamed center and in the bus you had a 30 minute conversation with a really fast speaking elderly woman whom you didn’t manage to understand, so you just smiled… a lot. Although you are in the city where you will spend the next 3 months of your life, the question “Now where to” just doesn’t go out of your head.
A little tired and mostly confused you arrive at the apartment, which you will call your home for the next quarter of the year. Here you collide with the next problem: what to eat – don’t worry your mother is thinking for you – the four slices of bread and the ham which are located at the bottom of the suitcase will do the job … the first day…
The first day at work – you are late, because you caught the right bus, but at the wrong direction. After lots of apologies it’s time for you to get to … work. You went through training and are ready to launch yourself into the battle, which at first sight is already lost, because you’re not entirely sure what is going on. Here is another problem: you have to work, no more careless days in which you got up at 11-12p.m. and went to sleep at 3-4 a.m. It is time to become an adult – waking up at 7.30 and going to bed around 12 a.m. Although you had enough sleep, that doesn’t mean you have to stop complaining about the early rising. Let’s not forget the breakfast which you ignored the last 9 years of your life, because you were just waking up for lunch.
Of course not everything is working! The nights, spent in the bar next to you, are also one of the experiences that you will never forget. You try a lot of different and interesting for you types of beers and decide to find yourself a hobby for the next months – collecting beer bottles, because you’re an adult and you can do whatever you want. After a while your collection is big enough to make other beer lovers jealous.
You get home and throw your clothes in the laundry basket and in the morning they are still there, waiting for you, it’s realization time – the magic basket in which you leave all your dirty t-shirts and socks don’t exist and all this time your mother was washing them (shocking I know). If this basket is not real, that means that it’s time for the next challenge – the washing machine. “Where should I put this white sand, that washes everything away, what about the interesting colored liquid from which all my clothes smell nicely and are soft”. With telephone assistance you manage to start up the first ever washing machine in your life. You feel really happy and pleased for the job well done. Just, please, don’t forget the clothes in the machine.
