First impression

I arrived in Amsterdam in the middle of August, to get to know the city a little better, before my exchange programme starts and to  participate in the Introduction week of ISN. In this week I met so many students from all over the world I couldn’t even follow anymore. They were from all over Europe, USA, Australia, Asia,… I’ve never met so many different people from so many different countries before. It’s actually quite impossible to do that in Slovenia, because it’s not very known country, so not a lot of foreign students go to visit it or go study there.

I noticed quite quickly that Amsterdam is much more diverse in all aspects, than Slovenia, or if I compare it to Ljubljana, the capital. We don’t have as much cultures on one place as here in Amsterdam. But I think this would be great for Slovenian people, because most of them are really controversial and getting to know more cultures and people from different ethnic background would help them see, that there is a lot of nice people outside of Slovenia too. More and more young people decide to study or work abroad, so at least we can share our experiences and maybe try to change opinion of controversial Slovenians.

A big difference between Dutch and Slovenian people is also in communication. Dutch guys are so straight forward that I was really surprised for the first few times, when they just said whatever they wanted to. We are usually not like that. A joke made up from Slovenian people is that Slovenian national sport is gossip. But that’s actually true. I mean, we also have a lot of very good sportsman on a lot of different fields of sport, so don’t think that’s all we can do. But it is true, that Slovenians just don’t say everything they want to. They just keep it to yourself and then talk about that with a friend. And that’s very bad. I like honesty of Dutch people, and I’m getting used to it. Oh, and another thing that shocked me was, that Dutch men don’t buy drinks to girls.. I found out about that on introduction week, when we were talking with our Dutch coach and people from my group and he said: ‘Why would you do that? Why would you buy a drink for a girl?’ And of course the reaction of ALL of us was: ‘woow, what!?’ We are from all over Europe, USA, Asia, and Australia and for all of us it’s normal, that a guy comes to you in the club or if you’re on a date he offers you a drink and of course also pays for it. But not Dutch guys. If you go on a date with a Dutch guy, you pay for your own drink and he pays for his own drink. That’s how it goes here. And don’t expect that a Dutch guy will come to you in the club and offer you a drink. You’re now in Netherland, so you pay for your own drink, or find a guy who is not Dutch if you want a free drink. ;) 

from the back: Turkish, Slovenian, American, Australian and Dutch guy's head . :)