Nino Galle

Video link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6olBxoNsPx2RjFYaGEtbXM2S1E/view?usp=sharing

When we interviewed Maarten, we noticed that there were quite a few difficulties with adapting to the local culture he had. For example, when he went to the university he always had to wait 30 minutes for his professors to arrive and they didn’t see any issue in it, which he found frustrating. This is maybe just one of the stereotypes of Southern countries, but it was true according to him. So, the coming late was something he could have expected, but the thing that we were surprised about was that you start adapting to the times of eating. In Spain, you eat breakfast at 9:00, lunch at 14:00 and dinner at 21:00 which seems very strange to us and we can hardly imagine ourselves adapting to this, but we’ll see. He personally liked this way of living very much, because it was very relaxed and it made him think about life in Belgium as way too stressed sometimes. Something that we found highly interesting, but wasn’t caught on camera because we discussed some more afterwards, was the explanation of the Spanish exam system. Apparently, you have 2 exam periods in January and February, where you can plan in your exams yourself and the third period is in August for if you failed during these periods as well. Maarten might have been positively biased as well, because he was very happy with his Erasmus stay and had an amazing time, except for his apartment. It’s very important to watch out for scams and to go check on your apartment to be sure that you get what you want and nothing else. Also, it was also interesting to hear about his opinion of having a girlfriend during your Erasmus period and if it was doable, and I was amazed by his response. Normally, you hear from Erasmus as the graveyard of your relationship if it hasn’t lasted that long yet. Something that I was glad to hear about was that the Castilian and Leon region have barely an accent and are ideal to practice your Spanish. We already heard this from our teacher from Spanish, but to hear it from someone who has had experience by living in this region was very nice to hear. We also fear a little of getting homesick the first few week and hearing this from Thomas' nephew that there are surely going to be times when you’ll be missing home, particularly when friends come over to visit you. Luckily, Thomas and I are doing our Erasmus together. We were best friends from the start of IBM so we are really happy with this coincidence.