You never know what to expect when you’re travelling somewhere new, especially a different continent. As I packed my bags to prepare for my trip to Radboud University which is located in the Netherlands, specifically the town of Nijmegen, I felt excited, nervous, and anxious. I hardly even slept that night! (Actually, I had to wake up at 6 am to catch my flight which explains the sleep deprivation.) Although I was unsure of what to expect when I got to Nijmegen, I knew that no matter what, it was going to be incredible. This trip is my first time ever leaving the country, and I’ve received copious amounts of guidance and support the entire year to make this whole experience possible. Even if everything were to go wrong (which hopefully it doesn’t), I knew and know that I have people to help me get through it. Keeping this in mind, I was able to relax and make it through multiple airports (one layover is too many layovers if you ask me) and navigate my way from the Dusseldorf airport in Germany to Nijmegen. It took a layover in Atlanta where I got to catch up with my brother (he moved there years ago and decided to save me from boredom by visiting me in the airport with his girlfriend during said layover), a missed train (four years of German in high school was helpful, but not enough to help a sleep deprived 20 year old navigate a train transfer), and some wishful wandering around Radboud (Google Maps is a great resource even for walking, unless of course your phone dies!)—but I made it.
Flying into Germany
So of course, I take a celebratory 4 hour nap due to jet lag on my unmade bed (yes, I was that tired.) Then reality set in, and I realized that I had no food and apparently, no towels. It took a few days to get everything I needed, but eventually I got the basics. I found the Dutch equivalent of Target and a supermarket to get food, towels, shampoo, etc. Then once I was somewhat used to the time difference, I was able to begin meeting everyone I would be working with during my time in the Donders Center for Cognition lab which was A LOT more fun than trying to translate different laundry detergents on my phone in the store. I had a long list of tasks I had to complete in the upcoming weeks before I could start testing, but it was still exciting nonetheless. I was just excited to be able to run my own EEG experiment independently for the first time.
After the end of the first week and second week too, I had definitely experienced a lot of technical problems along with the other PIRE students as well. Basically, we couldn’t access campus wifi until we had our student ID numbers which took over a week to get. I still was using up all of my data on my phone in order to communicate with people, and we had to use an Ethernet cord in our apartments to have any access to the internet which for some reason, only worked on my PIRE laptop and not my regular laptop. To make matters worse, I did not have the correct adapter for my laptop chargers, so I had to scour town for days just to find one. However, I was able to use campus wifi (plus log into computers within the lab) after getting issued a student number, but this only worked for my personal laptop and not my PIRE laptop. Eventually, all of this was sorted, and my technology problems seemed to be dissipating. But then one rainy, overcast day, (this weather is actually really typical and not just melodramatic) I open my personal lap top, and I get a stop error or a “blue screen of death” as my mom would call it. I decided that after thoroughly annoying the IT desk on campus with my technological inabilities, I had to contact my astrophysicist brother to help me fix it. And eventually, he did!! Long story short, I didn’t realize how important technology is in my life until I didn’t have unlimited access to it.
After getting through all of these technical issues, I was able to explore town more with Erika, Jessica, and Fatemeh and enjoy the city a little bit more. I’m not sure if I’ll end up gaining weight because the food here is so good, or if I’ll lose it because I have to walk over half an hour just to get into the main part of town. Either way, this hasn’t stopped us from going to different cafés, where the bad coffee is still better than anything I would typically get at home and restaurants that substitute ketchup with mayonnaise. One thing that we learned about Dutch culture is that the waiters and waitresses typically don’t check up on you as much as they would in an American restaurant. This is nice, but it also means you may have to search around for your server if you want to pay the bill. Otherwise, you’ll sit there for two hours talking like we mistakenly did one weekend waiting for someone to come!
Besides checking out the local restaurants, we also took a trip to a museum one day. The name of it is “Museumpark Orientalis,” and it featured a mixture of cultures and histories. When I say a mixture of cultures and histories, I mean that none of us were really sure what the main focus of this place was. It featured relics and artwork related to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Live reenactments of what life was like during different time periods and buildings that were modeled after traditional Jewish synagogues, Christian churches and Muslim mosques.
They also had animals that I’m assuming were to attract younger children, but I was equally as excited because they had a room full of rabbits and guinea pigs. The mix of religion and cultures was a bit confusing, especially because none of the exhibits had any English descriptions. However, it became clear that the importance of this museum was really to understand the historical background of three major world religions in a fun way and teach visitors about the stories behind each of them. I know I gained a greater appreciation after this trip while still having a lot of fun exploring inside the museum and outside. Although it may not specifically relate to Dutch culture itself, it was a cool experience to have because the museum has such a broad scope. Who knows what we’ll find next weekend!