Post-Erasmus Syndrome

The Post-Erasmus Syndrome

First of all I would like to give you an insight of my background story. I spent my Erasmus exchange semester, here in the city of Warsaw, in the first part of the academic year of 2014/2015. I’m originally studying in Romania at the University of Babes-Bolyai and this is my last year of master and quite surely it’s also the last year of my studies overall. Currently I am still in Warsaw, having an internship and trying to get adapted to my non-Erasmus life.

Our story
It feels like it was just yesterday, that I moved together with my flatmate and I took him for his first real Erasmus tour along Warsaw(including old town and crazy shots). I went to pick him up at the Central Station and greeted him with one shot of delicious sour-cherry flavoured vodka and a plate of spaghetti carbonara with a personal twist. He loved it.

Orientation week, which was organized by ESN Kozminski,  was knocking on our door and we felt that we already knew so many people, but we were wrong. Each night of that week I/we connected with so many people from so many cultures and countries that we could have never imagined before: Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, Denmark, Portugal, France, Ukraine etc.

It felt from the first moment like we are a family. And we were. We really proved to be one.
Sometimes we tried to label our stay here as something surreal or detached from reality, that it’s only a well-defined time span away from our homes, away from our families, friends, school etc. But the more time has passed, the more time we spent together, the more adventures we’ve gone through, the more “boring” chit-chat nights we had next to a beer and tasty chicken wings, the more dinners we cooked for each other, the more birthday surprises we organized, the more we realized that this is nothing else but reality, which is going to transform to one of our most beautiful and ever-lasting memories deeply carved in our hearts.
Sometimes we were many, sometimes we were few, but what we’ve always been was diverse. And we grew to be bound in our diversity.
Maybe we were lucky, or maybe we tried to stay lucky, because thanks to our Whatsapp group, which I recommend for Erasmus group of friends to set up, we are still in contact. During our common life it proved to be a great tool to organize events or just to set up some random meeting. And now it’s our “cloud” where our thoughts and memories meet from thousands of kilometers of distance.

Post-Erasmus Syndrome

Sadly from “our Erasmus group” I’m the only one left here in Warsaw and I must admit I’m having such an unexpectedly hard time.

In the beginning I thought that having a different lifestyle, a more serious one, will make all these feelings and memories fade away a bit. I was wrong. Every walk I take, every place I see, every bar, restaurant reminds of those unbelievable times, we’ve spent here together. And I miss those times.

Good advice

I would like to give an advice for my fellow present and future Erasmus participants, which is to cherish every moment you spend together and to keep in mind that this experience is for a lifetime. You can make friends, find soulmates and love, the only thing you have to do is to put effort in keeping them, but that’s true for everything we have in life.

Through this blog post, I would like to thank everyone of you the great times we had together, in school and beyond that, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being part of my life and sharing your friendships with me.

“Eat, sleep, rave, repeat! We are not on holidays!”

For more information about the Erasmus program: here