Ghent University held a welcome day for exchange students today, so we could all meet each other and find out about the uni and all the administrative things we needed to sort out before starting study. It was held in the Aula which is this amazing building like a theatre inside (photo shows the outside). There are actually a lot of exchange students. The biggest group are from Poland, there are also lots of Spanish speakers (from Spain, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia). I also met people from Lithuania, Portugal, Ghana, Slovakia, Greece, France, Italy and Turkey. It was neat to meet all these people and everyone was very excited to meet a New Zealander! One guy said to me – ‘So this is what New Zealanders look like!!’. Lol was he expecting an alien?? It was a little frustrating that people tended to aggregate in groups of people from their home country and speak in their own language which kinda left me on my own. We had presentations from various uni groups about language lessons, libraries, sports facilities and the ESN (Erasmus student network) who organise parties and stuff. Then we had lunch (broodjes) before going on a guided tour of the city with ESN. We walked through town and then visited the Castle which I mentioned below, the founding building of Gent, and even went through the torture museum! Apparently when corporal punishment ended the last executioner of the city decided to donate all his gear to the museum. So there is a guillotine (complete with used blades and sack to catch the heads), various instruments of torture such as thumb screws, stretch racks, shackles with sharp points, and various other head gear to keep people quiet. Quite disturbing really, but also strangely interesting. I also enjoyed seeing the suits of armour and the very windy and steep stone staircases up to the tower! Then we went past Gent’s very own red light district (also disturbing) before stopping off to try a Belgian beer. Ah Belgian beer – first impression has been very good. I tried a dark Trappiste beer (made by monks I think, all the best booze is made by monks) which was very heavy, full and a little sweet. It was 9% ethanol! I think the highest percentage beer here is 12% which is higher than most vodka RTDs, and I think most beers back in NZ are 4-5%? Anyway apparently there are hundreds of varieties of beer here so there is certainly no shortage of variety. After our beer stop we headed to one of the university restaurants for dinner, where I loaded up on meat and vege. Then we had some time to kill before the ESN party which was at a club on the ‘Overpoort’ (main pub street) so a few of us went to an internet café. I started feeling a bit unwell so I headed home for the evening but I hear it was a great night out. The Overpoort is about a 30 second walk from the 2 main student residences, so its very close for those students to just walk home. I will have to make some kind of plan for nights out as to getting home afterwards and such!
Anyway now I just need to open a bank account here and I am pretty much set. Uni starts next week, although my first class isn’t until Wednesday. Classes here are a different format to back at Waikato – instead of an hour class they are run from 10 in the morning til 5:30pm! Mind you this is Masters so im expecting it to be smaller classes and a bit more interactive too. Hopefully I will be starting to learn Dutch next week as well, there are night courses run especially for exchange students.
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