Last year I decided to take part of the Erasmus program, you know, spend a year in a foreign university, so on and so forth. I must say it has been the greatest experience in my life so far, except for my residence mates, that sucked major balls. I ended up in Manchester.

To start off, I have to go a little bit back to around February 2006. Picture a 3rd year physicist just finishing his first semester exams, but a little dissatisfied how things are going. Nothing's really going my way at this point, besides studies which have always been my forte, no girlfriend, no outstanding friends... actually I have never had a meaningful relationship up to this point, you know, somebody who you'd like to have kept on dating.

Now, if you think this isn't such a big deal, since studies are going fine, think again, only deranged or retarded people find comfort in lonelyness. It's not like I was totally alone with nobody to talk to, I mean, I play handball and do have friends, just nobody really I would've liked to spend more time with. Don't get me wrong, I did have a few girlfriends before, but I'm that kind of guy who just can't shut off my mind and fuck, if I'm not connecting deeply with the girl I just go ahead and find somebody else.

So anyway, there I was, dissatisfied and lonely and along came a girl I had a thing for from dancing class (yes, I took dancing classes, dancing in pairs, salsa and derivatives). She was quite beautiful and nice and I dated her for a few months but it didn't work out in the end, we were just at different mental levels. So along came the second semester exams and I'm feeling like shit, so my results dropped quite a bit, not failing but not the usual scores I was getting before.

At this point I decided I wanted to do something with my life, take a new direction and whatever. So I let my hair grow. Actually I didn't shave either, I thought, fuck it, who cares anyway. People nagged me endlessly about it but i just kept on going. I had decided i was not going to care about anything anybody had to say about me, heh.

It worked pretty well actually, when I finally got to Manchester in September, I was looking like a homeless guy, but I was speaking to everybody, anywhere at any time. It didn't really matter to me, I'd barge in on conversations making shitty jokes about anything I could think of, and generally having a lot of fun. I met the greatest guy in Manchester this way, the Russian Michael.

It's actually quite funny how i got to know this guy. First time I saw him, it was at the physics Erasmus meeting that was set up for us, to give us general information and all that jazz. I actually almost missed this meeting... well, not exactly missed, heh. It went like this:

The day after I arrived I knew there was a meeting somewhere about something at 9 am. I wasn't sure of what, and I was pretty fucking nervous because it was my first day in Manchester (I had arrived the previous night, and was picked up by a Greek driver who kept shouting "MALAKA" to everybody on the street, including women, pretty funny if you know what it means), and I had no clue of where anything was. I had forgotten to write down the details of the meeting so I needed a computer with internet access ASAP.

I got up at like 7 and started searching for one. Uni computers: no dice, I needed a university card first. Appealing to random people on the residence got me pretty weird looks and people backing slowly away from me ( I guess homeless appearence wasn't the greatest idea for this task ). So I decided to find a PC café, it was getting close to 8 so I was starting to get a bit desperate. I found one 30 minutes away, but it opened at 9, FUCK!

I knew the name of my erasmus coordinator, Alan, so I went to the physics building and asked at the reception. They pointed to a list and said: which of the 15 Alans are you looking for? I was thoroughly screwed and didn't know what else to try, so I just waited until 9 for the PC café and screw it. I almost called my parents back home to look it up for me in my e-mail, I was that desperate heh.

So I finally sit down to check out my gmail account (after paying 50p for 15 fucking minutes) and guess what. The meeting was on the following day. The thing I remembered was at 9 was actually a "survival meeting" for international students that I didn't really give a fuck about. Talk about a great beginning. The physics Erasmus meeting was later on at like 1 pm or something like that.

Anyway, about the meeting: there was a lot of food on the table, sandwiches mostly, some cups so you could have tea, juice or coffee and some dessert. They sat us down in couches, 2 by 2 so you had 2 people in front and one to a side. Here's where I spoke to Michael for the first time, he was wearing his characteristic dark blue sweater with the red star in the center, nothing much went on, we were all pretty nervous about our schedules and nobody really knew anybody else. I also met Jose (who was wearing an orange "holland football team" t-shirt, I actually thought he was dutch at first heh), Khadidja, Kilian, André and Caroline here.

I don't remember exactly how it all went down, but I went shopping with Rodrigo (a Chilean guy) and somebody else for the basic tools of survival, i.e. pans, cutlery, food, and a pillow (fuckers didn't give one, i had to sleep the first night with my coat under my head). Also, Khadidja saved my ass a few days later when she found a store that freed my mobile phone so i could use an English card.

A week after I arrived there was this anti-Bush-Blair-war march going on, that we thought we should join. I think I was supposed to meet Jose, Blase, khadidja and all the rest, but in the end only Rodrigo and Blaise showed up, and on our way there we found Michael. Can't remember where he was going, but he changed his mind and came along to the most boring march I have ever been in my life. The fuckers only had one slogan, which they repeated endlessly: "George Bush, Terrorist. George Bush, Terrorist".

We were bored out of our minds thirty minutes in, so we decided to go for food, beers and basically walk around Manchester a little bit. We left a bit after that and agreed to meet up later in the evening at my place to have some dinner and go clubbing.

So basically up until this point, nothing much had happened, I just got all my shit together, drank a few beers with random people and managed to get my schedule sorted out. I will continue after dinner .