The 5 Most Beautiful Months of My Life
Tolstoy said “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” Actually, that’s exactly how my story started. I went from Turkey to the Italian city of Salerno as a complete stranger.
In the fall semester of 2021–2022, I went to the University of Salerno in Italy for Erasmus with the agreement of the Computer Engineering department. In this article, I will tell you about my experiences in this learning mobility.
First of all, if I need to shortly summarize the Erasmus program, it is financed by the European Union; It is a program where students from all over the continent come together and share their cultures, views and lifestyles with each other. If I need to explain this cultural diversity better with an example, we celebrated the birthday of a Polish friend with our friends from 10 different nationalities.
I can describe Erasmus as the happiest, most challenging and most developed experience of my life. Although there is no airport in Salerno, Southern Italy, where I did my Erasmus, I had the opportunity to visit 10 countries (Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Vatican).
Every day, as soon as I woke up, I would say “Guten Morgen” to my German flatmate and “Dzień dobry” and “Dobré ráno” to my Polish and Slovak flatmates and try to find the most cheapest flight ticket. I have not bought a Salerno doner for 3.5 Euros, but bought a plane ticket to Vienna :)
I spent the night at the airports, I stayed in hostel rooms for 12 people for moneysave, I dealt with a lot of paperwork and unfortunately these documents were neither in Turkish nor English :)
I got sick, couldn’t get out of bed for a week, I was miles away from my mother’s lemon-mint :)
In order not to spend 3 Euros, I walked 9 km with an 8 kilo backpack. I had a hard time understanding Southern Italy’s healthcare and university system, I still couldn’t understand the Siesta system :)
But in fact, all these were just lessons prepared by the Erasmus program for me to learn, and it improved me a lot. I would like to thank Ömer Harun Çetin, a student of our university and department, like me, my dear friend and roommate, who overcame all these sweet difficulties together.
Towards the end of my article, perhaps one of the biggest contributions of this experience to me was the improvement in my English speaking skill. Especially the fact that my housemates are from different nationalities contributed greatly to my development in this regard and we have accumulated wonderful memories like a family. We had a difficult time together and had a lot of fun, so now I have no doubt that our friendship will last a lifetime. I am very excited and looking forward to hosting them in Izmir this summer.
Finally, I think that every person should spend a certain period of time in their 20s in a foreign country, where they do not know the system, language and culture, and this will bring tremendous benefits to them.
Ciao…
