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Tag: Holland

  • Homeless

    It’s my last weekend in Holland. This Monday I’m flying to Sofia, Bulgaria, from where I’ll take a bus to go to Istanbul where I will be studying for half a year. Moved out of my apartment last weekend, staying at my parents now, getting ready to stay in a hostel for a while, so I’m officially homeless again. Woohoo! Freedom! 🙂

    Figured I’d deliver an update on some things.

    My visa
    After posting the concerns I had about my visa, I decided to email a friend of mine, Ivaylo, who has a lot of experience with travelling and living abroad. His take on it was that once I get my residence permit, I’ll be a temporary citizen of Turkey, which will thus grant me entry into Turkey. So even though I have a single entry visa, once I get my residence permit I should be set.

    I’ve tried calling the Turkish consulate over the last 2 days to get a confirmation about this, but haven’t been able to get through yet. Once I’m finished with my studies I’m seriously going to consider helping out ministries of foreign affairs around the world to shape up the external communication side of their consulates and embassies, since I have very few very good experiences with consulates or embassies. The only embassies that I dealt with and I’m impressed with is the English embassy in The Netherlands and the Dutch embassy in Bulgaria, though I guess the latter doesn’t have very much to do 😉 (just joking of course).

    Monday morning I’ll get up early to call the consulate, just in case I do need to go to Rotterdam to change my visa, which I don’t expect. If I don’t get through, I could of course take care of it when I’m in Turkey.

    Language course
    I decided that I actually should take part in the language course I blogged about. After posting it here and going through the comments, I figured “why not?” So let’s just do it and see what happens. I emailed them again to double-check if they had seen the email in which I said I would not be attending and to ask whether I could still be part of the course.

    And I can. Cool.

    A place to live
    We set up a group on Facebook which has a big number of the Erasmus students who are going to be doing one or two semesters for an exchange this year. Some of them are already finding apartments and looking for people to come and live there.

    I decided to add everyone to my friends with a small note about the exchange in Istanbul and then get messaging to see if I meet like-minded people to live with, or people who are already looking for an apartment. While doing this, a Turkish girl who studied at the university I’ll be attending (Yeditepe), sent me a link to a consulting company that helps with temporary housing in Turkey. BY Consulting Company‘s site looks promising, but they don’t have anything near my university currently. Maybe if I contact them once I’m in Istanbul I can find out more.

    Turkish hospitality
    Every Turkish person I know or have spoken to through Facebook has been incredibly friendly and from a Dutch perspective are going out of their way to help me out. Offering to hook me up with people in Istanbul who can introduce me to the city, helping me out with ideas for housing, regularly checking on me; I’ve never met a more hospitable people than the Turkish and I haven’t even set foot on Turkish soil yet.

    All worries are gone. Everything will be perfectly okay and will run smoothly. The only thing I worry about now is getting my stuff washed and packing my bag with as much stuff as the airline allows (which is just 20 kilograms). Just 3 more nights in Holland!

  • The Orange Dream

    Holland clears the field after losing to Russia

    It’s over. Done. During the qualifications, Dutch coach van Basten got a lot of criticism, but when the Euro 2008 was there, he amazed everyone. Fans, being skeptical and pessimistic about the Dutch team’s prospects, partly because of Holland’s spot in the ‘group of death’, were surprised by the team’s great victory over France. Hope grew, orange fever exploded and increasingly people started talking about Holland’s chance to take the cup. As Holland had another convincing victory against Italy and beat Romania with a largely substitute team, sky seemed the limit.

    Will they win? Will we finally do it? Will this be the team, the combination, that we will speak about for generations to come?

    It was not to be.

    Russia played a great match and simply did better than Holland. No luck, no referee mistakes, they were simply the better team of the match. Holland created some hope in the second half by scoring an equalising goal, but this hope soon faded as Russia’s team clearly had more energy left in overtime. It’s the end of Marco van Basten as coach of the Dutch team, the last time goalie van der Sar played for the team (one of the greatest Dutch football players ever, in my eyes), and it must be bitter for Boulahrouz who is mourning the death of his child that was born prematurely last Wednesday.

    This means there’s only one thing left to do.

    Root for Turkey!

    Turkish team cheers after win

  • Rush!

    Letter of Acceptance

    I’ve been officially accepted to Yeditepe! Time to sit back and relax, right? Not.

    Last week: 2 final exams. This week: 1 final exam, 1 deadline for a website, some work assignments. So at this point I was already busy. Anyway, I decided to figure out how I would get my ERASMUS grant. I went to the international office and they informed me I should have my forms in before the 15th of July (I would be in Bulgaria/Macedonia from the 25th of June to the 17th of July), including a certificate of enrollment for the NEXT study year. I handed my enrollment in last Friday and was going on holiday this Saturday, so that got me quite stressed.

    “No worries, mate” I told myself. I figured I’d just take care of something that I could take care of immediately. I googled a bit to find out more about the Turkish embassy in Holland and visa. The embassy site was nearly completely in Turkish, but I found a number and called them. After passing through 2 rude receptionists and being connected to a person, I was informed that I should not call her but someone asked and she asked me why I called her. I blamed television and she gave me the number of the Turkish consulate. I called the consulate, had to go through the same annoying type of receptionists and finally got someone who knew anything about what I was asking. Turns out the studentvisum for Turkey is… 446 euros! Awesome. Perfectly reasonable to ask from a student, right?

    More stress.

    Then I did something I should do more often before asking stuff to people who don’t really know the answer either. I used my eyes and applied them to some text. I did some reading. I saw I could get an advance on the Erasmus grant, which meant I could probably use that money to pay for the visum. Also, I got in contact with the central international office of my degree factory (commercial university) and found out my enrollment for this year would be enough.

    Last time I had stress relief like this I decided it would be best not to blog about it. So I won’t.

    Nervewrecking stuff if you’re going on a holiday for a month in just a few days. Anyway, it all seems to be okay now. Still nervous about the visum, since I’d rather not borrow money for it, but we’ll see. Let’s hope the woman was confused and told me the normal or work visum instead of a studentvisum. Not counting on it though. The very worst is that I will have to go visit the consulate which is built in Holland’s pit of doom, Rotterdam. Lord, help me :sad:

    Oh! So I’m going on a holiday this Wednesday. Expect to see many stories and pictures! :cool:

  • Checkmate.

    Some of you might know I have quite a bad SoapBoxxer addiction. Well, I was just having a discussion and it offered me a good opportunity to flex my wit muscles / muscles of wit, whichever you prefer. The conversation went as below.

    Topic: Holland WILL win it all (Eurocup)

    Patofeo2: they won’t
    Spartz (that’s me): I doubt it, but odds have gone up considerably.
    Patofeo2: I have a feeling czech rep. will win all
    Spartz: Get real.
    Patofeo2: What’s the wager?
    Spartz: five!
    Patofeo2: please write the team you think will win. That way I can talk shit to you when they loose 😉
    Spartz:Czech Republic
    Patofeo2: u bastard!

    Checkmate. 😉

    .
    UPDATE

    Looks like i can relate this post to Turkey after all. Turkey just eliminated the Czech Republic from the Eurocup in the most spectacular fashion!

    Turkey last night made history in the most dramatic fashion imaginable by overcoming a two-goal deficit to emerge triumphant in their winner-takes-all Group A showdown with the Czech Republic.

    Jan Koller and Jaroslav Plasil had put the Czechs on course for a quarter-final meeting with Croatia, but Turkey discarded the script in an unforgettable final 15 minutes with three goals, including two from Nihat Kahveci, to progress to the second stage of a European Championships for only the second time.

    Telegraph

    Fucking awesome! Since I’m going to Turkey this September, I’m rooting for both Holland and Turkey! It’s great to see ‘my teams’ book succes :smile:

    Turkey 3-2!
    Picture: Telegraph

  • What’s up?

    Hey, figured it’s about time I give a small overview of what’s up with me. A couple of things.

    • Doing a project on International Affairs Representation (lobbying) for university. Very interesting. Looking at all that the IUCN organisation has to offer on their website. What a great organisation!
    • For the same course I’m going to Brussels for a field trip on the 27th of this month.
    • Got a potential marketing/sales project coming my way. If I decide to take it on, I expect I could make about two thousand Euro with it this summer. Which would be great, because I’m broke now. Looks like my interest in internet marketing and entrepreneurship is finally manifesting itself in my day to day reality, right?
    • Looking for a job doing some promo-work (like handing out samples and stuff) for a while, so I can make some money. Or maybe doing work at the homes of elderly people. Although I’m not sure if it would be productive to invest my time in that instead of the above project. Probably smart to have an extra, small income stream though.
    • Figuring out when I’m done with the semester and when I can fly to Bulgaria to go see my girlfriend!
    • Figuring out when I would probably be broke and have to fly back to Holland…  together with my girlfriend… to show her Holland. First time she’ll be in Western Europe. Culture shock :shock:
    • Applying to a Turkish language course at the end of August and beginning of September.
    • Getting my stuff handled with Yeditepe University in Istanbul, so my Erasmus exchange will start smooth. Or at least smoother than when I went to Bulgaria last year.

    That’s about it. If you think you can help me out with any of this. Please contact me.

  • My Interview about Wilders

    A few weeks ago I was interviewed about my views on the Geert Wilders movie Fitna by Alex, a PR professional, journalist and blogger from Bulgaria. I have a strong opinion about this, so when he asked me, I immediately told him yes and we made it happen. It was published a while ago and now I figured it’s time for a crosspost.

    What were the first consequences of the Geert Wilders video “Fitna” in Holland?

    Well, the first consequences actually came before the film was released. For about three months, we’ve been waiting for this film, not knowing what would be in it. Given the statements Wilders had made in the past though, a lot of people were worried that it might be very offensive to Muslims and spark riots in some of the immigrant areas of our cities.

    So the main consequence was a lot of fear and a big debate about Islam and it’s position in our society and western society – and how far the freedom of speech goes.

    After the release it stayed pretty calm. I think it’s less bad than what was expected or feared for and the tension really seems to be gone now. Or in the background.

    Was it changed because of that Armageddon-expectations? And in fact this couldn’t be the main version?

    I doubt it. If those expectations had come true, Wilders could have said “Look! I was right.”

    I don’t think it was in his interest to tone his film down. I would find it hard to believe he would done that, it’s not his style.

    Do you feel kind of disappointed of the final result?

    Partly. I was expecting a well produced film, though this is cut and pasting with fragments we have all seen numerous times, probably hundreds, in the case of the 9/11 footage even thousands of times. I am happy that he didn’t go as far as others said, because that could have caused national problems as well as international problems for the Netherlands (politically as well as economically). Some countries were threatening with boycotting Dutch products for instance.

    Can you find Wilders right in any of his statements expressed in the movie?

    Yes, with regards to Islamic extremism being a problem we need to be concerned with, like any form of extremism. No, with regards to the fact that he doesn’t limit his judgment to the small group of the 1 billion Muslims that is extreme, but is generalizing all Muslims.

    Although he himself claims he doesn’t; he is talking about the Islam, not the Muslims. I think that’s just a childish point, because when speaking about a faith in this way, you automatically talk about its followers.

    You’ve lived in Bulgaria for about an year. What makes Wilders differ from Volen Siderov?

    Well, I lived there a half year, and I assume Volen Siderov is from Ataka (?), but I didn’t get enough of an impression of him or them to say anything about that. Sorry.

    I do think Bulgaria is in a very different position than Holland though. Since the Islam in Holland came through immigrants; in Bulgaria through occupation by Turkey. If I wasn’t misinformed, at least.

    Can we expect that Geert Wilders will be treated like they did to Theo van Gogh?

    Times have changed a bit and both are different. Since the politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated, politicians have been getting a lot more security. Since Theo van Gogh, any politician that makes sensitive statements regarding Islam gets more security. Theo van Gogh didn’t have this, as far as I know.

    Geert Wilders has a secret address and has to change from residence every so often (I don’t know and I think they keep it secret for his safety). But yes, he is under threat and I’m sure that there are some crazy people who would try to get him if they just saw the chance to do it.

    It can be either Muslims who think he has insulted their faith/prophet, or people who don’t like his angry and right-wing tone (which can be extreme at times) and are concerned about the future of the Netherlands or just personally upset by him.

    http://bigtandem.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/bas-about-wilders/

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