Students at Embassy

Amsterdam – A strange and interesting place!

One of the advantages of living in England is travelling around Europe, which is very, very good. From England you easily can find planes, trains, buses or bikes (hehehehe, just kidding) to travel around many different places in this continent which has more historical places than every other one in whole world. Last weekend I went one of these amazing places you can visit while living in Europe. This place was Amsterdam, Holland.

Before visiting Europe I thought it was too difficult to understand the differences between those countries that are part of this historical continent and I still think that, but every trip you make helps you to ‘broaden your horizons’ trying to see the main points of this new culture and for one moment discover a completely new world before your eyes.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city with a several numbers of canals which cross it in all its extension, sometimes you can see lots of birds in those canals and they bring light into the narrow and medieval streets of Holland’s capital.

The official transportation is your leg. Is it sounding strange? – but this is true. Every citizen in Amsterdam has the habit of riding bikes to and from work and you can find there probably the BIGGEST BIKES IN EUROPE!! THEY ARE JUST ENORMOUS!! As a tourist, you can easily find a place to rent a bike for one day. Besides being very good exercise it is also cheap (it costs approximately 6 Euros/day).

Meanwhile the city has some ‘strange’ things such as a very different approach on subjects as sex and drugs. In the city centre you can find ‘Coffee Shops’ that aren’t places where they sell coffee as you are probably imagine, but places that everyone over 18 can buy and consume drugs without any problem or repression.

To summarise travelling is something very interesting and always make you think more about your concepts, your beliefs, your customs and habits and also see things rather differently than before. I would recommend you visiting Amsterdam to find out more about this amazing place and discover by yourself all things you should or shouldn’t experience.

All the best,

Matt

Hello London!

My first month in London was absolutely great!! When I moved from Cambridge on 4th January 2009, I was a little bit afraid of living in a huge city as London. Now I feel very happy with my choice and I hope that this post can help other people to make their decision from where to live abroad...

Definitely, Cambridge is one place that every student in the world wants to be. It has beautiful places to visit, amazing teachers, good bars and pubs, a very friendly environment and it is known as one of the best places to study because of its famous universities and discoveries.

If you want to have the experience of living a ‘real’ British city, you should go to Cambridge. There I could live inside the British culture, and experiment really good things such as the Christmas, the New Year, student life, the colleges, the churches, the happiness of the people and make friends that I hope I’ll have forever.

However, London is for those who want a more thrilling life. It has plenty of things to do every day and the city never sleeps. The transport system is amazing and you can easily go and come back to and from everywhere. Somehow, London is more challenging than Cambridge and if you are really into night clubs or theatres, THIS IS DEFINITELY THE RIGHT PLACE.

Despite the problems that every big city in the world has to face, such as traffic jams, crowed places, dirtiness and things like this, London is one of the best places one person can ask to live, especially if you want to know people from other countries and have a lot of fun.

During one typical day in London, you are able to hear more than 250 different languages, meet people from approximately 190 countries and choose one of 39 musicals on screen! IT IS ABSOLUTALY AMAZING!!

Of course these are just my views on these two cities... now it is time for you to make your decision and I hope I helped you on making your own choice.

All the best and good trip,

Matt