Hold on Magnolia to that great highway moon…

One year in Maastricht

It's a little bit late, but it is today exactly one year and eight days since I moved to Holland. I arrived in a town I had never heard of before and the first experience promised a lot more than there is actually. Guess that's why it's popular for other people in Holland to come down for just a weekend sometime.

It was lovely weather when I got here that Saturday evening in September, the town seemed to be very lively, Vrijthof appeared to have a very nice feeling about it and of course, everything in my temporary hotel apartment was from IKEA. Made it a little bit like home I guess.

"Moved down to Maastricht on the Saturday 17th of September and got accomodated in a rather nice apartment hotel by the company, payed by them the first six weeks. Started the training for the work the following Monday and I got apparently through it on record breaking two days, and the next three days was mostly sitting and listening in on phone calls with the colleagues. Started to work for real the Monday after, mostly basic stuff at first but taking real phone calls. My first phone call was a disaster, I said too much and too little at once, but after that it has just gone better and better. Sometimes it?s been like two steps forward and one step backward, but mostly forward. The phone calls is rather ?easy? now, but there?s still a lot to learn when it comes to rental car extensions for example."

All in all it's been a very positive experience so far, and I've never ever regretted that I decided to go down here instead of haning on in Sweden.

I did wonder if I made the right decision back in December, but that had more to do with me - finally - realizing I actually had moved and weren't on a long vacation. That damn bonus card.

However, I'm really starting to believe that people from the southern part of a country all are narrow minded and near sighted weirdos, or even racists in some cases. In america you have of course the southern states, in Sweden a racist party, which have a tight connection with the neo-nazi party, were very succesful in this years election, getting around 5-10% in most areas in Sk?ne and even getting up to 25% of the votes in one municipality, Landskrona.

People might not be racists here in Maastricht, even though some of them do hate people from 'Holland'. However, they tend to think that not even Limburg, but just Maastricht has more to offer than you can possibly imagine and that you should stay down here all your life, learning to speak fucking Mestreech instead of a real language. Even Heerlen is too far away for some people here.

They all talk fucking weird too!