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Moving from your hometown is always a difficult choice. Leaving the place where you grew up, met your friends and lived for your entire lifetime requires a lot of willpower. Still, so many people face this problem in their life. I’m from a small town in north-western Hungary. As a senior in high school, this question is more relevant for me than it ever was. In less than a year, I’ll be a university student, most likely in the capital, Budapest. I always imagined myself as a townsman, even though I’ve been living in the rural areas of Hungary for almost 18 years. My affection for Budapest started very early. This is partly because of my grandma who lives in the centre of the city and thanks to her, I fell in love with Budapest as a kid. To this day, I have vivid and fond memories from the times when we spent our whole day exploring the monuments, bridges, restaurants, playgrounds and other places of the capital. I’ve visited many beautiful and huge cities all across Europe and America but none of them ever came close. My dream was to move there one day. Soon it will be a reality. Despite all of this, you’ll soon realise that leaving so many things behind is not that easy. Things that meant so much for you. Things that you couldn’t imagine living without. All your friends going to different cities, universities, the struggle to keep in touch with them and the fear that you might lose them. Saying goodbye to the place where you used to play football, the small bridge where you used to jump down into the river and the hill that was perfect for sledging in the winter. No other city could replace these things. This is home. That is why no matter how far I’ll go, no matter how much time has passed, I’ll never forget my small town. I’ll come back and relive all those memories I couldn’t forget. #faraway #newadvenetures #newlife #nostalgia

My adventure began 3 years ago when I started my engineering studies after completing the entrance exams. I still remember when I received the news that they had accepted me in the city where I dreamed of living since I was little: Seville. I was a boy who had just turned 18 and now I was going to live in one of the largest cities in Spain. Luckily I was not going alone, my best friend had also been accepted and we were going to share a flat during that course. I remember the first day of class at the university, a new city and people I didn't know. But everything was very simple: lovely teachers, classmates who helped you, interesting subjects, a wonderful city ... And above all, surrounded by the whole atmosphere of a university campus, which seems to never sleep, the year goes by almost without realising. After meeting people who end up being your family, visit unforgettable cities during each holiday period or go to bars and end up riding a party in a house; after all the coffees, all the adventures, the laughter and the tears… after all that and much more you realize that the year has passed too quickly, that you would like to go back and start this adventure from the beginning. But it's summer and it's time to go home and you see yourself on a train back with your thoughts stuck in that city. That is when you realize that everything has changed, although in reality the one that you have changed is you. You are no longer the same, you are completely different. You like other types of music, you have become more sociable, you are able to solve the problems yourself, you realize the true definition of the word friend. Once you get home you miss all your friends, being surrounded by people, even classes ... you are surrounded by countryside now and you realize how different a town is from a city. There is hardly any pollution, there is no traffic but there are fewer activities that may interest you and you go from being an anonymous person among thousands to being part of one among hundreds where everyone knows you. This adventure made me see the best and the worst of the big cities compared to small towns and makes you realise everything you've changed, how your life "has been transformed" in less than a year. #livinginthecity #newexperiences #facinhnewrealities

I am from one small but beautiful balkan country Bulgaria. I have always been energetic, ready for adventures and open. And if you find the right people and the right place you can use these skills you would be the happiest person in the world like I am when i went for the first time on exchange in Ommen. And then again and again. Exchange. One word and thousands of meanings. In this kind of exchanges you meet so many different people from different countries, different cultures, with different mindset and knowledge. They are all strangers to you, but there is one common thing - the passion of traveling and exploring the unknown. In my small city in the middle of Bulgaria called Stara Zagora not all of the people are open to everyone. They prefer to stay in their comfort zone with their close friends and family and to live their life as usual. Of course not everyone likes the changes. That is why i decided to try and feel the experience of the exchange. To feel the difference between people who are not speaking the same native language and i find out that it does not matter the language, but the way you are expressing yourself and the opinion you have. When you are living together you have to work with each other, not against. That is how the team work is going to be successful and with good influence. However you have to get out of your comfort zone and if it is hard for you and you have never did that, Olde Vechte is the right place to learn. Speaking in front of a big audience is hard, you are feeling weak, without confidence and scared of other people’s reaction. But isn’t that the point of everything in life? You have to face the fear and be stronger than it! When we are living in our countries we are used to contact with people who are completely different even when the language is the same. The exchanges teached me that you never have to cover your real self because of someone else. You have to do what makes you happy. Be with people who are making you feel comfortable with and help you to grow. And you know what? After the time you spent living with these people, doing everything together you are getting attached to them and you all became one big family. You don’t feel them anymore as a strangers from different countries, speaking another language. The only thing you are feeling... is comfort and love. In the end of the exchange you have good friends and open doors all over Europe, beautiful memories and new skills. These people are going to stay in your heart forever. You can’t bring the memories back, but you can create new ones! When i came back home from my first exchange after my first thought ¨ OMG i have to go back there¨ i start bringing back all the memories and realize how for sixteen days my mind has changed a lot. I start thinking more about my actions and reactions. I was last year in High School and i had to make a lot of important decisions for my feature and deal with the problems. The exchange is an escape from reality. Living the dream, isn’t that perfect? Yes, it is, but everything in life has its end and you have to go back to your reality in your country, use all the new things you have learned from this dream and make it real.

Ever since I was a child I remember myself loving two things with my whole heart; my grandparents and dancing. Because I get too emotional talking about my grandparents I will instead dedicate this text to talk about my love for dancing. I began dancing when I was 5 years old, in kindergarten. I still remember the dress I was wearing and the people that came to see us during the performance for the end of the schoolyear. Something in me definitely sparked that day. I was also lucky enough to have dancing as one of the activities we had in elementary school. As if this wasn’t enough I wanted to spend as much time as I could dancing so I would beg my parents to enroll me in dance classes as an after school activity as well. However, they would insist I played basketball or took swimming lessons. In the end though, I would always end up in a room full of mirrors and loud music and somehow like that my love for dancing blossomed. My relationship with this type of art is a relationship of love and expression because when music hits me I don’t feel any pain. One of the most amazing experiences I lived because of dancing is when I traveled with my dance crew to Berlin for the “World of Dance” which is one of the most prominent competitions in street dance culture. Coming from a small province in Greece that dancing as an art is not appreciated enough and taking part into this event became the highlight of my dance journey so far. When we are arrived at the location the competition was taking place the cultural shock hit me. First of all, it was in the most central part of Berlin and the organization was impeccable; from the warm welcoming of the contestants to even the dj that was entertaining the crowd when we were taking breaks. One of the things that shocked me the most though was the advanced level of the dancers. Where I come from in Greece, the dance competitions are very small and not that reputable. The shows and performances I got to see that night, I would have never had the chance to see where I live in Greece. Moreover, the audience was so very warm and encouraging and everybody was dancing with each other; clicks and bad vibes had no place there. Moments before we got up the stage and while the presenter was giving our crew an introduction, reality hit me and I just couldn’t believe that I was about to step on the stage of “World of Dance”. During the last seconds of our choreography I was trying my best to hold back my tears as I had been waiting for that moment for years and was immensely grateful to finally be living it. Dancing has been my outlet as it gets me through the good and bad days. The main reason I love it though is because of the people that it has connected me to that come from all over the world. The dance community, or at least the one I’m in, feels like a warm hug. It is an incredible feeling to be dancing alongside people you love and can call your family. I also feel extremely lucky because the people I have met not only have helped me improve my dance skills but they have also helped me become a better person. Dancing is sharing and when you share with one another you connect!

My name is Stathis and I am from Greece, I live in a small town called Katerini. Even though my town isn’t as small as a village, it still is tiny compared to bigger cities like Athens or Thessaloniki, therefore there are some problems that a citizen of my town faces every day. One of the main problems is connectivity to the internet. This problem can be more severe in small villages, on the mountains mainly, but it still is bad in my town. Compared to more advanced and developed countries, Greece overall, has a “slow wifi” problem. The healthcare system, also, isn’t the best. In the past the hospital was located inside the town, now, they transferred it six kilometres of the city centre. Understandably, they moved it for the surrounding villages to have an easier time reaching it but nevertheless it is a disadvantage for the town. Not only services are in short or of bad quality but also consumer goods are. In big cities like Athens you can find shops of any kind at any time you want, in Katerini, even though we have a lot of shops, you have to buy somethings online to get a better price or because your work schedule doesn’t allow shopping time. There are transportation issues. My town only has a train station but no one is using trains in Greece because of the dirtiness and the poor timing of a train's arrival and departure, and a bus station which is the main way to go anywhere by land in the country if you don’t have a car. The closest airport is one hundred kilometres away and it has poor services too. To sum up, if you live in a town smaller than mine and you are far from any big city you are pretty much not a part of civilisation. #challenges #smalltown #glasshalfempty #howtopromoteinclusion

Living on the country-side is living in a segregated and calm shell, which seems like a way different world. In this world the boss is not the head of the city, the prime minister or somebody who was chosen by the people or the law. Here the nature rules the roots. In my country, living on the countryside means that the income is mostly provided by the nature, almost everybody is working in the agriculture, just as most of my relatives. It means a lot. We wake up with the nature, our morning alarm is the sunrise. We spend their time outside, with our plants and animals on our venue. We up to it. For big city citizens, it is kind of unimaginable, that we do not schedule our time. We can not decide when do we want to do our job, we are not working from Monday until Friday just between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. We work, when the nature lets us or needs us. It is not our decision when our cow gives a birth. It is not our decision when the hard storm comes. It is not in their dairy to collect grapes on 17th of September- we do it, when the nature allows us to do it. But as I got it, it was never ever a suffer. It is like a symbiosis. It is being grateful for every single crop, drop of rain, shine of the Sun. This what is harmony for us, can be frightening for townsmen. Up to the nature, and accept always what it gives. And if someone moves to a town or a city, it is hard to be understood and understand the differences. We speak the same language, we have similar roots, we all know our culture-but somehow do not understand each other. We do not have cutie pets, hamsters and dogs at home, who we carry in our bags. We have our German shepherd to bark when someone unexpected enters our property. We feel weird in shopping malls, where trees are inside, instead of outside. We feel weird in the crowd, on the metro, or on the tram, because unknown people were never so close for us unwantedly. We do not need thousand kind of milk in the shop with the exact fat percent on it, we have it from our neighbours, and we have never asked whether it is half-fat or fat milk. We have never eaten fruits and vegetables when it is not their season, and it people look at us on a weird way, when we say: “excuse me, but I have never ever tasted mango before”. It is something what for townsmen easy to get, but we have not even seen those in the small shop before, and surprisingly, we personally neither produce it in our garden. We prefer comfortable and well-functioning clothes, and we mostly do not care what is in the new Vouge. It is not because we consider being trendy as redundant, we have simply no possibility for that, and it can seem weird for others. We can look weird at each other although we are living in the same countries and the difference is just 10, 100 or 1000 kilometre. But the gap is not in those kilometres. The gap is in the minds, the way we consider each other. This is why people from the country-side rather stay there without leaving it. It works like a beautiful green trap, from where just few can get out. #countryside #city #followingaflow #guidedbynature #naturecalls

I've been living in the city for several years, but I couldn't live here forever. It is known that cities possess distinct advantages , there are many remarkable things to do, every possible kind of service someone might need and the only sure thing is you'll never get bored . And — most importantly — it gives you anonymity, you do whatever you want without worrying about what others will say. But in the city people do not maintain meaningful ties between them. Life in the village is serene. People are modest, sincere. Growing up in a village means that you learn to call things by their name, you call a spade a spade ,even to the point of being blunt or rude. My childhood years were carefree without the routine, and the stress people from the fast-paced cities have to deal with. All the kids, young and old, were gathering in the central square of the village and playing in vacant and big places, ball, basketball and hide and seek, or even take our bicycles and visit youngsters in neighbouring villages until evening. We weren't scared like the kids from the city. And our parents left us free. They knew that if something bad happened, someone would come to help, because everyone knew everyone and they all cared for each other. The criminality was low because of the people's mentality. Another big problem in the cities is the so-called "Dead hours" , those times when you have to wait without any other alternative, such as taking the bus to go to work/university or get stuck in a traffic jam forever. It takes me almost two hours to go from my house to the university and come back. That's not the case in the countryside, where most things are close to each other and due to the low population you almost never get stuck in traffic jams. Of course in small villages, there are stereotypes and prejudices, especially in older people. Some simple things can really blow out of proportion from time to time. And accepting diversity remains a delicate affair. But I reasonably believe that our modern generation is more informed, more aware, and more open-minded than our parents' generation. The rural lifestyle can be wonderfully refreshing. If you love nature, quiet activities such as reading, or very full-time hobbies that would be difficult to pursue in a more distracting atmosphere, the rural lifestyle might be just the ticket for you! #countrysidelife #connections #citylife #distances #closeby #faraway

At this moment I am doing an internship of ten months in Cape Town. A city with his iconic Table Mountain, de history of the apartheid, Robben Island, Nelson Mandela and many more. One thing can be added at the list as well: the traffic. The behaviour on the road can be compared with the one in Italy. At the very last moment, they insert or exit their car on the highway, the flashing light suddenly doesn’t work and try to fit in every small spot that is possible. Cape Town has a beautiful nature and surroundings, but you simply don’t have the time to enjoy this while driving a car. Back in the Netherlands. On the countryside, where I live. Slowly the traffic is passing by, behind each other and with a normal speed. On the countryside, you have the time to enjoy the nature and surroundings. The green landscape and his endless fields makes you feel relaxed behind the wheel. Being exhausted every day when you come home from work, or coming home relaxed? #traffic #citylife #drivingindifferentcontexts

Sleeping with the horses in a meadow filled with grass, a disgustingly delicious experience. If you live on a farm with horses, you probably know what I’m talking about. Those magnificent, huge animals with their snotty, soft nose. You sit next to them, but they’re more interested in the grass. So you lie down and you doze off. Until you wake up with a start because that huge animal - with the snotty, soft nose – snorts on you. You open your eyes with a face full off snot. And there she is, with her big snotty nose and her ears turned to you in a curious way. One more snort and she walks away. Away to the delicious grass. You call out for her, she ignores you. You call again, and another horse walks towards you. She becomes jealous and starts walking to you. Chasing away the other horse. You reach out to pet her. She turns away and walks to the delicious grass. The lovely arrogance of this magnificent animal, that is part of the magic of living on a farm. #countrysidelife #countryside #horses #grass #farm #simplethings Florien Deelstra

Do you want to follow the people, or do you want to go at your own speed? If you choose for option A, you see yourself living in a city, rather than living in the countryside. Every time I walk in the city, I see people doing one thing: focussing to be as fast as possible at their destination. Time is money, a thought that got stuck in the heads of city dwellers. If there is a little bit time left in their agendas, it needs to be filled as fast as possible. Busy, busy, busy. Going anywhere, anytime. From A to B. It seems like there is no end or escape of the daily routine. The pressure of performance is always looking behind the corners of the city streets. I live on the countryside myself. There is no one looking behind my shoulders, saying what I have to do, or when to do it. ‘Act normal, then you are already crazy enough’, a common credo. Act normal, like the way you are. Not to please your boss or to make career. Changes will not be created, they will come with the wind. Everything comes with the wind. Live today, not tomorrow. Do you want to run your life or your life running you by? --------- NL -------- Meekomen met de rest, of je eigen tempo volgen? Wie voor optie A kiest, zal zich eerder een stadsmens noemen dan een plattelander. Laatstgenoemde zal kiezen voor optie B. Telkens als ik in een stad komt, valt het me op mensen gefocust zijn op één ding: zo snel mogelijk op plaats van bestemming zijn. Tijd is geld, is de gedachte die in veel hoofden van stedelingen zit verstrengeld. Of elk klein gaatje in de agenda die men overhoudt voor zichzelf moet zo snel mogelijk weer gevuld worden. Druk, druk, druk. Constant heen en weer. Van hot naar her. Er lijkt geen eind te komen aan de dagelijkse sleur in de stad. Prestatiedruk is een kernwoord dat bij de stad hoort. Ik woon zelf op het platteland en houd ik mijn eigen tempo aan. Niemand die achter mijn kont aanzit en zegt wat ik moet doen, of wanneer ik iets af moet hebben. ‘Doe maar normaal, dan doe je al gek genoeg’, is een veelgehoord credo. Normaal doen, zoals je bent. Niet om een wit voetje te halen of om jezelf hogerop te willen werken. Kansen worden niet gecreëerd, ze komen vanzelf op ons pad terecht. Alles komt vanzelf. Leef vandaag, niet morgen. Je eigen leven lijden, of je eigen leven leiden? #citylife #countryside #challenges #changes #busy #timeforyourself

Easy, I thought. Leaving my village in the countryside and start moving to Leiden, a real student city. Expecting that new friends would come to me, everything would come to me in due time! For at least a year before I started studying at university I was already daydreaming. How much better everything would be once I would finally start studying in Leiden. These pink glasses I that I had put on were very much to my liking. In my village it is so easy, you send a message to a friend and in 10 minutes you are at their doorstep. You have probably already known your friends for years and the good mood when you are around each other is to be expected. You always see the same people, and even though you don’t really talk with them, they are familiar faces. Nothing exciting or really surprising usually happens. I haden’t taken my time to really taken into account how much of a difference it would be once I finally moved to the city. I dide make friends in university, friends who all lived in different cities. And this was the same for about half of my whole class. It appeared it wouldn’t all come to me on its own. This certainly doesn’t have to be a problem, I had ten times as much possibilities to meet people with the same interests as me to have a fun night with. The thing is, it would have been with people I didn’t know at all, whose faces I had never seen before. This, again, doesn’t have to be a problem, as long as you can set yourself straight on what needs to be done and know what to do. I by no means set myself straight or did what had to be done all the time. As a result I was lonely at times when no one that I knew was in the city or wanted to exercise with me. While I hadn’t needed to feel lonely at other times, only if I had take more initiative, like I ultimately did. So by all means, be excited that you are finally going college, just don’t forget to put off the pink glasses and leave them in the drawer. ------------ NL ----------- Makkie dacht ik, weg uit dit plattelands dorpje en verhuizen naar Leiden, een echte studenten stad. Vrienden zouden mij wel aanvliegen, alles zou mij wel aanvliegen! minstens een jaar lang zat ik thuis al te dagdromen hoeveel beter het wel allemaal niet zou zijn wanneer ik ga studeren in Leiden. Deze roze bril beviel mij wel. Thuis in het dorp was het allemaal heel makkelijk, je appte iemand en 10 min later zat je bij ze thuis. Waarschijnlijk ken je je vrienden al jaren en is de goede en makkelijken sfeer vanzelfsprekend. In het dorp zie je altijd dezelfde mensen, ook al mocht je er niet mee praten, je wist waar je aantoe was. Er gebeurde zo goed als niks verrasends in het dorp. Ik had er niet genoeg rekening mee gehouden dat dit wel eens helemaal anders in de stad zou zijn. Ik had in de stad vrienden gemaakt, die allemaal in andere steden woonden. Hetzelfde gelde voor ongeveer de helft van mijn studie. Het zou mij niet allemaal even komen aanvliegen. Dit hoeft niet een slecht ding te zijn, ik had 10 keer zoveel mogelijkheden om mensen met dezelfde interesses te ontmoeten en een leuke avond mee te hebben. Het was alleen met mensen die ik totaal niet kende, en nog nooit van gezicht heb gezien. Dit hoeft geen probleem te zijn, zolang jij jezelf daar bewust van kan maken en weet wat je te doen staat. Ikzelf deed dat lang niet altijd en was dan wel eens eenzaam wanneer er niemand in de stad was die ik kende, of met mij wou sporten. Terwijl ik mij helemaal niet eenzaam had hoeven voelen op sommige momenten, als ik zelf wat meer initiatief genomen had, zoals ik uiteindelijk deed. Wees dus vooral enthousiast dat je eindelijke gaat studeren, vergeet alleen niet je roze bril af te zetten. #pinkglasses #reality #studentlife #countryside #citylife