The Pros and Cons of Erasmusing

Part I : The Pros

First and foremost, the "Semester card"! this little piece of paper will open all gates for all of us poor broke sudents. With it you can get for free, not only in all the urban transport, but also on all trains of Niedersachsen, which extends till Holland on the West, the Northern Sea, obviously North, almost Köln South, and halfway to Berlin East. You can go to Hamburg, the second city ( I don't know in which aspect) of Germany, to Bremen, Celle, Hameln ( the village with this polpular tale of the guy who played the flute to lead the rats to the river so they drown, what a cruel way anyways), and a lot more!
Just don't get too used to the fact of travlling " for free", because then you'll be in trouble when you get to places outside the reach of the card. Does this sound too real? it is! I had to pay 40 euros "Straff" in Dresden; believe me, it hurts!

Another good thing of being an Erasmus student, is that if you don't know an answer when asked in the classrom, you just say the magic word (i.e Erasmus), and the teacher will look somewhere else, almost feeling guilty. Some of them don't react like that though, and keep it up with the hastle. In that case, just say that you do know the answer, it's just that you cannot translate it in German. If still that doesn't convince him, well you should then admit your ignorance and hope you don't blush too much, now that you built it up for five minutes. That will make the rest of the class get the usual conclusion :" he/she is Erasmus, he/she doesn't have a clue about anything, and even if (ok, let's drop the sex thing and say "it") it would, it couldn't translate it. So why did it come here in the first place?!". Congratulations! you just contributed to feed our already grand reputation of stupid aliens. Keep up the good work! (next time just cut it short and answer a plain : "Ich weiss nicht" (= I dunno) ; nobody really cares.)

The best thing about being an Erasmus though, is the fact of knowing other Erasmus people! Of course you needn't be an Erasmus, to meet the Erasmus, but for a reason that I do not know, it creates some secret bonds. Ok, maybe there is an actual reason, or a big bunch of them, especially the fact of always being lost in translation, lost in place, time and everything. Union makes the force, isn't it?