Shopping

Groceries
In the Netherlands you can find a lot of grocery stores. The cheapest ones: Lidl, Aldi, C1000, Poiesz. In the first two you wont usually find well-known brands - but it is still cheap. In the last 2 ones, you can find everything and home.brands as well. I personally do my shopping in Lidl or/and Poiesz.
The more expensive ones are Albert Heijn, Super de Boer. Of course if you do your shopping there, you can still find some nice discounts or the home-brands are also cheaper there (like everywhere).
These are all supermarkets, in Holland I have not seen any hypermarkets (like Tesco or Interspar), though I once saw a Spar in a village :D

Clothing:
Well, I dont do a lot of clothe shopping but my experience was that the cheapest ones are Bristol and Bentex. I once got a pair of jeans in Bentex for 4.50 euro. But it was because there was a discount:  2 halen, 1 betalen, meaning getting 2 for the price of 1. So me and my friend got two jeans and since both cost 9 euros, we got the 2nd one for free.
There is also H&M, C&A, America Today, etc. I dont usually go there so I dont know the rest actually XD
V&D is a 3 or 4 store building - you can buy there clothes, electronical stuff, there is also a restaurant/café kind place, junkstore -  every floor has its own thing.

Drugstores

In the Dutch drugstores you will find shampoos, medicines, pills, shower gels, deos - so everything what you would usually expect from a drugstore. My favourite one is Op is op, because it is really cheap and you can get well-known brands there. A pretty great place is HEMA. Thats also a drugstore but you can also get there some clothes (mostly underwears) and there is usually a small cafeteria.

Junkstores
My favourite ones: Action, Xenos, Blokker, Euroland.  You can find there EVERYTHING for a very low price. If you need blanket, or excercise books or whatever, just go there.

Of course there are a lot more stores in Leeuwarden, but these are the ones where I usually go to.

Oh, and maybe as an electronical store, I would mention MediaMarkt. Everyone knows it, no explanation needed, I guess.

Dutch and Frisian

I'm gonna write some things about the languages spoken in this country, from my Hungarian view.

Dutch:

It resembles a lot to German, so Germans usually don't even have a problem learning this language. Though there are some who still say that it doesn't look like German at all. Then I just say my favourite example which proves that it does look and sound alike: Ik heb gedacht means, I have thought/ I though. In German: Ich habe gedacht.... There is a little pronunciation difference: the Dutch says its 'g'letter in a very weird way: it rattles its the 'g'. I'm not sure about the right word but the point is that it's a hard 'ch'. Almost a 'k'. but just almost. It is typical Dutch. Though in the south, in Limburg mostly, they say a 'zachte ge', a soft 'g'. Here is a song where you can hear the difference. The guy is from Limburg says the soft g, and the girls sing it in a very hard way. In addition, it is a very funny song, if you figure out what the song means, then you can laugh as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzN3CttekBs

Okay, Frisian.
It is also said that it's the old English, although it doesn't look alike at all anymore. And I dont think that English people can understand it either. They also say that it resembles a lot more to German, and they might also be right. For instance: Do hast in Frisian means, you have. You say in German, Du hast..... Or do bist in German du bist...
Dutch people generally canNOT understand Frisian, though if you have lived enough in Friesland, you can understand it after a while. I personally think that Dutch and Frisian are pretty similar, of course they all have their own words, but living here for more than a year already, I can also also understand it pretty well. First I thought, it was also a dialect but now I know it's not.

Dialects:
The small country is Holland, the more dialects there are. Really, people speak in a total different way in Rotterdam, or in Amsterdam. I also have a roommate, who is from Rotterdam, she is a really nice girl, but I really have to pay attention on what she says because I am simply used to the  Dutch which is spoken here, in the North.

Oh, and I must also add that most of the Dutch people do speak English. Though I noticed something: if I ask them, if they spoke English and if they say, yes, I speak very goodf English, they usually dont :D and if they answer that 'a little bit' then they probably speak it pretty well. Though it also makes it difficult to learn Dutch because if they hear that you are from abroad, they will switch to English at once.

Leeuwarden, Stenden, IBMS

Leeuwarden, as I mentioned before, the capital of Friesland. It's a typical student city, has 3 universities: Van Hall Institute, NHL and Stenden - that is where I study right now. Here is a nice video of the city  ,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_kBXUZ0bYY&feature=related

As for the school, it's called Stenden University of Applied Sciences. I am studying at HBO, still getting a Bachalor degree, but in Holland there is a difference between Bachalor and Bachalor. See, they have universities, and colleges/HBO. HBO is a lower level, actually it is lower because it's more practical. If you go abroad, noone will look at it and make a difference, this differs only in Holland. I prefer HBO because I dont have to study my ass off at the exam periods.

Oh ye, exams! My course work this way: a year is devided into 4 moduls/periods. One modul takes about 2 and a half months, and in the end of the period you take your exams. Every modul is built up around one subject. E.g: In the first one we had marketing - then we had marketing lectures, english classes, and some other stuff. 2nd period was management accounting - we had book-keeping, accounting, statistics, and english and other stuff (English is offered the whole year - I mean, it's not offered, it's compalsury :D)

The point is that we always have an exam week at the end of the period, when you dont have classes, just exams (that 3 max 4...) and after or before we have a so-called study-week - a week off. Nice, huh? Just chilling for practically 2 weeks. I'm lovin' it.

So some words about IBMS - international business and management studies.
The course takes 4 years and we are going to become the managers of the future. As for the degree, we will get one in Business Administration. It is real fun, it's said to be the most difficult course of the school but I studied in Hungary before so if you decide, as a Hungarian, to come and study here, you wont have a problem at all.
We have a lot of group works, assignments - we gotta work on cases 5 or 6 of us. It is VERY international and you get to know a lot of cultures.
As a part of the course, we have the chance to go abroad in the 4th year - to study a half year and then do our internship, or the internship whole year while we also have to write our thesis. Pretty cool.
In addition, in the 1st and 2nd year, we all go to excursions, this year to Belgium (Brussels, Antwerpen) and next year, Im not sure where because last year the 2nd-year-students went to Berlin but I believe, this year they went to Prague. Oh, and it is also compulsory! So if you wanna be the part of a dynamic, intercultural environment, IBMS is for you!! ( nice marketing line, huh? :D) http://www.topibms.nl/

Friesland - Viesland

Well, my Dutch friends would definitely not like this title I just gave coz it means something like this - Friesland, the dirty land. Explanation later.

So Friesland is one of the provinces in the Netherlands. It is pretty unique because it has its own language - Frisian. It's not a dialect, it's the second official language of the Netherlands, beside Dutch. So a lot of people's first language is Frisian but they also speak Dutch, as well (except for the really short-sighted ones, who are not WILLING to speak Dutch.... ). But I do think, it is a pretty nice province, there is a lot of water (I love any kind of water) and the see is just half an hour far from here (Harlingen).
The capital of this province is Leeuwarden, you may know it because of the Domino-day - they organise it here every year. Pretty fun event, if you haven't heard of it before, you gotta check it out.

Besides, this province is also famous for Heerenveen (football club) and the ice-skating races.

So and why did I give this title? I personally don't like the attitude of Friesian people. Of course, there are always exceptions but a lot of them are typicall short-sighted people, they don't think out of the box at all. They always stay inside the province, never travel. But I must say there ARE real nice ones. I hang out with a Frisian girl at school and she is NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL. This discription is mostly about the people who live in the small Frisian villages and work as 'boer', so something like countryman/-woman. So who do fieldwork.

All in all, Friesland is a very nice province, Leeuwarden is a typical student city and for more info about the province just click here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friesland

The purpose

I thought I would start this blog to share my experiences in the Netherlands - because that's where I live right now. I am originally from Hungary, grown up there, went to school there, so my life belongs there - in a way because since the fall of 2009 I am living the easy-going life of the Dutchies.

So this blog is made to show you and give you some info about the Netherlands, the school I study at and some other experiences. And so you get an idea how it is to live in Dutch style :))

So some words about myself: 

I'm 21, live in Holland, Friesland, Leeuwarden for a year and a half now. In the first year I was working as a cleaner (still do), just to get to know the culture, the language and everything around here coz I don't think it's handy if I start the school right away, and turns out meanwhile that I hate living here. I really don't like starting something and then break it. But since I really love this country, I decided to stay. 

Right now I study at Stenden University, International Business and Management Studies (IBMS). I'm gonna write some more info about this as well later on.

I used to play volleyball, back in Hungary but I stopped when I moved here. I really miss it and I'm hoping I can do it again next semester.

Right now I speak Hungarian, English, Dutch, used to speak German (working on being able to speak it again) and can understand some Friesian. But Italian is still on my list to go.

Well, I guess that's all enough about me, the other info will be more useful hopefully.