‘It was the greatest period of time I’ve ever had in my life’, I never thought of another kind of description every time when I was caught to answer questions like ‘How is it in Europe?’. It was not exaggerated at all.
In year 2009, I was so luckily being selected as a student of one of the Erasmus Mundus Programs called ‘Economics of International Trade and European Integration (EITEI)’ and spent one whole year in Europe. It was such a great period of time and so good chance to experience things totally alien to me, to see what’s happening in another continent, to touch another type of culture and people. It is still so impressive and means to me a lot now. I know that something in life can be forgotten, but I dare to say this European tour for me is absolutely not the case. Although that joyful time is over, now when I look back, I still could remember every detail of it. I remember the extremely tranquil moment in the church and the harmonious face of that old Christian lady; I remember that un-slept night when we talked about war and forgiveness; I also remember the fairy-tale-like, snow covered Stockholm and the piercing winter breezes there, and the beautiful sunset on the spectacular remains of the ancient Roma Empire.
However, the whole story begins with much unevenness. The first week we were in Antwerp for registration, I found I could not speak anything at all since all of my classmates speak so fluent and fast English. I could not ease down, as a result, I was almost isolated by myself at a single dining table when we had our breakfast in that week. It made me so upset and a bit angry, later I asked myself, ‘so what? You come here just for the breakfast? Oh, great man!’. From then on, I tried to start conversation with ones who seemed relatively more ‘friendly’, although needed to repeat words for several times. At last I found in fact everybody was so nice and open to me; all those guys and girls I made acquaintance with first became my best friends there, and every time afterwards I talked about my embarrassments to them, they would just point at me with head-shaking ‘oh god, I don’t believe you were such a shy boy then’, lol. From this I realized that being open to others is a wise way to reap me friendship and everything.
As you all might know, EM program aims to enhance European integration in an educational aspect through broad and fairly intensive communication among universities in Europe. So as a specific example, one academic year is segmented into three semesters with each of them nearly one third of the year, and the students would learn the courses in three different countries at different semester. This seemingly odd arrangement I think is one of the key issues that make EM program so attractive and popular around the world.
After the registration week, we were separated into two groups; one was sent to Lille, France, the other one to Staffordshire, England. The courses of the first semester in University of Lille 1 were setup to be a little bit theoretical, for it aimed to offer an underlying foundation for the later practical ones. They are advanced Micro, Macro, Econometrics, and mathematical economics, which looked quite familiar to us WISE students. However, it’s never been so easy; to get a good mark, it still cost much time and energy. The extra-curricular life in Lille was also an important part; it made us more like a family and got closer to each other through many things like homework discussion, playing games, birthday parties, travelling and so on. Here I would like to give my appreciation to the co-coordinator Professor who speaks with an interesting French accent and took charge of us almost everything; such as accommodation, welcome party, lecture, and even an organizational tour to Paris.
The second semester all the students that were partitioned before met together in University Antwerp. We got a much bigger family now but soon we got integrated as if we were friends before. I love this since they brought me friendship, warmth, and also more space for my curiosity. Beside of people there, the courses of this semester were much more interesting. We started to learn some practical models about international trade, open economy; tried to figure out the theoretical foundation for the European economic unionization; what are the potential benefit and side effect if we open our market to each other or even unite our currencies. Along with economics analysis, we also got several experts of law and politics, to give us more discussion for European integration. All these impressed me so much that they are used to looking for solutions for real problems, and those European young people really care so much about the future of the place where they belong.
Now it comes to the last semester and my favorite city Prague in Czech Republic. We enjoyed the best time there most probably because of much cheaper life cost, and also the just right climate with spring-summer sunshine all time along. There we discussed about another practical issue, that was, how to get integrated for the eastern and western Europe. We know that the east part was made temporally different almost in all aspects thanks to the WWII, but now they want to come back and be re-recognized by the former Europe. So we learned about the post war history of the eastern European countries, and how was the transitional economy going. This course attracted me so since I could take a close comparison with what we did after the foundation of new China. Another big job we needed to do in the third semester was the dissertation writing. The ‘market-based system’ (please see ‘My tour study in Europe’ by Wenjian Zhao) will give you enough chances to choose topic that matches you best; and all the professors were so helpful and even the librarian gives you warm greetings because you would be a hardworking visitor at a very large probability.
During the holiday break, we have been trying to discover more. We made very detail travel plans to make sure that we would not miss any piece of this dreaming land. We’ve been to Spain for the beautiful Barcelona beach, we’ve been to Austria for the classic symphony, we’ve been also to Italy, for some sort of unspeakable emotion I don’t know exactly. Well, all these travelling plans could only make me love this continent more. And it is this European tour that changed me most,, made me think about life and the world at a somewhat higher level.
As an end of the words above, I here want to thank my friends and all the ones who helped me to manage and enjoy this wonderful European tour, and because of you, I could finish this small essay. Thank you!
（WISE2007级硕士生 胡飞翔 ）
