• Storms in Bochum are intense.
• The group of people I hang out with most of the time consists of 4-8 Italians and me. The question “where are you from” is slowly being replaced by “are you from Italy?”.  Italians are awesome.
• On another note, a girl in the supermarket started talking to me. The strange language I couldn’t understand turned out to be Slovak. That´s how I met Monika, a student of medicine in Brno. (Tvoje Balabán placka mě seznamuje s krajany všude po světě, Markét!)
• I am living in a constant fear that I will lose / destroy my card which is the key to my room. Or that I will lock myself out. And then I will have to call a German number and pay so much money that I won´t have any left for the rest of my stay here. To check that I have the card by me has become my primary instinct. When I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, the card is the first thing I think of.
• There was a very chaotic lunch at Corrado´s kitchen today, including losing people on the way there, stealing a pot from my kitchen, and starting an hour later. (Note to myself for later: always bring your own dishes when visiting an exchange student. There is never enough forks or plates or glasses.) But everything turned out great in the end, the pasta was delicious and I got to meet some awesome new (Turkish!) people. (And a big yay for something finally happening in our dorms!)

Threatening note in C.´s kitchen:

• You have two options:

1) You are quiet after 21:00.
2) I call the police.
I am a serious man.

Orientation week

•           At the welcome brunch we met our Campus guides (most of them have already gone through the Erasmus experience). For our East-Asian studies group they turned out to be these two super nice girls and I decided I want to join the ESN Olomouc when I come back. It is so nice and helpful when we have someone we can turn to who knows what the struggles of a foreign student can be. Also, several students of Japanese came so I got to meet some of my soon to be classmates.
•           On Saturday there was a guided tour around Bochum as a part of the orientation week. I decided to join the group with the German guide to practice my German. Well, I can´t say I understood much but I understood two things:
•   The old city center of Bochum consists of one building, where they now sell shoe insoles.
•  There is a church where the priest (?) tells a story about a window painting of Jesus with six fingers.
•           There was a flea market organized by the ESN today and I finally bought a spoon. Also, it is really fun to watch what people of different cultures consider as important items for their kitchens.
•          Tomorrow there is a special early date for foreign exchange students to sign up for university sports. Turns out that the online registration systems “works” pretty much the same way as STAG in Olomouc.

•  I have bought a blanket. Blankets are important. If there were more blankets and more people who would wrap up other people in blankets whenever needed, the world would be a better place.

Dečky jako první pomoc na všechno.