UvA students look back: “Never again in 2024”
Skinny dipping in Miami, long lines at Lowlands, sleeping in a hostel for two months: these are experiences UvA students want to leave behind in 2023 and not relive in the next year.
Sleeping in a hostel and a gym
“When the university says don't come to Amsterdam unless you have accommodation, they’re not kidding,” political science student Francesco Macagno (19) now knows. In good spirits, he boarded a plane from his home country of the U.S. to the Netherlands. But finding a room? That turned out not to be as easy as in the U.S. So he ended up in a hostel, where he stayed for two months.
It was no fun, he says now, looking back. “Amsterdam is an attractive place for British people and sex and weed tourist types. With them, you often sit in a room and they are rather unclean. That's where you sit in between with all your study stuff.” But the worst thing he found was the communal showers. “Picture the worst possible situation with people in your former school locker room,” Macagno said.
These are precisely the kinds of things that make Dennis Gronert of UvA housing development warn international students ahead of time about Amsterdam's difficult housing market. “We don't want students to be in hostels,” he explains. “That’s why we say very clearly to make sure you have a place, and otherwise: Don’t come! But if they do come, we as UvA provide some alternatives where they can stay temporarily. These are then hostels.”
This year and in the past, the UvA has signed several contracts with hostels, including City Trip Hostels in Zaandam and the Stayokay hostel in Amsterdam East, where students can get priority accommodation, says Dennis Gronert. “That way they at least have a place to fall back on.”
But Macagno, an experienced camper, didn’t find the hostel worse than sleeping in USC's gymnasium during Intreeweek. “It’s hard to sleep on the floor,” he told Folia earlier. It gave him shoulder problems. After his rough nights in the hostel and the gym, Macagno is only too happy that he has now found a “normal room” in Amsterdam.
Stolen stuff in Miami (or at UvA)
Slovak PPLE student Anka Susicka’s (22) laptop bag is still in the middle of REC-E. But not unattended. She used to leave it lying around unsupervised, but not anymore. Never again. She has asked a guy studying in the loft to keep an eye on it.
After all, ever since she and a Czech friend went skinny dipping (swimming naked) on a beach in Miami late this year, she has been very apprehensive about theft. When they emerged from the ocean together, her friend discovered that ALL her belongings had been stolen: her passport, phone, and wallet. Especially applying for a new passport in the U.S. proved to be quite a hassle, Susicka says.
She herself was lucky—her things were still on the beach—but she says she learned “a big lesson. It was so stupid,” she says, “because the number of thefts in Miami is extremely high, which is exactly why it is forbidden to go to the beach at night.”
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Theft also occurs at the UvA, she now knows. To alert unsuspecting students, the UvA keeps track of how many laptops have been stolen from the university’s libraries recently. “First there were six, then eight, and now nine,” says the guy watching her laptop bag.
Library employees are therefore extra vigilant, UvA librarian Wilma Goossen reports by e-mail. And in the meantime, so is Susicka.
Busy at Lowlands
“It was fun ...” begins law student Victoria Dreijer (21), talking about the Lowlands music festival. But that’s the extent of the positive stuff, it turns out. Then she lets loose. “It was crowded everywhere.” It starts the moment you get into the car, she says. Traffic jams, long traffic jams, from the Randstad. Then when you finally arrive at the festival site, early in the morning, “you still have to fight for a place to pitch your tent,” says Dreijer. “It doesn’t make sense.”
And if you have to go to the bathroom? Queues. Dreijer puts her hands in front of her eyes. At one point she devised a tactic: “Only drink if you can pee.” If she stood in a crowd, she deliberately did not drink water or anything else. Otherwise, you have to make your way through all kinds of people, she explains, before you can get in line for the bathroom.
She nevertheless stayed the whole weekend. “On the last day, it was very hot. So I looked for a place to lie in the shade for a while, but there was no room anywhere. Literally by the containers, next to the air fans of an eatery, there were still people sitting.”
And it’s not cheap. On the contrary. For the full three days you pay—”I don’t even want to think about it anymore”—€300. “But that’s still not including transportation, camping gear, and drinks,” Dreijer lists up. With an expensive vacation and another big festival in the Netherlands, it was a drain on her wallet. “Next year, I want to go on vacation again. But the Lowlands, I don’t feel like doing that again.”
