Living and interning abroad
Studying International Business and Foreign Languages suggests that there’ll come a moment when you’ll spend some time abroad. That’s how I ended up living not only in Nantes, but also London and Rotterdam in the past two years. I’m currently interning at Awkward as a Marketing Assistant.
Nantes is a student city, famous for its political protests and buildings such as Le Hangar à Bananes, a post WWI warehouse specifically built to stock products imported from French colonies. For the first two years of studies, I’ve spent the initial semesters of my masters in Nantes, somehow escaping both the presidential elections’ tension (bless proxy vote) and France’s national railway strikes.
I’ve had two mandatory internships to complete, which is why I spent five months both in London and Rotterdam. Even though I found my internships pretty late, I was always lucky to find ones in areas that I continue to be very interested in: an independent film magazine with a special focus on illustration, and a digital design agency.
Moving to London was exciting: going to a new place I knew had a lot of experiences to offer, meeting internet friends I had never seen in person before and being able to work for a film magazine I admired. Save for how expensive housing and transportation is in the capital, as well as the lack of ventilation on the London underground, I had a great time and learned a lot.
London is very different from my hometown, which you would expect from the largest city in Europe: there are many neighborhoods (shoutout to Shoreditch, Chinatown and Soho), a lot of different people and the best Bibimbap place around.
Rotterdam was something else. Except for some knowledge about the Port of Rotterdam and the fact that it was under sea level, I knew close to nothing about the city. I decided to go because of my interest in Awkward and also because one of my university friends had just started her internship in Rotterdam. Getting there, the first things I noticed were the crazy amount of bikes and the modern architecture.
Rotterdam has a saying that goes: “geen woorden, maar daden”, roughly meaning something like “action rather than words” and that motto is something that can be felt. The city of Rotterdam was destroyed during the Rotterdam Blitz in 1940, which explains the modern architecture and infrastructure. They had to rebuild it all. Now, it’s a very well-thought-out city: bike lanes, public transportation and lots of public spaces. It all feels very organized. I never thought I would bike every day to work but it’s happening now and it really is very convenient. Not so sure about biking in the rain but that’s for another day.
I also quickly realized Dutch was going to be a tough one to learn. Understanding a new language isn’t too much of a scary thing, as I’ve been doing that for some time now. But my preconception, as a French person, that Dutch is only a mix of English and German was naive for sure. Even though everyone speaks English, I’m sure being able to speak Dutch would make the experience even more fun. Just know that if you hear someone next to you say “gezellig”, it can only be a good thing.
All of these cities have very different atmospheres, ups and downs, and I’m very glad I was able to live in each and every one of them. I got to learn a lot of new things. I met some very good people during university, work and my personal life that I truly hope I will stay in touch with. I hope I can go back someday because it feels like I haven’t seen half of it.
