When you're an Erasmus student you get to know a lot of people in a very quick time. I was already hanging out with new friends the day Mark left Budapest. That very same night I was in some Erasmus student flat playing the Ring of Fire. Usually conversations between students are not so deep. They stop at "where are you from? How long have you been here? Are you studying at ELTE or Corvinus? Do you know about this or that event? You can't believe how much I drank last weekend." Guys are here to have fun, that was as clear to me as the sun. As clear as the fact that I was feeling willing to have fun and make new friends too, but also to have some real interaction. I found out that real interactions are pretty rare around here. I felt more similar to some people I met, and once I believed I could REALLY talk to a guy that I met at a speed dating organized by local Erasmus Student Network (nothing romantic at all, it was just an initiative to know other Erasmus students), but in the end he was flirting with me. I don't know. Maybe I'm looking for real relations, even simple real relations when you can just take a cup of coffee together some afternoons and freely talk to someone, because I'm older than the average people I use to meet. Maybe it's because I live by myself, I don't have any flatmates by my own choice and I need real company. Most probably I'm looking for something true because that's me, I've always been looking for it. I started to enjoy staying with people just to hang out and tell superficialities later in my life. Now I kinda enjoy sometimes not to bear the burden of a deep dialogue that asks a level of concentration. Thank God I changed a little, I would never have survived studying abroad before! There are advantages in being an Erasmus. Nobody knows you, so you can be your favorite version of yourself. Most of the people are pretty friendly, they just want to talk to you, they really wanna like you most of the times! You can enjoy small talk, and say to yourself that is an experience. Studying abroad allows you to get much more familiar with other cultures. Everybody knows it, I know it, I've even lived this experience in Central America, but truth is that I've never lived this experience with the European cultures. We are an amazing continent. In such a small space live so many and so different histories, people, cultures. I love that it takes just 2 hours on car to find yourself in a new world. These are the pros. The big con is that this multicultural reality mixed with nationalism lead to 2 WW and several other ones. We are living now in the longest period of peace that Europe has ever experienced. I like to think that projects such as Erasmus + program help this period of peace to continue. We are the future.