Αντώνης ΜαντζαβίνοςIt’s been already 4 months since my arrival in Salamanca. Of course it is the Erasmus experience! Nothing can go wrong. Well, almost nothing! There seems to be a curse only for the Erasmus students of Salamanca. But before elaborating on this let me give you the big picture about our life here.
Every day is pretty different than any other and the overall experience seems to be a life-changing one! Meeting new people every day, hanging around with individuals from various cultures and of course enjoying life abroad. The discussions you participate in, the University workload, meeting locals, everything contributes into making your time a developmental experience that many would love to be part of. Personally speaking, I firmly believe that Erasmus expands your horizons. Thus, bringing forward the magic equation. To make myself understood, this equation means a great variety of elements that combined make every day count more. And by this, I mean the amount and quality of experience you get. My metrics so far clearly indicate that a day on Erasmus equals to four days from your normal life back home.
So all these are indeed happening as we speak. Yet, there seems to be an ongoing issue which we refer to it, as “The Erasmus Curse”, related to our mobile phones. It might be the atmosphere, or something in the air that mysteriously causes our phones to get broken, stolen, lost or even “implicated” into really rare occasions and accidents! It all seems to have started in the city of Rodrigo, back in February. We were all there to watch a bullfight but the difference in that one was that the bulls were running to reach the arena through the city’s narrow streets. It was at that moment that Thomas, our Austrian guy, got his phone’s screen broken as he was trying to avoid being trampled by the raging bulls. And that was our Pandora’s Box!
From that moment on, and as Erasmus was being continued many more “victims” of the famous Erasmus’s Curse experienced at least a related story to tell. Unfortunately I was part of this story too as my phone decided to die peacefully while I was strolling the city centre, returning back home after playing basketball.
But let’s take a look on the #ErasmusCurse stories of my fellow friends here in Salamanca.
After Thomas, Zefie the fellow Greek lost her phone while dancing! One moment she was texting, then placed it into her pocket. Instants later it wasn’t there. That one was stolen! Same story for Friedericke, an Austrian student of Economy. She was just standing next to Zefie when her phone was stolen too.Both of the girls at this point were in a dark bar of our city, in which we dance between 4 and 6 in the morning.
But not only were our phones stolen. The case of Florentin, the Bavarian guy from Germany is a little similar to mine. His red covered phone decided to malfunction for no reason! He tried to repair it, but it didn’t work. The #ErasmusCurse vale was all over the city! Maybe the luckiest guy is our mutual friend Florin. His phone fell a million times but still works. Nobody seems to be able to count the cracks on the screen.
Unfortunately there is more to refer to. Raphaelle, the Belgian girl lost her phone while being on the city, with absolutely noone being able to understand what happened to her phone. In the meantime, David the cool guy from Switzerland forgot it somewhere and he still cannot remember where it was! He tried to ask for it on the places he had been during the day, but no one seemed to know.
Our next case is about the Belgian Law student called Lancelot. He was having a great party during the night of the incident. His phone was not!
And of course my story, as mentioned above!
To sum up, the so long awaited Curse freeze became a reality when Thomas repaired the broken screen of his phone for the second time. His first attempt was not critical enough to eradicate the symptoms. Fortunately the second terminated it, at least for the time being.