The new year gives birth to new dreams; the new journey bears new aspirations. Let’s come together and reach new heights!

Our heartfelt thanks for your support in 2012, and we look forward to your continued interest and participation in our dynamic community in the year ahead. Wishing you and your families a Happy New Year, good health and happiness!

But if your parents are not millionaires, you might want to have a job. I found a great blog that will definitely help you before and interview or before an assessment day.

Here it is : http://www.blog.grad-expectations.com/

1. International Student House – If you want to get to know a lot of new people from different nationalities and cultures, you should choose for a student house.  In addition to that, student houses are famous for their parties and entertainment activities. Thus, you will have an exciting and interesting time.
The stay in an international student house is limited to one year at this moment, because of the high number of international students who arrive in Groningen every year. After your stay for a year, you have to find another accommodation. If you chose for a student house, you have to apply to the housing office (www.housingoffice.nl).
For specific information regarding the student houses and the pricing of the different rooms, please refer to the above mentioned website.
Here you can see a map with all available international Student Houses Groningen, managed by the housing office.

2. Private room / flat share - If you are planning to move in a flat with friends or if you want to rent a private room, the situation is a bit more difficult. You can hire an agency which offers flats and rooms. Normally, the agency will charge you one rent for this service and one rent as a deposit, provided that you chose for one of the offers. Here are several websites of real estate agencies and other accommodation related pages. 

Lately Facebook has also become a popular place for international students in Groningen to exchange rooms. The main advantages of this is that you may skip paying a commission to a real-estate agency and directly get in touch with the people who live there at the moment. You can also contribute to the community by posting your own room there when you are leaving. Here are links to the two most popular groups at the moment:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/162781577095263?ap=1
https://www.facebook.com/groups/163161983728652/

- Kamernet.nl
This is the biggest website in the Netherlands for seeking and offering accommodation. It is among the cheapest choices for finding accommodation, and certainly much cheaper then using the services of a real estate agency. This is so, because through Kamernet you can directly communicate with the landlords, and so you do not have to pay a huge fee to a real estate agent. You have to pay a relatively small fee for a Kamernet subscription. The major drawback, however, is that if you are out of the Netherlands you can not have a face-to-face meeting with the landlord. Because of the high demand for student accommodation, it is almost impossible to find accommodation through Kamernet if you are abroad, especially in the peak period in August and September.
The conditions of rooms and flats as well as the rent differ very much and cannot be generalized. Usually, rent prices are between 300€ and 400€.
Last Resort Accommodation
If it is time to come to Groningen, and you were not fortunate enough to have found accommodation already, you can book a stay at a hostel in Groningen. Staying in a hostel is not a convenient solution for students, but it can be the only option untill you find something better. The following link will take you to the homepage of the cheapest hostel in Groningen:
http://www.simplonjongerenhotel.nl/
If this hostel is full, you still have two more options. First, there is another hostel close to the city center: http://www.budgetthostels.com/. If you are really unlucky and both of the hostels are full, you can “couchsurf” for a few days: http://www.couchsurfing.org/. Sign up for an account and we are pretty sure you will find people willing to help you with a temporary couch in their house.
To sum up, looking for a private room or flat requires a lot more time and effort; therefore you should start your search as soon as possible. If you are abroad, it is almost impossible to find a room on the private market, as you can not meet face-to-face with the landlords / real estate agents. The easiest option is applying through the Housing Office.
Whatever accommodation you chose for, we hope you will have a great time here in Groningen. Of course, if you have any further questions do not hesitate to ask on the Faculty’s Facebook page.

3. Long stay

If you plan to stay in Groningen for more than 2 years it would be a good idea to sign up for an account with Woningnet ( http://www.woningnet.nl/snelzoeken.asp?IID=12 ). The sign-up fee is 14 euros/year. The website is using the famous points system (for every month registered with the website you receive one point; the more points you have, the more chances to receive a room). Because of this, the average waiting time until you have enough points to receive a room – 2 years!! BUT, after you have a woningnet account, you have a few extra benefits:

a) you can apply for free to the social housing announcements published from time to time on nijestee (http://nijestee.nl/ikzoekwoning_socialehuurwoning/Woningen_tijdelijk_te_huur/ OR http://nijestee.nl/ikzoekwoning_socialehuurwoning/woningen_per_direct_tehuur)

b) if you are willing to spend more than 650 euros/month on housing, you can apply for an apartment from woningnet without the need of the points system. You can recognize this type of announcements on the website from their green color (sort by price and you will notice that the houses that cost more that 650 euros/month are written on a green background).

4. Temporary stay

The following website is for temporary housing: http://www.carex.nl/.  You have to sign up and it’s free. Only when they find you a place, they take a fee (10-50 euros). Carex is what you call an organization that tries to prevent ‘vacancy’ of buildings and houses (buildings that are temporarily empty due to new purpose they will serve in the future or buildings that are on the list to be torn down in a while). They manage these houses for companies/private persons, to help people that need housing badly and to prevent buildings from not being used. It is extremely cheap to live in these buildings, but it is always temporary, meaning you can stay somewhere from 1 month to several years if you’re lucky. You do not pay rent, but you pay like a ‘user’s fee’ which is very low. Next to that you pay for electricity, gas, internet, phone etc. Some houses are very old, some are really nice. They too have a waiting list however (they’re popular among students obviously ). If you need a room, Carex is a really good place to look, if you don’t mind the temporary character of it, I would definitely advise it.

5. FirstDoor.nl

This website looks quite interesting: http://firstdoor.nl/  – 10 euros per year for an account is a great deal. But until now, we have no information whether or not somebody successfully used it. Please let us know if you have more information about this website.

P.S. Don’t let yourself fooled by different real estate agencies. Take a look on this website before sending money to anyone! http://bekijkhetnu.nl/enindex.php

The first solution and most expensive one is going to the good old IKEA, which is situated at Sontweg 9, a little bit far from all major sights of the city  but can be reached with busses 9, 22, 73 and 76. The IKEA in Groningen is one of the biggest in the Netherlands and offers a great variety of products, in other words the possibility not to find what you are looking for is very little, the price is a different question.

The opening hours are:

Monday –Frida:  10am–9pm

Saturday:  9am–8pm

On Sunday it is closed.

Even if you don’t have what to buy there, still it is interesting to just visit since it can definitely you’re your boredom at least for one full day.

Moving on our next and cheaper option is buying second hand furniture. I will recommend Mamamini, which is a shop for secondhand stuff; you can find everything from junk and clothes to reasonable furniture. Keep in mind checking if some kind of bugs hasn’t decide to claim your new sofa for theirs. In Groningen there are three Mamamini stores for you to choose. Be sure that all of them have completely different furniture compare to the previous, so if you don’t find something that you like in the first who knows maybe you will be lucky in the second. Here is a map to check the locations or you can just Google it for yourself.

Last but not least, is to buy your furniture from other students; normally this is the cheapest solution.

First you can have a look at the different student houses, typically there are sell-advertisements on the ground floor but I don’t really believe that anyone will really start going from house to house just search for someone’s old chair, so let’s go to the more convenient option.

You can join the Facebook group “For sale in Groningen”, where people offer you their old stuff on quite reasonable prices. The variety is not limited to furniture only but you can buy a bike or something else. The group is all in English and all the items offered are shown on photos for you to know what exactly you are buying. In addition, you can negotiate the price if the seller is willing to do so.

With this my little lecture is over, I wish you good luck in decorating your perfect room!

If you are even luckier then you can get invited to some of the special events, organized by the different communities in Groningen. After the unforgettable Indonesian dinner several months ago (see: http://www.feb-international.com/experience-indonesia), The “Groningen Indian Students Association” didn’t let to be left behind and kicked in with Bollywood Dance Night.

Everything started with amazing home cooked Indian dishes, thank goodness adjusted in spiciness for us weak Europeans but still strong enough to appreciate the power of curry and then after some socialization and making new Indian friends, you get the chance to worked out some good sweat , dancing to the rhythm of Bhangra and Pop. The dynamic movements and the lessons of native dancers definitely can let experience the world of Bollywood for one night only.

This kind of event is organized by “Groningen Indian Students Association” at least once a year, so if you get the chance to feel  as if you are part of old Indian movie , don’t miss it at any cost, it’s totally worth it!

Every year in June for one night the center of Groningen turns into a strange place, where you can find a giant model of human heart or just enjoy the performance on the stage next to it. On the Night of Arts and Science, talents from the different faculties of RUG get the chance to show that they are not all about studying but much more. Of course, there are some professional performance as well like musicians and artists.

You can move to various locations and on each and every something different is going on. This year you could have played with a robot in front of the UB, bumped into all kinds of creepy creatures in the city center or be amazed by the acrobats near the Central Station. There is so much to see that you cannot catch your breath running from place to place and still fail to see everything.

Normally, you should pay a certain sum to visit some places like museums and exhibitions but if you are a student in the red, you still can have a lot of fun because most of the activities in the city center are for free.

Every year the program differs but remains very exciting. One thing is sure though, for the past two years even putting my best efforts I still couldn’t say I manage to see everything, my hope remains to shine for my third year

Searching for a job as an international student is again a full time job. So, in order to make your life easier I would like to give you some tips and tricks from my job hunting experience.

1. Monster.com – is probably the biggest job board available. It has many options and filters that will help you find your dream job faster.

2. LinkedIn – the well-known social media platform for jobs has some limitations when it comes to search filters, but you can find many companies posting their announcements here.

3. iagora.com – is great a great tool to find internships, graduate programs, but also jobs. Before paying the premium features, please search the announcement on google. Sometime you will be able to find the original job description and to apply directly on the company website. For example: Step1: premium job announcement: “Site Editors are the final stage in the deal creation system, giving each (COMPANY NAME) its own web page.”  Step 2: google search for “Site Editors are the final stage in the deal creation system, giving each”. Step 3: google search results number one – the company name is Groupon UK. Step 4: go to groupon website and apply directly by avoiding to pay the premium fee.

4. graduateland.com – this website is focused on graduate programs, but also jobs. A lot of jobs available in Denmark.

5.  graduate-jobs.com and milkround.com- other websites for graduate programs.

6. European Institutions – keep an eye on the major European institutions: European Council, European Parliament, European Central Bank, etc. They are often recruiting.

Good luck!

The movie is “Margin call” which follows the key people at an investment bank, over a 24-hour period, during the early stages of the financial crisis.

Before the start Professor Boudewijn de Bruin will give a short introduction on the topic. After the movie there will be a discussion where everyone can take part and give his opinion about the movie and the crucial topics in it.

The activity is in English and to make it a delicious experience, free snacks and drinks are provided, so grab some friends and be there!

When?  17.00 23^rd of May

Where? Duisenberg building room 5412.0031, Zernike

Why? Why not

Of course, as a national celebration it is a day free of lecturers and classes. Most students in Groningen head to the Stadspark, where various events are held each year during the whole day.  There are several stages, where artists are playing different types of music to match everyone’s taste. You have the choice to a look at famous bands on the main stage or check out the local heroes and get to know some traditional Dutch songs on some of the smaller stages.

The event brings together people from different generations, so you can see families having picnics on the grass, children running around the place and in the kids area their a lot of interesting activities, some of them suited even for a little bit grown children. This year there were people cosplaying as Stone-age villagers, except that it was fascinating for the children, I had the chance to bake my own bread on fire and appreciate the hard work of the one who invented the oven.