First day on the University of Budapest

It is now one o’clock in the night and we are all quite tired. This morning we were all awake around seven or eight o’clock. Really, that was kind of early for students who went out last night.

Now we can say that we didn’t go out, but to be sure, yes we have been. Firstly, we took the tram, but this one stopped lots of stops before our stop. There we were, in the middle of the centre of Budapest. We decided to walk and to ask Hungarian people for the direction. Unfortunately we were sent the wrong way, so we took a taxi to the club ‘Morrison Two’. As soon as we got there we saw that the club was closed. Then we went, with the same taxi driver, to another club, named as ‘Szimple’. Our first reaction after seeing the club was “oh-my-god where are we?”, but we had a lot of fun! Check our photos on this website for some visual explanation.

When we finally made it to breakfast in the hotel, we felt completely overdressed! We thought we were going to a business university in Budapest, but this did not necessarily mean that people dressed for the occasion. After breakfast we took the tram to the University and we walked into a large college room for a presentation and the group dividing. By the way the University was a very beautiful building. Not like we are used to, but more like an old building which you visited as a sightseeing. About 15 minutes into the presentation we heard someone make a strange noise, we looked behind us and we saw a Scottish girl puking, we guessed she had a tough night as well. During this presentation the whole Markstrat game was explained. We prepared the manual, so for us it was too expanded, but we all listened to the people. After this long presentation we were divided in groups, so that we were able to start the game with your group.

Markstrat has begun! For getting used to the program and each other we played first a practice round. The Markstrat game started completely chaotic and actually it didn’t changed through the day. We didn’t know where we exactly we had to be and how to start. There are three industries and we have got all another group, but some of us are operating in the industry. Lieke, Anke, Stephanie and Madelon are all competitors from each other, so we are all very exciting for who is going to win.

Even though it is nice to meet a lot of different people from different countries, but it is very frustrating as well, because working with each other is very hard. Through the chaotic day we couldn’t complete the second and last round of today. So tomorrow there are four rounds to do.
At the start all countries had to do a presentation about their country and their culture for example. Some were better than others. For example the Polish students had kind of a sales presentation about their country. All the prejudices all the other students were take away by the Russians. For example the drinking of vodka liquor, they told us not everyone is drinking that much. After the Scottish students, a teacher had a funny presentation. The teacher was dressed as a typical Scottish men in a quilt. The funny and nice part of all was that this teacher for 75% Italian and for 25% German was and he is a teacher in Scotland. That is global thinking!

Tomorrow we got a busy day, but in the evening you will hear from us again. We know, you cannot wait ;-).

Greets from Budapest,

Anke, Stijn, Tanja, Teun, Lieke, Stephanie, Albert, Bram and Madelon