Hello dear Erasmus community from Budapest and anywhere else!

Experiencing a study exchange in another Country of your own means that you eventually have to find a flat in your new city. You will maybe end up in a one-room flat just for you or you will end up in a shared flat and your flatmates may not necessarily come from your beloved country. This multiculturalism under one single roof inspired us for today’s topic and we wanted to look at the positive side of it: The Benefits of Cross-Cultural Shared Flats!

For today’s article, I – one of the authors of this blog – will share my own experience in my shared flat. So I present you my flatmates: Erik from the Netherlands, Valeria from Italy, Nick from the German part of Switzerland (and myself, Yaelle, from the French part of Switzerland).

Here is my little story: A few weeks ago, I observed Erik cooking his national dish for the international day at his university and was really intrigued by it. Fortunately, he promised me to cook it again so that I could try it, this is why we had a nice little get-together with my housemates that we called “the Dutch night”. Our friend Matthias from the German part of Switzerland was also invited to our little Dutch experience.

We all sat together in the kitchen and began to prepare the famous “Hutspot” (I will put a little cooking recipe at the end of the article for all the non-Dutch who are interested). While cutting all together some onions, carrots and potatoes, we started talking about the Netherlands. My dutch flatmate explained us a bit about the Dutch cuisine, what he usually eats for dinner with his family and their little rituals. To enjoy even more the Dutch experience, we listened to some traditional Dutch music as well. Valeria, Nick, our friend Matthias and I were really interested into knowing more about the Netherlands, so we asked many questions about different fields such as politics, traditions, education etc…I learned for example than “Holland” is not the synonym for “The Netherlands”:-) While listening to Erik talking about his home country, each of us could notice some differences or commonalities regarding our respective countries and we started to share our own experiences. Even though we – Nick, Matthias and I – come from the same country, we could notice some differences in mentality or culture between the German and French part of Switzerland.

So what are the benefits of living in a cross-cultural shared flat during your exchange semester ?  You do not only get to know a new country and culture while studying abroad, but you can learn about so many other countries and cultures as well while living with international flatmates! It is a great opportunity to ask all the questions that you have about your housemates’ home country, their traditions or culture. Maybe some of the clichés you had will vanish and you will discover a totally new aspect of one particular country.  Furthermore, you can even practice a foreign language or several ones. You will certainly practice your English, but you will be maybe able to improve for example your French with your housemate from Paris or Italian with your housemate from Milan.

My advice to you: If you are afraid to live with strangers at first, just try to think about everything you could learn from them and how these strangers could broaden your vision of the world!

Hutspot recipe

What you need to buy:

• potatoes
• carrots
• onions
• parsley
• some pieces of bacon (or skip it if you are vegetarian)
• some sausages (we couldn’t find the right Dutch sausage so we just ate some meat, of course if you are vegetarian, just skip this part as well)

What you need to do now:

1. Peel the potatoes and put them in a pan to cook them first (it requires more time to cook the potatoes)
2. Then start peeling the carrots, cut them in small pieces, cut some onions and put everything in the pan with the potatoes
3. Wait until everything is cooked and the fun part can begin: just smash everything together (see picture below)
4. Fry some pieces of bacon as well and add them to the smashed potatoes
5. Add some parsley
6. Prepare your sausage or meat
7. Enjoy it!