In 2016, the Scottish Eilidh Turnbull followed a Master’s in European Law at Radboud University. She gladly shares her experiences with newly arrived international students. 'This may be the time when you first start to ask yourself “How am I going to survive this place?”. Well fear not, I will come to your rescue with my tip top tips on surviving this lovely city you will soon start to call home.'

Firstly, buy a bike. This is the Netherlands, having a bike is as essential as food and water, but don’t buy the cheapest bike you can find. You can imagine how incredibly excited I was to find a bike for 30 euros, a couple of days later the bike basically snapped in half and I was left bike-less, disaster! I bought a decent bike for 80 euros and never looked back. You can probably sell it for 50 euros when you leave, making it a pretty good deal for 6 months/ a year of transport.

On a cycling theme, buy a cool waterproof jacket (I truly believe these exist). I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it is going to rain, a lot, and you are going to have to cycle through said rain. This is sooooo much better when you are wearing a waterproof.

Try new things. Parties are great, but soon you get tired of them. I can promise you that in the future when you look back on your study abroad experience you won’t think about the 15^th party that week where, yet again, they played the entire Manu Chao back catalogue. Instead you will think about your spontaneous trip on an overnight bus to Berlin, or trying a yoga class in Dutch or eating authentic food made by your new Taiwanese friend.

Don’t be afraid to do things alone. This will probably be the only time in your entire life when you can rock up to a party, alone, with a six-pack of shitty beer and within an hour have 3 new BBFs. If parties aren’t your thing then start a sports class or get involved with local activist groups or check out a festival. It’s so much easier to meet new people when you don’t always hang out in packs.

Talk to Dutch people. Sure, they are pretty tall but they are really not that intimidating. Break the ice with a quick “Hoi” and they will probably think your terrible pronunciation is super cute. Make a little bit of effort and you will soon have friends for life. You will get to experience Nijmegen in a totally different way and experience some weird and wonderful parts of Dutch culture.

Take advantage of free stuff. Studying abroad is expensive and the Netherlands is not the cheapest country in the world. But there are so many things to do that won’t cost you a single cent. There are festivals and massive concerts in the park. There are the street parties, especially those for Carnival or King’s Day (although you might have to stretch for a few beers in order to be able to put up with the music). Or you can cycle to Germany or swim at the river beach.

So how to survive Nijmegen? Be open to new things and make the most of every day, you’ll probably only live in Nijmegen once (unless you love it as much as me and come back a few years later). Oh, and you should probably do a bit of studying too…