Erasmus Syndrome

On January 27, 2007, I left the US for 5 months in the UK. It still remains, if not the best, one of the best times of my life so far. It's almost been 2 years but the memories are still fresh in my head.

The best advice I can ever give to a college student is to study abroad. I know what some of you are thinking: Oh, another "study abroad transformed me" story. All study abroad stories are unique to their owner but all share the same sentiment: you are never the same after. You will never be the same after. This article elaborates on the same idea.

This was found by my friend Alexandra who translated it from Greek and was edited by yours truly. The original can be found at http://metanastis.blogspot.com/2008/01/erasmus-syndrome.html

Erasmus Syndrome

17/01/05
"I’m at my university right now. I've met so many people and I feel great! If I were to leave Sweden right now this would be a great experience so far, bearing in mind that I’ve been here for 5 days and I will stay for the following five months!"

This is the first entry in the diary I used to keep while I was in Sweden taking part in the Erasmus program.

Erasmus syndrome is a condition that comes as result of a long stay abroad and it happens due to change of culture, climate, society, language, friends, relationships, lessons, food, habits, colors, smells, feelings, insurance system, traffic regulation, TV programs, people, animals, insects, plants…what else? Oh yes, toilets, cities, villages, football, music, politics, mass media, means of transport, time that gets dark, time the sun rises, time that it’s noon and it's time for me to finish the list. At the end, the combination of the all the aforementioned with those that one finds in the country one comes from results in the Erasmus syndrome.

Let me take things from the beginning.

The first days in a foreign country - where you know you’ll be spending a serious amount of time living in - are revealing. You see and live unfamiliar things and this induces a sense of euphoria.

After we all had fun and got to know each other fairly well, we enjoyed a period of relative relaxation, where we started to behave as if we were residents of this country: Travels, walks, parties, football, studying, friends, and everyday human activities. (Now that I’m writing this I realize after a long time the need for such small joys of life – even though it sounds like a cliché. Go for a walk somewhere nice, give your girlfriend a flower, look at a full moon, ’cause if this isn't life then what is it?)

Time got by very pleasantly (something that confirms the notion that when you’re having a good time, time flies by.) The weather was cold but tolerable, almost pleasantly different.

Toward the end of Erasmus, the need for contact was imperative and the promises for future reunions were endless. Especially the last days we used to have many conversations about where are we in life right now, what are we doing, what we're gonna do next and so on, all that accompanied by the stress of our return or rather, our departure.

I remember the discussion we had with a Slovenian and a Belgian guy our last night out. We all felt so weird that we may never meet again that we started to philosophize effortlessly just to end up to a funny fact that actually contained some truth. “No, my friend, no! You have to put your feelings in a box as long as you are here and leave it aside.” That is, no smiles, no joy, all that has to be in the box. I guess that was a bit exaggerated, but what happens if you bond excessively with something or with everything there was where you went? How are you going to go back home? I imagine (and believe me I can imagine that because I lived it) that it’s going to be torture.

While I was in Sweden, relatives and friends kept asking me when I was coming back. They kept talking about how much they missed me and all that stuff. However, I felt exactly the opposite, I wasn’t in the mood to go back home or explain what I lived. I feel (and this is not only me, but also lots of friends from Erasmus feel so) that over there I had a parallel life that I could make it as I wished, knowing what friends to make, what decisions to take (based on my experience of life, okay I must’ve had some experience from all the stupid things I’ve done, right?) and knowing of course that one day I would be back home.

I can say that others were influenced a lot by the syndrome; they changed or their life changed (I know quite a lot of people that broke up while being on the program, whereas others broke up by going back), while others seemed unaffected.

The first days I got back to Greece I felt lost, trapped between two worlds. My room seemed too small for me, the toilet big, and the key different; however the city, the relatives and friends were all the same. I can say that when you are emotionally bonded before you go, you are even more when you return.

One of the many pieces of advice is to go alone and hang out with as many foreigners as possible. Even if it seems scary at first, it will leave you with some incredible memories and knowledge at the end.

The symptoms of the Erasmus syndrome include continuous sighs, a sense of escape, the need for a full life, words like ‘everyone has their own story, their own friends, and we all together are a group', tolerance to other ethnicities and generally to the different, increase of sociability and a lot of other symptoms that would take up lot of space to be described here.

Finally (this is another freaking symptom, thinking in another language, in my case English) this whole thing has left me a bittersweet taste that is getting sweeter and sweeter as time goes by…

14/06/2005
"I’m on the airplane right now. If I were alone here I would be crying. Everything's so different but still the same. It’s over…"