Matkaraportin laatija: Petteri Teikari

Osasto, pää- / sivuaineet:
Electrical and Communications Engineering, Illumination Engineering / Cognitive Technology & Electronics and Measurement Technology

Harjoittelupaikan www-osoite:
http://www.rug.nl/biologie/onderzoek/onderzoekgroepen/chronobiologie/index

Hankintakanava:
I got the place myself by contacting directly the group leader there. I knew the laboratory beforehand from publications related to my own field of interest. I also sent e-mails to some other interesting laboratories around Europe and got accepted to another place but eventually chose this as a better option for me.

Työ ja saamani opit:
The Work consisted mainly of image processing related MATLAB-programming along with some radiometric measurements and testing. Work improved my programming routine and I learned many new things after all being surrounded by biologists rather than engineers. Work culture seemed more or less similar to the one in Finland.

Palkkaus ja verotus:
Scholarships from TKK (1450 euros) and from the Finnish Society of Electronics Engineers (500 euros).

Majoitus:
I got my room myself via http://www.kamernet.nl/ (other possibilities http://www.directwonen.nl, http://www.beter-wonen.nl, http://www.duwo.nl/) and paid 350 euros/month for a 40 m^2 room. Despite the web sites being only in Dutch the room hunting was not that difficult considering the Germanic origin of Dutch and the help of Babelfish. There were 3 other people living in the same apartment which were all natives.

Matkajärjestelyt:
I flew from Barcelona (where I had been as an exchange student) to Amsterdam Schiphol where I took a direct train to Groningen. Normal priced train rides (http://www.ns.nl) in the Netherlands are rather expensive but it is possible to buy a discount card that costs around 55 euros which gives you a 40% discount of the train rides. For example return ticket from Groningen to Amsterdam costs 24 euros with the discount, and a weekend return ticket to Brussels around 40 euros. Inside Groningen I did not need public transport at all as I had a bicycle borrowed from a colleague.

Vapaa-aika:
Groningen is a city with ~180'000 habitants of which 40'000 are students. During summer time the students were somewhere else and the city seemed rather empty at least compared to Barcelona. However, the Netherlands is rather compact country and it is easy to take a train to some other city and explore the Netherlands. Most of the happenings in the Netherlands are concentrated on a district called Randstad (consisting of the four largest Dutch cities Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht)

Maan tapa:
Compared to Finland there are no major differences in the way of life and there was really no culture shock coming to the Netherlands.

Things were in general quite well organized especially compared to the sometimes chaotic "mañana"-organization skills encountered in Barcelona. However, small amazement was caused by the fact that you couldn't buy your train ticket with paper money and the machine did not accept my VISA card. Another weird thing was that no proper food was served at the university cafeteria. Menu consisted normally of soups, salads and some unhealthy looking things. In local supermarkets the selection was however much better and there were no problems finding something proper to eat.

The Netherlands have a reputation of being very liberal country especially in regard to drugs. However, this is not really apparent at all in the normal urban landscape and compared to the normal night in Helsinki people seemed to behave much nicer in general.

The Dutch people also like to think that their language is really difficult to learn like us Finns. There are many exceptions in the Dutch grammar but still with a background of Swedish and English it is somewhat easy to guess the meaning of words. In general it can be said that it is rather easy to learn how to read Dutch but it takes more time to speak and write it properly.

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