“Does your sun never set?”
“I can’t believe how disciplined people are at VU if you observe the silence in the library”, “Dutch people seem to be so energetic and always busy, nobody sits around doing nothing”, “How on earth can you guys enjoy lunch and rest if you only have such short lunch breaks?”, “what can we do with our cash Euros if everybody in the Netherlands seems to pay with cards?”, “does your sun never set?”
These are just some of the remarks made and questions raised while Mekky and I welcomed our 15 Bhutanese visitors from the Royal Thimphu College in Bhutan. They were visiting the Netherlands to follow different programmes of the VU Summer School. All of them made use of Erasmus+ funding for staff exchange. Five of our visitors are also involved in the HAPPY Project, which gave us the chance to finally meet part of the HAPPY team in-person after 2 years of online collaboration.
