“I don’t like the fact that the municipality builds big buildings in the city centre instead of green meeting places. People want meeting places,” says Veronica from Lithuania. “But you always have a love-hate relationship with the place you live in I think. Furthermore, I can live well in Rotterdam, I get the city feeling here and yet I can cycle from one side to the other in 30 minutes.” She now lives in the West. “So I often visit the Museum Quarter, especially the waterfront and the park. And I always attend the Rotterdam rooftop days in June, I really love that too.”
No longer an outsider
She compares Rotterdam to Maastricht, where she came in 2013 for her undergraduate degree. “Rotterdam has a bigger mix of people. That makes me feel more comfortable. In Maastricht, there is less of that. That made me feel different, like an outsider.” So after her time in Maastricht, she left the country again. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So then I moved to Ireland, where my mother lives. From there I looked for a job, anywhere in Europe actually. It was by chance that I found an internship with a Dutch consultancy company.”
Future
For now, she has other things on her mind. For instance, she just got a new position at Erasmus University and is looking very hard for a new home with her boyfriend. “Those are both new challenges. Especially looking for a house, you really need to start that on time when you are new here!”
She is also worried about the latest new political developments. “The gap between each other is widening. So I hope we all continue to be considerate of each other,” sighs Veronica. “Because at the end of the day, we are all human beings.”