Goedidag from Maastricht! - Positive Psychology

After spending an action-packed New Years in Amsterdam with all the CRAZY fireworks, I finally packed my bags on the 3rd of January to head to Maastricht, a 2.5 hour train ride south of the capital. Our arrival in Maastricht was greeted with a light shower of rain that would remain constant over the next couple of days, but even that didn't lessen my excitement - after so much anticipation I was finally about to start my Positive Psychology journey!

The main entrance to Maastricht trainstation

I caught a taxi to the guesthouse accommodation with another student, but as the taxi began to pull up to a hospital entrance we became unsure of how well our driver had understood our English directions. Strangely, it turned out that the student accommodation is located within the hospital itself, who knew! As I was staying in the shared accommodation I was expecting a room similar to that in a hostel, so therefore I was pleasantly surprised to find that my room was quite spacious. It even had a kitchenette and bathroom sink, as well as a desk, bookcase and wardrobe for each person.

My roommate arrived not long after with some others from my floor, most of which were also Australian. We later discovered there were also a few Americans from North Carolina doing courses over here, so it's been interesting to hear about their college experiences compared to our experiences in Australia.

Braving the cold and crazy cyclists on our first morning

The next morning started with a guided walk to one of the university campus buildings located in the city centre. Unlike most universities in Australia, such as in my hometown of Newcastle, the university buildings here are located throughout the whole city of Maastricht rather than being located together in a central campus setting. This means that to get from building to building you get a beautiful scenic view of Maastricht. It also means that if your building is located on the other side of town, as the psychology buildings are, then it can take up to an hour to walk there. The majority of students however overcome this in a very Dutch manner - bicycles!

My beautiful bike!

Our first Dutch bicycle experience was certainly eye-opening as many students hadn't ridden a bike since childhood, but despite this and after many wobbles and near misses, our group of close to forty cyclists managed to complete the hour round trip relatively unscathed. We must have looked quite a sight to the locals, crawling along at snails pace until we got our confidence up, and constantly forgetting that we needed to stick to the right side of the bicycle lane instead of the left.

Fellow shared accommodation students; Amy (left) and Kylie (right) with their brand new bikes

As we didn't have any activities scheduled for the weekend several of us set out to explore the town by night, and as most of the christmas lights are still out it all looked absolutely beautiful. Maastricht is home to over 350 bars, so we found the nightlife to be quite active and even came across a bachelor party, which was quite interesting to say the least...

This is about half of our pack of nervous cyclists on our way to uni for the first time - the rest were behind me!

By the time Monday rolled around we were all very excited for classes, and our first lecture didn't disappoint! Our crash course introduction to Positive Psychology left us all eager for the rest of the course, and it seems like our time here will be over before we know it! Our second day of lectures introduced us to mindfulness and meditation, which I was fascinated by as I have not personally meditated before and have always been intrigued by it. I found the experience very enlightening in regards to both learning about myself and my thought processes, as well as learning about the process of meditation itself and how it can be used to benefit other people.

Our first lecture in the brand new psychology building!

With upcoming trips to Belgium and Amsterdam I'm sure there will be many more adventures to come! Our first round of assignments is also impending and hopefully the first snowfall of our visit! I'll keep you all posted.

Amy Bartolacci

Amy Bartolacci is completing the Positve Psychology program at Maastricht University running this January 2013. Amy is in her 4th year of a Bachelor of Psychology at University of Newcastle.