Winter is now in its most miserable month and the TU’s warm-country foreign students are really starting to feel the cold. The writer, a Brazilian MSc student, asked some fellow ‘warm-blooded’ students for some tips on surviving cold February in Delft.
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If adopting and adapting to a new lifestyle, new eating habits, new opening schedules for shops and so on wasn’t enough of a burden, now, we newcomers from countries where cold weather isn’t really an issue, must endure the freezing, windy and soaking wet Dutch winter. The first thing most warm-country foreign students notice about living in a place where winter is truly cold is that your daily professional and personal timing changes a lot. The deadly combination of dark mornings and freezing temperatures can really work against your sense of punctuality. Now, in the middle of winter, the preparation process for leaving our cozy homes and heading for the TU has turned into a whole new specific part of our day. James Duplessis, an exchange student from Brisbane, Australia, says: ,,Back home, it used to take me less than 20 minutes from being awakened by my alarm clock to leaving home after breakfast. I was used to wearing just a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers. Here, it takes almost the same 20 minutes just to get dressed. My days now start four times earlier just so I can have time to put on all the clothing I need to go out in the cold.”
Controlling your body with all these new and rather heavy layers of clothing on you has become an issue in our lives as well. Try answering a mobile phone while wearing those nice ultra-thick, wind-proof gloves you bought at Hema so you could bike to the university without losing a few frost-bitten fingers on the way. Or how about trying to turn your head to check for oncoming cars before crossing the street when you’ve got a fleece scarf longer than your long intestine wrapped and knotted around your neck? Wearing winter clothes definitely requires some training and getting used to. Of course, you can always do some winter clothes training in the privacy of your home, unless you think that’s too weird.
Having already established a loving relationship with your bike, the winter requires you to add another object of daily use to your circle of ‘intimate friendships’: the backpack. That tale you’ve heard about how you can experience four seasons in one day in the Netherlands is true, even in the winter. No matter how many times you check the updated weather forecast on the Internet, weather surprises are always in store for you here. So you have to be ready to adapt yourself to these mutating climatic situations, and that’s where your dear backpack comes into play. It should be with you at all times and stuffed with a range of all-weather wear, from a raincoat to an extra-warm hat.
Feeling dead tired after your weekly shopping in the super-market? Feeling an overwhelming desire to close your eyes and take a nap inside the warm, dark lecture hall during a slide presentation? Don’t worry, you haven’t been bitten by a strange Dutch sleep-sickness bug and don’t blame yourself for being lazy. Blame the cold weather. Keeping things (including your body) warm is about storing thermal energy, and in the winter much of the energy you store is used to keep your body warm, as well as for studying, biking and so on. Even after more than a year in Delft, Sergio Moreno, an MSc student from Colombia, says: ,,I almost faint when I return home from school sometimes.” Moreno agrees that it’s wise to plan your meals in away that gives you more “things to burn” throughout your day, like pasta and cereal bars. All this extra winter eating may leave you with a different silhouette come spring, but you’ll most certainly be better prepared for these cold weather days, when you’ve got to spend twice the energy you normally do in your warm home country.
Finally, for students who enjoy outdoor activities but are upset at having to cancel them because of the cold weather, a helpful tip comes from Delft’s rugby team. No, you don’t necessarily have to join the team and get pounded into the frozen turf to stay warm, nor do you have to spend loads of money in buying a brand new, light-weight thermal suit that’ll leave you looking like an urban scuba-diver. Mark Gathaya, an international student from Kenya and rugby team member, says a good, cheap solution for the cold is found in your local drugstore: Baby-oil. Rubbing baby-oil on the parts of your skin directly exposed to the cold helps you retain your body heat. ,,However, it’s clever to remember to use only water-soluble baby-oils,” Mark says, ,,otherwise you’ll be slick for days.”
Winter is now in its most miserable month and the TU’s warm-country foreign students are really starting to feel the cold. The writer, a Brazilian MSc student, asked some fellow ‘warm-blooded’ students for some tips on surviving cold February in Delft.
If adopting and adapting to a new lifestyle, new eating habits, new opening schedules for shops and so on wasn’t enough of a burden, now, we newcomers from countries where cold weather isn’t really an issue, must endure the freezing, windy and soaking wet Dutch winter. The first thing most warm-country foreign students notice about living in a place where winter is truly cold is that your daily professional and personal timing changes a lot. The deadly combination of dark mornings and freezing temperatures can really work against your sense of punctuality. Now, in the middle of winter, the preparation process for leaving our cozy homes and heading for the TU has turned into a whole new specific part of our day. James Duplessis, an exchange student from Brisbane, Australia, says: ,,Back home, it used to take me less than 20 minutes from being awakened by my alarm clock to leaving home after breakfast. I was used to wearing just a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers. Here, it takes almost the same 20 minutes just to get dressed. My days now start four times earlier just so I can have time to put on all the clothing I need to go out in the cold.”
Controlling your body with all these new and rather heavy layers of clothing on you has become an issue in our lives as well. Try answering a mobile phone while wearing those nice ultra-thick, wind-proof gloves you bought at Hema so you could bike to the university without losing a few frost-bitten fingers on the way. Or how about trying to turn your head to check for oncoming cars before crossing the street when you’ve got a fleece scarf longer than your long intestine wrapped and knotted around your neck? Wearing winter clothes definitely requires some training and getting used to. Of course, you can always do some winter clothes training in the privacy of your home, unless you think that’s too weird.
Having already established a loving relationship with your bike, the winter requires you to add another object of daily use to your circle of ‘intimate friendships’: the backpack. That tale you’ve heard about how you can experience four seasons in one day in the Netherlands is true, even in the winter. No matter how many times you check the updated weather forecast on the Internet, weather surprises are always in store for you here. So you have to be ready to adapt yourself to these mutating climatic situations, and that’s where your dear backpack comes into play. It should be with you at all times and stuffed with a range of all-weather wear, from a raincoat to an extra-warm hat.
Feeling dead tired after your weekly shopping in the super-market? Feeling an overwhelming desire to close your eyes and take a nap inside the warm, dark lecture hall during a slide presentation? Don’t worry, you haven’t been bitten by a strange Dutch sleep-sickness bug and don’t blame yourself for being lazy. Blame the cold weather. Keeping things (including your body) warm is about storing thermal energy, and in the winter much of the energy you store is used to keep your body warm, as well as for studying, biking and so on. Even after more than a year in Delft, Sergio Moreno, an MSc student from Colombia, says: ,,I almost faint when I return home from school sometimes.” Moreno agrees that it’s wise to plan your meals in away that gives you more “things to burn” throughout your day, like pasta and cereal bars. All this extra winter eating may leave you with a different silhouette come spring, but you’ll most certainly be better prepared for these cold weather days, when you’ve got to spend twice the energy you normally do in your warm home country.
Finally, for students who enjoy outdoor activities but are upset at having to cancel them because of the cold weather, a helpful tip comes from Delft’s rugby team. No, you don’t necessarily have to join the team and get pounded into the frozen turf to stay warm, nor do you have to spend loads of money in buying a brand new, light-weight thermal suit that’ll leave you looking like an urban scuba-diver. Mark Gathaya, an international student from Kenya and rugby team member, says a good, cheap solution for the cold is found in your local drugstore: Baby-oil. Rubbing baby-oil on the parts of your skin directly exposed to the cold helps you retain your body heat. ,,However, it’s clever to remember to use only water-soluble baby-oils,” Mark says, ,,otherwise you’ll be slick for days.”
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