Erasmus

My name is Peter Murphy and I am about to begin my fourth and final year of Industrial Design, studying at the National College of Art and Design, (N.C.A.D) Dublin, Ireland. I choose to partake in an Erasmus exchange, due to the very positive feedback we received from students, who had previously partook in an Erasmus exchange, in my college. As I live so close to college in Dublin, I have never lived away from home for a lengthy time, so I thought this to be a great opportunity for myself to experience new things and meet new people. I chose to do Erasmus in Finland, home of Industrial Design in my view and decided to take the full 5 months offered to me. I arrived in Finland on January 9th. I travelled over with three other students from my year. Two of which were to further their travels to study in Lapland University, and the other was to join me in Lahti. The college we attended was very organised and very welcoming. We had an introduction week set up for all the Erasmus students which gave us time to settle in and meet everyone. They had all kinds of events planned for us, Introduction to Finnish Culture and Cuisine, Camping, Snow hikes, Ice skat-ing, Ice swimming, Skiing and Snowboarding etc... We were also paired up with students from 1st year who were our ‘tutors’, they met us from the bus station and had our house box (provided by the student union, it had all nec-essary household items you need to cook, clean and sleep etc...) and keys to our apartments all ready for us. This made moving into our new accommodation very easy. Also, if there was any problems we could give our ‘tutors’ a call anytime and they would help us out. College started straight after the induction week. What really stands out in my mind about the college was the way they had the courses laid out. When I arrived I thought that all I would be doing was what I studied in Dublin, Industrial Design. However, along with my degree course, I could do an assortment of different courses form all other faculties in order to make up the required credits. This is definitely something I think N.C.A.D should do. Along with projects solely concerned with Industrial Design, I was doing courses in Furniture design, Packaging design, Wood workshop, Interior design, Photography, Finnish cuisine (learning how to cook finish foods), Finnish culture (learning the history of Finland), Survival Finnish (learning the Finnish language) and Architecture.We took a class trip to Milan during school holidays, to see the design week

This was fantastic, seeing all the sights Milan had to offer and all the design on show. Zona Tortona and the Salone were amazing. While we were there we met up with tutors form our home college in Dublin, this was good fun, great Craic had! During our stay some of us had the choice of travelling over to Genoa which I did with some friends. We contacted a guy on couchsurfing.com and were given the top floor of his apartment all to ourselves for the week, completely free of charge. We later met up with the others and travelled back to Finland.Another class trip brought us to Russia were we travelled to Moscow and St. Petersburg. There we saw a whole new culture and way of life. Russian architecture is incredible. The history of the country is unbelievable, from the time of the Tzars ruled and the time of Communist parties ruled, which are both very evident in the architecture all over its impressive streetscape. We saw the sights; The Moscow and St. Petersburg Underground that would put any man-sion, castle or palace to shame, the lavish decoration of some of the stations was breathtaking. We saw a Russian Circus, really impressive acrobats with little or no safety nets, The Kremlin, Lenin’s Tomb and of course we checked out the night life, pretty insane, no rules apply sort of stuff.During the Easter holidays myself and a friend travelled up to Rovaniemi, Lapland to our two friends from Dublin who were also partaking in an Erasmus exchange in Lapland University. There we had the best Craic; we skied and snowboarded whenever we got the chance. Up North in Finland is a whole new way of life. The weather is more extreme and the wildlife is incredible. We saw Arctic foxes and hares, reindeer and birds of prey, things which are alien to the shores of Ireland.

While in Rovaniemi we travelled further north to the Arctic Circle were we visited Santa. A first for me! He spoke some Irish which was great laugh. Unfortunately I didn’t get to witness the incredible Northern Lights. Although a friend of ours did and he took some fantastic photos. This is one of the reasons why I will definitely be returning to Finland in the near future.Back in Lahti, I finished up my studies and completed all my courses. Some of which were very interesting. Designing children’s furniture, which opens up a whole new world of Ergonomics? Designing protective rain covers for boats, boating being the number one pastime in Finland. Experimental design with a young designer form Helsinki, which was very interesting, we got the chance to experiment with a whole new range of products and materials and finally, Designing emergency response rescue products, to be used in areas of natural disasters, which was done with the packaging design department.My time in Finland made me very aware of how remote Ireland is compared to the rest of Europe. I feel we are socially isolated from mainland Europe’s people and history, something which can be explained due to us being an island perhaps? I met people from all around Europe. I felt their teachings and understandings of Europe’s history were far greater than anything I had ever learnt in school. Also allot of them were bilingual with sometimes knowing three or four different languages, fluently. I took this as something strange and novelbeing only able to speak, ashamedly, an embarrassing amount of Irish with a few French phrases thrown in for good measure.I met one girl in particular form Slovenia, who not only spoke her native language but spoke perfect English and Spanish from teachings in school and also spoke fluent Italian. She learnt her Italian from television at an early age, from the fact that she lives close to the border between Slovenia and Italy. Something that I think us Irish miss out on unfortunately.

To conclude, my Erasmus exchange was definitely a success and definitely something I would like to do again if I got the chance. It strengthened my knowledge in art and design and more importantly, opened my eyes to a whole new Europe.

Dedicated to Bucko, Slats and Sagatron3000... ya rides!