# 12 Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM)

      Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Kralingsen Plas

      1. The Netherlands

Small country with a peculiar weather, get use to rain and sun in the same day and it is always windy. Your best friend will be the weather apps. 

The trains work very well therefore you can visit other cities in The Netherlands (Utrecht, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Delft, Den Haag, and others) and also visit Belgium ( Rotterdam – Brussels is around €20). Download the app 9292 or check the website 9292.nl to have access to train and trams time table in the entire country.

      2. Rotterdam

Rotterdam is a very nice city, with modern architecture and wonderful terraces to enjoy the sun. The city center is small, bike is the best transportation

2.1 ‘My’ best places

·         Kraligen Plas – to jogging, to have a drink or do a barbecue

·         Blaak Market – every Tuesday and Saturday

·         Cubic Houses – the icon of Rotterdam

·         Erasmus Bridge

·         Euromast 

Erasmus Bridge

2.2 Transports

Everyone has a bike, however don’t forget to buy a good locker otherwise you will get yours stolen. You can buy one in the fb groups like Rotterdam Commodity Market, by asking for it or replying to one of the innumerous posts. 

To use the tram you can buy in the central station or in other big stations an anonymous Ovi-chipkaard (check the website: https://www.ov-chipkaart.nl/aanvragen/), costs 7.5€ and you can put credit on it. It gives you cheaper travels otherwise you have to buy a single ticket that costs €3 (normally one travel with the ovi-chikaard costs around €1.5). 

2.3 Restaurants

As you may guess, The Netherlands is not the cheapest country, especially when compared to Portugal. Nevertheless the biggest difference is felt in the prices you pay in restaurants or clubs/bars. . 

You can find a huge variety of cuisines, but the classics are the Italian restaurants: VIP (Very Important Pizza), Happy Italy, Vapiano, and others. A cheap alternative is also enjoying the many fast food roulettes in the middle of the street. A especially note for the Rotterdam famous invention named Kapsalon that you can find in Kebab stands. For the ‘desert’, go near Blaak and try the poffertjes (mini pancakes) and also the typical cookie with sweet cream inside. 

2.4 Supermarkets

The biggest chain is Albert Heijn (very similar to the Pingo Doce in Portugal). However if you want cheaper supermarkets you have others like Aldi. But to buy fresh (and cheaper) vegetables and fruit go to the market every Tuesday and Saturday at Blaak, it is the best. 

2.5 Nightlife

Because we know study is not everything, it is crucial to talk a bit about the parties and the nightlife in this review. Despite from what you may think, we believe it is perfectly doable to combine the workload of the university with your mental sanity, meaning parties.

The key for your mental sanity to stay intact is to have a good CEMS Club, which you may be part of, if you want. This body is of outmost importance because they are the only ones to organize the social activities for you.

Concerning clubs/bars, there are a few interesting options in Rotterdam. In the end, you will spend the majority of your Tuesday’s nights in a club called BED, where ESN organized a weekly international party with very cheap beer.

Going in detail, the following activities were the ones we had during the semester:

·         Carnival in Cologne

·         Trip to Ireland (Dublin)

·         Cycling dinner

·         King’s day

·         Pub Crawl

·         Karaoke night

·         Marathon

·         Barbecue

·         Paintball

·         Several dinners and clubbing nights

Along with all this activities, we also had a few sustainable and corporate initiatives such as volunteering days with homeless or mental disable people and company presentations and tours.

A special note for King’s day - a ceremony that marks the birth of the King Willem-Alexander. This event happens every year on April 27th and is one of the most known parties in the Netherlands. It is a daily party, celebrated from morning till the time you can’t walk anymore and the craziest action takes place in Amsterdam. Definitely a most!

    King’s day in Amsterdam

      3. The University

Don’t be confused by the name of the faculty, “RSM”, vs the name of the university, “Erasmus”. Unlike what it may seem, the most famous university in Rotterdam is not named after the many students it receives in the Erasmus exchange program, rather by the Dutch Renaissance theologist Desiderius Erasmus. Within this huge university – with over 20,000 students – stands the business and management faculty, called RSM.

It is often heard by CEMS students throughout the world that NOVA and RSM are similar in that they are two of the most demanding universities of the program. Although I have not studied in all the others, from the 5 universities I attended throughout the past years, I have to admit that RSM is very good academically. 

I attended three courses: “Management Challenges in International Organizations” (the mandatory course), “Corporate Governance and Strategic Leadership” and “Climate Change Strategy Role Play”. They were all quite interesting, challenging and had excellent teachers. However, one of the only problems we faced at the university was the grading systems. Although their scale is from 1-10 (easy to convert into Nova’s scale of 1-20) it is extremely difficult to achieve their “cume laude” grade of 8.5, which is equivalent to Nova’s grade of 17.

3.1  International Business Projects (IBP)

Regarding the International Business Projects (IBP) at RSM there are around 12 different projects, grouped in teams of 4-5 students, typically from very different nationalities. The difference of RSM’s IBP system, to that of other schools, is that you do not get to select your favourite. You receive a survey, some months in advance, asking what subjects and industries you would prefer to work with, but you do not even know the companies/subjects until you get there. 

From the three of us who were in RSM last spring semester, we got IBP’s with Siemens (myself), CARE Nederland (Beatriz) and Berenschot (Miguel). I was extremely lucky because my group got to travel to Spain and the UK as part of the data collection process for our project and I had a great Academic and Company coach. However this is not always the case – feel free to contact us personally for more specific details regarding other projects.

Overall, I really enjoyed the university and I believe I speak for the three of us when I say that Rotterdam is a great choice of CEMS exchange city, particularly if you want a great “academic stamp” on your CV!

3.2 Campus

The University campus is amazing! Since 1 year ago they are improving the facilities and trying to increase the sustainability of the campus. As a result, it is super green, there are lakes everywhere and the atmosphere is cool. Some of the facilities include:

·         Starbucks

·         Sports Center (gym, football and tennis fields, classes…)

·         Several restaurants, including a totally renewed area.

·         Pub

·         Supermarket

In addition, if you are trying to find a place to live, I recommend you the U-building, also known as Hatta Building. This is a 15-floor building inside campus only for international students to live. It is cool because you have everything you need in a 5-minute walking distance from you and the environment is very friendly. Nevertheless I would try to ask in the CEMS Facebook group if someone is thinking about staying there because in my year we were we were 12 CEMS students living there and that obviously made the experience much better.

Erasmus University Campus

----

By Beatriz Gonçalves, Miguel Vale and Patricia Weigert,Class of 2013/2014

Term Abroad - Spring 2014

# 11 The Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIMC)

Kolkata, INDIA

India is an amazingly different country compared to any other. It’s immersed in culture, in traditions and costumes. And despite being all the same country, each state looks like a completely different country with their proper gastronomy and divergent ways of living.

Kolkata is located in the East and it is the capital of the state of West Bengal. Kolkata is super crowded and noisy, polluted and messy. I saw chickens being killed in the middle of the street, children showering in puddles left by the monsoons. It has around 5 million people. That’s a lot of people for such a small space! And during rush hours, there is a huge crowd everywhere.

IIMC Campus

Campus is 10 km away from the city center. To get to Park Street for instance (one of the best streets because of the “high” offer on bars and restaurants), it takes 1 hour which means around €3 by taxi or €0,50 by bus. If it is not rush hour though, it could take you half the time. To get to the airport it’s a longer distance and it may take around 2 hours. The most western area is South City because you can find some tall residential buildings and because the big shopping center is quite western. It is called South City Mall. It’s 45 min away from campus.

The IIMC Campus is supposed to be a place where you have everything you need to live the entire semester without having to go to the city. This is actually true, but you end up coming out of campus at least 2 times a week so you don’t feel claustrophobic.

The Campus has 5 or 6 residences, each one with their cantine. Then there are 2 or 3 cooperative stores where you can buy the basic stuff like shampoo, pens, toilet paper, chewing gum, water, cookies, charge your phone... Each one of the stores improvised in their own way. It’s nice and funny. You also have a “gym” (with 2 treadmills and several rusty machines), badminton and tennis courts. Undoubtedly, it’s a beautiful green campus, with many trees, seven huge lakes and a diverse bio ecosystem (all kinds of birds, many crows, squirrels, 1 monitor lizard, snakes, around 7 dogs, etc…). It is not a new campus though. Also, all the school facilities are within campus walls, so you can either buy a bike and take 2/3 minutes from your room to the classrooms or go by foot and take 7 minutes instead. :)

Indian students are incredibly warm people. Always willing to help you in whatever you need, to share whatever they have… And they are crazy fun! Either they study hard, and get extremely focused, or they party like animals. They don’t really value sleeping time. It is important to understand that Indian people studying at IIMC are extremely educated and ambitious. During the Fall term that I was at IIMC, we were 13 CEMS students and around 70 exchange students. We all felt welcome by them.

Of course, there are also some negative points. For example, for me, it was really hard to get used to not having a kitchen to cook and have to eat the cantine’s food everyday. Either that or you order pizza from Domino’s. In special dates, they do make an effort to give us better food, but still it is greasy and sometimes, too spicy.

CEMS students were all given rooms in the best residence (newest building on campus – Lake View Hostel, LVH). However, there were some people that stayed on the top floor (me) and were unlucky. Two of us had infiltration problems during the monsoon period (until late October). This led to humidity in the room, and a weird smell as well as mold in the walls. But you learn how to avoid it… Keep the window open, don’t turn your fan off! In the 2 corridors of girls at LVH (which corresponds to 24 rooms), only 2 rooms had these problems. In other residences, the proportion was bigger, which is good news for CEMS students because we usually accommodate them at LVH. Another huge challenge that arose: bed bugs. Never in my life I had this constant contact with bed bugs. And we could ask the “plague killer” to come and disinfect our rooms, but they would be back again a couple of days later. The way of overcoming this is to put at least 2 layers of bed sheets in our mattresses. We only discovered this after one month at LVH, so we managed to get many stings until then.

Restaurants

West Bengal Cuisine: Peter Cat (the first restaurant I went to, good service, good food), Teej (vegetarian), Mirch Masala (excellent food), 6 Ballygunge Place

Western Cuisine (after some time only having spicy and saucy food, you’ll feel like having a good steak or some nice pasta): Taj Hotel (try either the dinner buffet or the champagne brunch), The Oberoi Hotel, Fire and Ice (Italian)

Nightlife

Some place else (kind of Irish pub with live music)

Roxy (club)

Street Markets

New Market (the biggest market), Behala Market, Gariahat Market

What to wear?

Girls should cover their legs and do not walk around with cleavages. To be honest, I never felt afraid, but you should avoid danger at all cost. There is no need of facilitating. Guys should not have a problem though. Anyways, don’t walk around alone, try to be at least 2 or 3.

Weather

I arrived on the 27^th of August and the campus was flooded. The 7 lakes were 2 only and we had to be transported by car from building to building. This was not very efficient because we spent time with simple things such as waiting for a car to take us to the other side. And we could not put our feet in the water because it had harmful chemicals. Despite that, temperature was high, and until late October, independently of the time of the day, you are always sweating because humidity makes 35ºC feel like 40ºC. Weather in end of October and November was awesome. Like summer in Portugal. And probably in December you already needed a light jacket.

Courses

Besides the mandatory course of Global Strategic Management (worth 6 ECTS), we could choose between the following courses (all worth 4 ECTS):

Bank Management     

Marketing to Bottom of Pyramid Consumers

Business Transformation with Social Media 

Corporate Social Irresponsibility        

Country Risk Analysis

Economics of Corporate Sustainability          

Entrepreneurship in NGO       

Ethics and Values in International Business 

Financial Risk Management  

Human Resource Management in MNC        

Innovation in Marketing Theory and Practice

Leadership Excellence: Insights from the Indian Ethos         

Management Control System

Management Of Self in Organizations

I strongly recommend the course “Management of Self in Organizations”. You will have the chance to have one of the most awesome teachers in a super interesting course.

Travelling

There is so much richness to the Indian culture that it is almost mandatory to visit every state. Rajasthan is one of the most beautiful and interesting states. Naming some of the cities in Rajasthan, there is Agra (where Taj Mahal is), Udaipur, Jodhpur and Jaipur. Then you have the state of Kerala that you should definitely travel to and try the Backwaters experience. Also Mumbai and the amazing Goa are travel destinations.

The Himalayas trekking is an awesome experience. Don’t climb too fast though, and be careful with the altitude sickness!

In Thailand, you have Koh Phi Phi (islands) that are so much fun. I had such a good time there and it is sooo beautiful! Koh Phi Phi is the perfect scenario for diving, canoeing, thai massages for 3€, and those idealistic movie late hour beach parties. If you are looking for some paradisiac islands, some time to relax, a good alternative is the Andaman Islands.

-----

By Paula Costa, Class of 2013/2014

Term Abroad - Fall 2013