Katerina Blogs: Christmas’s around the corner

Being an international student in Tilburg gives someone the unique experience of interacting with fellow students from around the world, experiencing different customs and traditions. This includes embracing new traditions, as well.

After having celebrated gloriously an intercultural Thanksgiving that included traditional American delicacies, Vietnamese dishes, Bulgarian dessert and of course Greek salad, now it was time for another custom-made student tradition: baking Christmas cookies!

Of course, what would have been a piece of cake for others, for me was the ultimate quest as I barely know how to boil water, but anyways! We all gathered together in what I like to call ‘Santa’s workshop’(aka a housewarming kitchen in the Verbs) to bake Christmas cookies from Germany and the United States, traditional Indonesian cake and an extremely sophisticated recipe by the world famous chef, Albert Heijn, executed by me!

I have to admit that this new tradition was so much fun! Listening to Christmas songs, decorating cookies and singing Christmas carols in six different languages! Sometimes, this is all you need to feel a place like your home away from home. The Christmas bliss was completed with watching the ‘traditional’ girls’ holiday movie, drinking wine and of course tasting the cookies!

By the way, I don’t know if you already received a present from Sinterklaas but I did! And I’d like to thank him and Zwarte Piet for the great surprise! For now, I am really looking forward to more new traditions!

[Katerina Petropoulou (25) studies Business Communication and Digital Media at Tilburg University and blogs for Univers.]