By Kristen Pinto
On the first day of fall in Boston, the best way to spend the day is enjoying one of America’s oldest and favorite past times – watching a good ol’ Red Sox game.
For Bram Lamberts, walking down Yawkey Way with a Fenway Frank in hand, this first-time experience was truly unforgettable.
Lamberts is a senior geography major who is spending the semester studying at FSU. Thousands of miles separate him from his home, all the way across the ocean in the oldest city in The Netherlands, Mijmegen.
“It was awesome,” he said. “The atmosphere at Fenway Park was amazing. Even though they lost, it was by far the best experience I’ve had here yet.”
Lamberts grew up in a small town – almost small enough to be called a village – in The Netherlands, called Habert. Now, he is a senior in college, enrolled at Radboud University in Mijmegen.
What he loves the most about the United States is how much there is to see and do. Holland is a very small country and everything here is just “huge,” he said.
This marks Lamberts’s (fth trip to the United States, but his first time exploring the east coast. Lamberts said that he loves America so much that he hopes to come back as much as he can.
“I came here with my parents and younger brother on vacation – to the west mainly,” he said. “Pretty much every state west of Colorado. I was traveling around there a lot and seeing lots of great stuff, and that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to come back to the US, because of all the great experiences.”
Lamberts found FSU through a program at his school and chose it for its proximity to Boston, and the fact that he had never seen the east coast before.
Lamberts is meeting new people each day, but has made a core group of friends here at school who have been taking him on different adventures around the Boston area. He went apple picking for the first time, and discovered that he likes fro-yo as well.
There are still many things he hopes to experience before he leaves at the end of the semester.
“I hope to watch games for all of the sports teams, like the Bruins, Celtics, and Patriots,” he said. “I just want to see more of Boston.”
Living in a dorm room with another person was a big change for Lamberts. At his college back home, everybody lives off campus in houses in the city where they can each have their own rooms.
“It’s different that most people here live on campus,” he said. “You go to the caf every day and get food
instead of cooking it yourself.”
Lamberts is making the most of his time here at FSU, and on the east coast in general.
“I miss my girlfriend and my friends,” he said. “But I am so busy here that I don’t have the time to miss home much.”
He is excited to spend his frst holidays here in the states, and many of his friends have eagerly invited him to join them for their Thanksgiving dinners. At Christmastime, right after the semester ends, his girlfriend is coming to visit for a week, and he can’t wait to show her all of the cool things he has gotten to experience here.
“I definitely plan on coming back someday after I leave,” Lamberts said. “I love it here.”