There are no solid national figures, but there is no longer any doubt: many students are at the end of their tether. Also in Maastricht. “Everything has to be done quickly, quickly, quickly. That’s the struggle of our generation.”

Sometimes, an issue gets under your skin. Whether it's because it’s personal or because you believe it to be the greatest concern of our time. These students have decided to dedicate their free time trying to improve the world in their own way.

It was only a year ago that he started to live by himself and took his first steps in the kitchen. Meanwhile Cas Renders, second-year student of Psychology, has been declared the winner of UM’s Next Top Chef, a cooking competition organised by catering company Albron. He created a recipe especially for this first-years’ edition for new cooks. Easy, tasty and cheap.

Rent, tuition fees, books, food, insurance, going out. Frightening, just how much money needs to be paid out every month when you first become a student. Fortunately there are many ways to economise. Here are some tips.

“I know that most of the teaching and mentor staff finds it difficult when a student confronts them with an extremely emotional story. What do you do when someone starts crying? Should you give him a hug, offer a tissue?” It’s the question that Pia Harbers, student advisor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, drops in her ten-minute talk during EDLAB’s teach-meet last Tuesday afternoon. Staff from all UM faculties and service centres discuss the issue of student well-being and how it affects them.

Why is it that so many young people today feel stressed, anxious, depressed and burned out? Many have tried to find an answer. The panellists and the audience at the Sphinx debate about the topic, Wednesday 29 May at Lumière, took another stab at it. Their conclusion: structural changes have to be made at Maastricht University.

 “I was quite anxious, going to a commemoration of Second World War victims as a German.” On 1 May 2011, Professor Martin Paul became president of UM. Three days later, on 4 May, he lay down a wreath on behalf of the university during the Remembrance of the Dead ceremony in Maastricht. He immediately felt welcome and was “taken in” by the atmosphere. “It was all about remembering, not about exclusion at all. Of course, it was a solemn event. There was a uniformed concert band – very Limburgish – and a men’s choir sang a German church song, giving it a cross-border touch. It was very special.” This month, Paul begins his third term as president of UM and he’s acting as guest editor of Observant. His theme: Europe.

He’s prepared to threaten Brussels with a Nexit. He’s even prepared to mean it, if the EU spins out of control. Ruud Burlet, political leader of the conservative Eurosceptic party Forum for Democracy (FvD) in Limburg, engages in a debate with EU expert Professor Mathieu Segers. The latter doesn’t like threats. And he certainly doesn’t like pretending.

From 24-26 May you get the chance to learn about Maastricht’s culture, history, monuments and food at the third edition of the Meet Maastricht Festival. New this year is a sleepover at the Museum aan het Vrijthof, a big opening party at the Cod...

You don't need to tell anyone at Maastricht University that problem-based learning has a lot of advantages. But will a democratic society work better because of it? Do students learn skills that will make them more involved citizens? Teun Dekker, professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences Education, believes so. To test this out, Observant asked him to discuss PBL, democracy and Europe with a number of his students.

MAASTRICHT. There is a new network for LGBT+ people in Maastricht. On Thursday 23 May UM Pride will have its launch event. “We want to be a safe space for the LGBT+ community at Maastricht University for both staff and students”, says initiative taker and law student Davide Muraro. UM Pride will focus on four themes: research and academics, education and training, support and welfare, and events.

Learning from the past. It is a cliché that is often neither here nor there, the writer and historian Ian Buruma will argue in his Schuman lecture The Wrong lessons from history, next week. And what about the endless comparisons with the Second World War then? Is it right to call Baudet a fascist? “It is not completely unfounded.”

For the third year in a row, Maastricht will celebrate the expression, creation, discussion and collaboration of feminist, women, trans and gender-non conforming people at Ladyfest on 4 and 5 May.

The Young Office has created a spacescape in the Bonnefanten Museum, at Bureau Europa you can immerse yourself in a world of conspiracy theorists, big data and artificial intelligence, and Marres is brimming with sculptures and moulded portraits of people in everyday situations. Museumnacht Maastricht is almost upon us once again. On Friday, 12 April from 20:00-1:00hrs, thirteen Maastricht art institutes will open their doors, for the fourth year in a row.

What it means to be European, how to deal with European history – both good and bad, collective memories and individual experiences. These are all themes that the storytellers who spoke at last Tuesday’s Storyline event ‘Europe: stories about love and hate’ touch upon in their work, whether it’s in writing, the spoken word or film. In cinema theatre Lumière they shared their thoughts.

MAASTRICHT. The opinions about Europe are – to put it mildly – divided. In the next Story-Line event on Tuesday 26 March storytellers will share their stories about love and hate in Europe. Guests include Mathieu Segers, professor of European Affairs at University College Maastricht, best-seller author Francesca Melandri and Dutch writer Lodewijk van Oord.

Three refugees recently received a special NWO grant to carry out research at the UM. Two of them - a Syrian neuroscientist and a Palestinian pharmacologist - tell their stories. The third laureate – Erman Atak from Turkey – preferred not to be interviewed.

To prepare students to be good citizens in a democratic society is the central concern of education for Teun Dekker, recently made first professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Europe. Dekker intended his inaugural lecture on Thursday, the 31^st of January, to be a “celebration of Liberal Arts education” and hence introduced his idea of the seven democratic virtues fostered by a Liberal Arts and Sciences education.

“Small steps and big dreams” illustrates perfectly the sentiment that the visitors could feel in  the room  4 of the Lumière Cinema on Saturday afternoon. The discussion regarding the Women in Film Post- #Metoo was part of the Shift Film Festival. This festival happens every year. Throughout conferences, discussion, movie screening and diverse activities the major and current societal and political shifts are put in the spotlights. Meet Maastricht, a cultural foundation gave the opportunity to students to participate  to  multiple events.

SBE dean and Danish citizen Peter Møllgaard became the new chairman of the Danish Council on Climate Change from 1 December. Despite recent ominous reports, Møllgaard believes in a good outcome. “I am a born optimist.”

On 14 June 2009, a missile hit the second floor of the house of 39-year-old Palestinian human rights activist Yamen Al Madhoun. Glass and stone splinters slightly injured two of his sisters. Whose missile that was, is still under investigation. Viole...

MAASTRICHT. The measure introduced by the Maastricht city council to only allow a maximum of 120 new rooms annually, the so-called 40-40-40 rule, has put the brakes on the proliferation of student housing. Other rules, such as the requirement of bicycle parking facilities and a shed for rubbish bags, have had much less effect. An evaluation report has been published regarding the property division policy, introduced in 2016. There is a considerable conflict of opinions. Where the students detest the measures for being too strict, neighbourhoods believe they should be even stricter.

The Muslim question – that’s the greatest challenge for Europe today, according to Maajid Nawaz, who gave the Tans lecture last Monday. Nawaz, co-author of Islam and the Future of Tolerance, believes that both Islam and Europe need to reform in order for us to build a society in which people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds can live together.

NETHERLANDS. The tax on dividends remains and the cabinet therefore has enough money to meet the demands of expats whose tax benefit is being decreased. But the expats remain vexed and threaten to go to court.

MAASTRICHT. At the age of sixteen, the British-Pakistani Maajid Nawaz joined Hizb ut Tahrir, a world-wide Islamist organisation that aims at establishing a caliphate. Nawaz becomes a leader, but eventually ends up in an Egyptian jail. After spending ...

What kind of waste do you think ends up in the river Maas most? Plastic? Glass? Actually, second- and third-year students of iArts, an interdisciplinary arts programme of Zuyd Hogeschool to which also UM teachers contribute, found a lot of clothing and textiles. Commissioned by Dutch Earth Week – which starts next Monday – to do a project about nomadic waste in the river, they designed a clothing line made from fabrics found in the Maas.

MAASTRICHT. Maastricht University has reopened discussions about container accommodation in Randwyck. This time it doesn't concern second-hand units from Amsterdam, but newly built sea containers by social enterprise Rendiz from Limburg.

MAASTRICHT. “It's a mess.” That’s what foreign students who have recently rented a room at the Annadal complex on the Brouwersweg say. The 217 additional rooms were renovated in no time during the summer. The objective was reached: handover on 1 September. But it isn’t ready. The inhabitants are dealing with a lot of dust and noise.

Anyone who enters the former nurses flat on the Annadal complex, will receive a friendly greeting from the builders. “Don't fall over the materials.” This person is sanding and painting, another is putting up shower units like you wou...

Dual inaugural lectures have happened before in Maastricht, but this is the first time that a ‘husband and wife’ present theirs in the same ceremony. The honour goes to German researchers Lisa and Alexander Brüggen, each of whom will accept a chair at the School of Business and Economics (SBE) tomorrow. “Some employees, who have worked at SBE for years, don't even know that we are a couple.”

MAASTRICHT SATURDAY NIGHT 20.30. In no more than 45 minutes these brave writers wrote a small article about PAS during the Observant writing workshop. You can read them here.

Doga Kordel (19) from Istanbul is going to study International Business. He chose Maastricht because he wanted to study in Europe and he didn’t want to make it too expensive. However, the most important reason is that he wants to learn a new la...

Mrinal Gupta (19) is a soccer player, but he’s thinking about  joining Saurus this year. His Inkom mentors got him really excited about rowing, he tells during the Sports Event at the Griend on Thursday. He came all the way from New Delhi ...

As she stands in front of the wall, ready to be photographed, Italian Lisa Scanu (18) tells about the tattoo under her left collarbone. The word zussen – Dutch for sisters – remembers her of her time in Costa Rica. It sounds crazy: a Dutc...

Jannick Neudert (24) from Germany, master International Business: “What I like about Maastricht? I arrived this morning and parked my car not far from SBE. I had to walk through parks to reach the faculty, I like the green atmosphere. I want to...

MAASTRICHT. Tuesday evening. As the clock strikes six, the front door of the student house at Vrijthof 27 rattles. Two bright eyes peep through the mail slot into the corridor. It’s rector Rianne Letschert, pressing the doorbell in vain. In June last year, she joined the students for dinner for the Observant series Guess who's coming to dinner?! They agreed to meet again in a year’s time to see how everyone has got on.

MAASTRICHT. How do storytellers relate to current pressing issues? When and why do writers, filmmakers and artists become activists? That’s the theme of the fourth Story-Line event, this Saturday in Lumiere Cinama. The English programme include...

MAASTRICHT. For one night, Marres will be transformed into a jungle, Bonnefanten Museum into a maze, and the Dominicanen bookstore into a trendy club. During the Maastricht Museum Night on 13 April, thirteen art institutes will not only open their do...

Academics have an ethical obligation to write articles for a broad audience, partly to counter others who are less than expert in the material or who wish to manipulate us. This is the standpoint of the Melbourne-based guest lecturer Simon Clews, who is giving writing workshops all week at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

For their new production Family Matters, student theatre association Alles is Drama embarks on a new adventure: musical theatre. In addition to sketches that they wrote themselves, each player will also perform a song. The overarching theme is family...

“Richard fights for the rights of prisoners in Burundi.” Under the impressive photo of this African human rights defender, with the Servaas Bridge in the background, visitors to the exhibition in the Faculty of Law's Lenculenhal can r...

As the meek face of morning

Peered, winking generously

Over the woken earth

Came a lonely boat,

Slaving to the tide

Soothing solemnly by

As a sailing thought

 Slowly making its way

 Across the pallid waters

 Of my liquid mind.

(Alfie Marsden-Smedley)

After studying law in England, Anuol Deng decided to return to his native soil in South Sudan. He was determined that, as a lawyer, he could make a contribution in his war-ravaged country. The Dutch sisters Femke and Ilse van Velzen trailed him for months, filming a documentary called A Haunting History. This Thursday afternoon, Deng will deliver the Theo van Boven lecture at the law faculty. The film will also be screened.

“He is not only an idol, he is my hero!”, were Professor Clemens van Blitterswijk’s words leaving the curious audience tempted to learn about the identity of this mystery man. His talk was one of the many that were given during TEDx Maastricht’s 5th anniversary, which took place this year at the MECC forum. This year’s theme ‘The process of inception’ was entertained by various speakers taking the stage, attempting to awe, inspire and motivate the public.

What do a surgeon, a chef and a hat maker have in common? They all work with their hands. As this was the theme of the Training the Senses held in the Brandweer Kantine last Wednesday, it made sense (pun intended) to invite exactly those people to be the hosts of the evening.

MAASTRICHT. Design thinking – it’s a concept many people are unfamiliar with. This is something Maastricht Disrupt – a think tank of about twelve people, among them UM students – wants to change. They are organising  the second edition of their annual conference on 23 and 24 September in the Cube Design Museum in Kerkrade.

We have no control over the weather, wrote Jacques Reiners in the programme booklet for PAS (Pleasure, Art and Science) Festival that took place last weekend. And that proved to be true: on Thursday and especially Friday evening, it rained cats and d...

With no fewer than 58 lectures, most of which by Maastricht scientists, there is something for everyone during the PAS (Pleasure, Arts and Science) Festival that will open its doors at the beginning of September. A preview by Observant.

MAASTRICHT. What does Maastricht have to offer in the cultural field? Young international people living in Maastricht can discover the city’s ‘hidden treasures’ at the new Meet Maastricht Festival from 26 until 28 May. There are ove...

MAASTRICHT. What do Grammy winner Jacob Collier, food trucks, and Maastricht University researchers have in common? They are all part of Cross Currents, a new festival held in the Sphinxkwartier on Saturday 13 May, and organised by Jazz Maastricht. Four art and science collaborations will be presented at the festival, which combines music performances with movie showings and presentations. One of them is a project on artificial intelligence and creativity.

MAASTRICHT. Ladyfest is a festival to celebrate, empower and inspire women. This worldwide concept will come to Maastricht for the first time at the Mandril Cultural Centre on 6 and 7 May. It’s a do-it-yourself festival, meaning that instead...

MAASTRICHT. Swooshing down a slide in the Bonnefanten Museum, lip-syncing to Elvis, or dancing to night-time sounds of nature. All of these are possible during the Maastricht Museum Night on Friday 7 April. Thirteen art institutions will open their doors for the evening. Visitors can go to the Muziekgieterij after 1 o'clock for the after-party.

MAASTRICHT. A beetroot up your nose will do wonders for a cold, tobacco improves a sore throat and mandrakes should always be picked by a dog. Folklore abounds in the historic herbal books on display at Realm of Herbs (Kruidenrijk), three mini-exhibitions curated by students and spread around Maastricht: Centre Céramique, the University Library and the Natural History Museum.

On Friday night, March 17th, all chairs are filled in the InnBetween, in anticipation of hearing Samar Yazbek talk about her two books, Woman in the Crossfire and the Crossing. Yazbek is originally a novelist but her desire to cover the Syrian conflict has lead her two books to hover half-way between journalism and fiction. They cover her experience with the Syrian resistance. This event is the third installment of Storytellers on Stage, an event organized by StoryLine.

MAASTRICHT. You know it’s Stukafest (the student room festival held last Thursday, 9 February) when you’re in a quiet residential street and suddenly a group of Germans on bikes comes to a screeching halt in front of a student building. &...

MAASTRICHT. When he was 16, singer-songwriter Joshua Oudendijk (19), first-year student of European Studies, performed in the Rockhal in the city of Luxemburg, one of the most important pop podiums there. A year later, he was at the Luxemburg festiva...

In the week of the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Professor Dirk de Schutter delves into Hannah Arendt’s take on the implications for our collective humanity that the Holocaust has left behind. Questions of truth and judgment, evil and responsibility are laid out in relation both to the past and to the present.

Visitors of the story festival China, Secret Stories, organised by Story-Line Maastricht in the Bonnefanten museum on Sunday 22 January, will receive a red envelope. The Chinese give these to family and friends at New Year and they usually contain mo...

MAASTRICHT. One play, four separate scenes, the connecting theme being love and how people deal with it. That is Confusions, written by Alan Ayckbourn, played on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 January by the Maastricht PhD Academy, directed by John Ramaek...

MAASTRICHT. An intimate crowd gathers inside the Innbetween, which is decorated with warm lighting and a traditional Christmas tree, for the Unicef Charity Concert Thursday night. People chat and eat Mexican milk cake before the concert begins, which...

MAASTRICHT. The SBE lecture hall is full on the evening of Wednesday 23 November. Security is tight, and the mood is sombre. Three speakers have been invited for a discussion that is “perhaps even more important to have now – now that the issue is out of the headlines again”, in the words of one of the organisers, Luca Bucken. The theme of the evening: ‘An honest conversation about Islam, terrorism, and extremism.’

The Collector - John Fowles Recommended for: Art, Literature, and Society students (FaSoS) ‘We are such stuff/  As dreams are made on; and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep.’ – Prospero in The Tempest (Act 4 Scene ...

MAASTRICHT. In a well-hidden corner of the Bonnefanten museum, a group of about thirty people gathers. As they collect their paper and charcoal, pencil or pen, the near-nude models take their places at the front. Hungarian artist Sándor Sinkó will le...

The “1970s living room” on the Bogaardenstraat was recently traded in for a hundred-year-old boilerhouse with style. But the new Lumière is not about to start showing James Bond films. Definitely not. What the cinema would like to do is cooperate in a more structural way with Maastricht University: “UM will have free use of Screen 2.”

How does one ‘be’ Dutch? Greg Shapiro, self-proclaimed ‘American Netherlander’ and comedian from Boom Chicago, Comedy Central, answers this question meticulously in his book How to be Dutch. Using quiz questions in the style of the official integration exam, Shapiro pokes fun at the reader, himself and especially the Dutch.

Maastricht University, celebrating its fortieth anniversary last week, went all out with an art and science tour, the PAS+ festival, boasting 150 activities. The wonderful weather helped; the performances in the gardens were very popular. As far as the lectures given by scientists were concerned – one spoke of Sjeng Tans’ legacy, another about EU crisis management, yet another about immune therapy for cancer: some of them were completely full ten minutes before they started, others could have done with a larger audience.

MAASTRICHT. A thousand people on yoga mats at the Tapijn barracks. That is the aim of the Good Life Yoga Maastricht foundation. On 21 June, International Yoga Day, the organisers want to show that yoga is not “woolly, boring or just sitting dow...

MAASTRICHT. Vagina, vagina, vagina. It wasn’t too long ago that uttering this word in the public sphere could induce sharp rebuke or embarrassment. Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues, doesn’t just say the word - it’s enti...

MAASTRICHT. The students of the Dutch National Student Orchestra rehearse ten hours a day during the days prior to their eleven-day tour ‘Vrij’. Together with pianist Arthur Jussen, the ninety members play pieces by Claude Debussy, Trevor Grahl, Ravel and Béla Bartók in various cities (in Maastricht on 14 February). Second-year Biomedical Sciences student Pieter Dijkstra (percussion) is one of them.

Keen to join in during the Maastricht Carnival? Be prepared. But don’t worry – Ad van Iterson, associate professor at the School of Business and Economics and Carnival – goer by birth, is here to help you through these weird three days and nights. “Get over your shyness, but don’t overdo it; don’t be too enthusiastic. The best way to get into the Maastricht groove is to shuffle a bit.”

It all started in 2002 with four people who started living in the squatted former grain storage facility at the Biesenwal 3 in Maastricht. Nowadays, the Landbouwbelang is home to fifteen people, a ‘free zone’ for art, music and culture and the set of many a festival, play and exhibition. Sina Maghami, a third-year Science Programme student, and Mareike Smolka, a research master’s student in Cultures of Arts, Science and Technology, are part of the community that lives there.

MAASTRICHT. The American Dream was their point of departure: what is it in fact, why does everyone want it? The students from drama association Alles is Drama subsequently improvised and elaborated on the theme. This resulted in a mix of made-up scen...

The Dutch pop band Het Goede Doel sang Sinterklaas, wie kent hem niet, (Sinterklaas, who doesn’t know him) in 1982. But this saintly man is not so well known outside the Netherlands and Belgium. In various parts of Europe, a children’s party is celebrated in or around the day of Saint Nicolas’s death (6 December), but often a lot less elaborately than in our region. Steamboat, putting your shoe out at night, making surprise gifts; what exactly are all those traditions? Observant has put together a summarised user guide.

MAASTRICHT. Every year the Boekenfestijn, a travelling event selling books at reduced prices that failed to be sold in stores, makes a stop in Maastricht. From November 26-29 the fair took place in the MECC, its yearly reoccurring venue.

MAASTRICHT. The image of two male lovers bathed in the teal-tinged light of a bedroom confronts the visitor when entering the Centre Céramique. With this image, Danish photographer Mads Nissen won the prize of Photo of the Year. It is part of the World Press Photo exhibition, which Céramique hosted until the 15th of November.

Have you ever heard of the Maastricht Quartier Latin? It is located in the area of the Bouillonstraat, Tongersestraat, Minderbroedersberg, Zwingelput and all the way up to the Tapijn barracks. On Saturday, 12 September, this area will be the beating heart of lectures about scientific research, for theatre, music, dance, film and visual arts. It is known as Parcours of Art and Science, or PAS. “A kind of tasting for science and art,” says Jacques Reiners, head of the organising body Studium Generale.

MAASTRICHT. Inkom wouldn’t be the same without Fabrizio. The Maastricht singer will make his appearance again during the Inkom opening event on the market this year. Spanish-Belgian singer Belle Pérez will follow him. No Dutch main act t...

“Writing starts with a sense of a tension, which gets into my head. A friend and writer once said to me: ‘I have that scream in my head and I need to get rid of it, in a manner that is as beautiful and elegant as possible.’” ...

When you move someplace new in your twenties, you make friends by getting drunk. In your thirties, you join a book club. The first book in my new Amsterdam group is called The Humans. It’s about a Cambridge maths professor whose body is possess...

MAASTRICHT. “Progress, ah! Progress, ah!” Performance artist Rachel Solomon is performing her interactive poem about politics on the little stage next to the campfire at the St Michel farm, just outside Maastricht. Her performance is part...

MAASTRICHT. ISN, the International Student Network, is sponsoring Bruis this year. The pop festival will take place at the Koompe, the sport’s area of the former Tapijn barracks on 4, 5, and 6 September 2015. Entrance is free.