The calamity was triggered by a fire that set ablaze 100 tons of fireworks. Oguzhan reminisces, `The surrounding houses were completely burnt down. We lost everything. My wife, then fiancée, Fulya and I had come together to the Netherlands but she went back due to some glitches in her visa. We had been corresponding with each other regularly and my first thoughts were about our letters....numbering nearly 200. I also lost my Master's thesis presentation and other related data.' On that fateful day, Oguzhan was camping with his friends in Belgium; they had persuaded him to accompany them. He received the news with shock, as he watched his street burn on television in Belgium. `Of course, everyone was telling me how lucky I was to be away', he adds.
Another enormous loss in the explosion is memories of his past. Oguzhan has been living on his own since he started university in Turkey, soon after his parents' divorce. He explains, `I took all my things wherever I went. Now I don't even have photographs of my childhood or adolescence.' For about a week, Oguzhan lived in intense anxiety about the fate of his house as the entire area was sealed off. To quell his unrest, Oguzhan visited the site and asked a policeman to reveal to him the state of his house - he was told that it had been reduced to rubble. `I was particularly saddened to see the charred remains of Fulya's piano,' he says poignantly.
Oguzhan appears resentful, but his bitterness stems from Dutch bureaucracy - a grouse expressed frequently by students interviewed in this column. He explains, `If you think having your house destroyed by a fire in a foreign country is nerve-wracking, you could not be more wrong. I found dealing with the `gemeente' of Enschede after the accident far more tumultuous. I have lost count of the number of times they simply misplaced my papers. I filled out the same application forms repeatedly. It felt like harassment. I was preoccupied with nothing but paperwork towards the end of my Master's and the first 7 months of my PhD. I used to think bureaucracy in Turkey was awful. But this experience was a real eye-opener.'
Mention the Dutch medical system and doctors, and Oguzhan can only shake his head in disapproval. He describes one of his unpleasant experiences with them. `Fulya had developed a skin allergy and the doctor prescribed a cream without a proper examination. We asked to see a specialist, but our request was denied. When we saw a specialist in Turkey, he conducted a few tests and told us it was not a skin allergy, but a stress-related reaction, and the prescribed cream had exacerbated it.'
Oguzhan's experience underscores the importance of a support group for foreign students - formed at the UT in December 2003 to enable students to vent to their feelings on the professional as well as personal front. The group does not claim to provide solutions but to make foreign students in distress feel less alienated. As for Oguzhan's future, he plans to leave Netherlands for good and pursue a Post-doc in the United States or Germany.
Hometown: Eskisehir, Turkey
Languages known: Turkish, English, some Dutch
Favorite food: Mediterranean
Favorite music: Gothic rock, Classical
Currently reading: Stephen Baxter's `Origin'
Best part of living in NL: Salary received by a PhD student
Worst part of living in NL: Medical services
