“Offering: Spanish. Looking for: Italian and/or Dutch”. It’s just one of the many posts on the Tandem Project Eindhoven Facebook group. The idea sprang from the mind of student Rachel van Berlo, who set up the project with fellow student Anqi Li. Li is a board member of international student association Cosmos. Van Berlo: “I did an Erasmus internship in Italy, where they had a similar project. Upon my return in the Netherlands, I wanted to keep practicing my Italian, so I decided to found a language exchange here, too.” She stresses the informal nature of the enterprise. “It’s all about practice apart from any language classes you might be taking. We encourage people to have a beer with their language partner.”

Many students have already shown an interest, witness the posts in the Facebook page. There has already been a meeting in the Common Room on May 2, where some 25 people met. The two students of Industrial Design have noticed that people are interested in learning Dutch especially. Van Berlo: “I’ve read a Cursor column on the subject, too: since so many Dutch people speak English, there’s not much room for practicing Dutch.”Her fellow student Anqi Li agrees. On the Facebook page, Dutch students are urged to team up with an international student.

The two don’t want to limit the project to TU/e necessarily. “Should people outside of TU/e be interested, they are free to join.” There will be another meeting Friday 6th of June at 8 pm at the Commonroom, but anyone can post a request before that time, of course.