I’m a massage therapist and I work in the afternoon in the football school in Leeuwarden. Children between the ages of 7 and 16 train in this football school. In the morning I have to go to different workplaces to learn about methods of physiotherapy.

Last week I was in ROC Friese Poort on a shiatsu lesson, and in Sneek in TopFysio. The word physiotherapy means something different here. They know what hydrotherapy is but they don’t know electrotherapy. One of the therapists told me, he has learnt about it, but he only has vague memories.

There is a method called dry needling. It’s similar to acupuncture. Its effect lasts for a month and it can be used on every muscle knot but the patients don’t like it very much because it’s very painful. You don’t need a referral for it.

The other method, I was shown is the manual therapy. The other word for it is chiropractic. It’s used in case of spinal complaints. I think it’s scary and dangerous, if the chiropractor makes a mistake.

Our real workplace is the football school, I’m here with Toni, and we work together. I was very happy about this workplace, on the one hand because of the children on the other hand because of football.

We have to work mostly with the couches. They are very kind; they tell us everything we want to know. At first we had to watch the coach how he treats injuries and we had to memorize, which kid had which injury, and how they got better.

Now we can do the massage, and I really enjoy it. The techniques are a bit different from the techniques used in the hospital, but there are many similarities too. It was amazing to see the techniques I learnt in Hungary during the work of the coach.

We’re learning many interesting techniques. We make friends with the children, they are very kind, and they teach us Dutch. The first word they taught us was regenboog. I don’t know why they chose it.

I’m sorry that I can spend only 3 weeks here.

Magdi