Ups and Downs

Finally I have the end of this chapter in sight. I am sure that I will finish it next week at the latest- a first draft that is. Of course I will have to put in a continuous effort in improving and completing it, as well as the others. But with the end so close, I finally feel a bit freer and actually look forward t the next chapter, which my supervisor says will be a lot easier than this one. He said the same thing about this chapter as compared to the previous one, so I am not so sure if I am going to believe him. But I am sure that a change of topic will do me good.

 

In our house things are weird at the moment. Our downstairs neighbour’s flat has been broken into last week. Which of course does not make us feel any safer here even though we decided to move in summer (when the lease is up). We try to comfort ourselves and make fun of the situation in bringing to our minds that all our electric appliances have German plugs and are quite old into the bargain and thus any potential burglars will not be too happy with what they might find in our flat. We just try to take things as they come at the moment, but more and more things seem to happen, that make it clear for us that we will not stay here beyond the PhD which would have been possible in the original plan. Now we keep ourselves going by telling us that it will not be longer than the end of next year before we finally can return home.

 

With this I am of course not trying to dissuade anybody from moving here. The University is excellent and the programmes of study and support are great. Only the circumstances do not seem to turn out right in our particular situation. We miss our friends, sociable outings, for which we do not seem to find the time or the money (yes even students are not excluded from the Credit Crunch), and our families, the garden at home, the countryside…We are just not made to live in the city and this was probably a very important lesson we learned here and something that helped us to decide where we want to live in the far away future. So even if the overall experience for us does not seem to be paradisiacal, we learned many things that will be important to us in future times.