basically, everything is fantastic: i didn’t want to keep you hanging until the end, so that’s it. now let me bore you with the details. I live in this former nursery home just outside the centre of utrecht where everyone is nice and likely to be a heavy drinker, the walls are coloured and the floors wooden. All in all, i couldn’t be happier with my accomodation. I have a roomate, floris, and things are quite good: he’s going back home to germany tomorrow for a week, so tonight we drank accordingly. about 100-150 people live in this building, mostly spanish i am guessing, but i tend to hang out with my neighbours, whom happen to be lovely as well. it’s a very relaxed and… erm, party-oriented kind of place. VERY.

for visuals, i think there are pictures in my mobile uploads album; more are to come (just like she said).

as for uni, it’s brilliant. i’m about to enter the fourth week of classes and I have already had an exam and an assignment graded (they went well). next midterm exam is on tuesday and obviously i am ridiculously behind schedule: everything as per usual.
i’m taking two classes: one is called method engineering, and for the geekiest of you it’s basically another big shot of UML, the other one is “strategic organisation managing something something”, and it teaches you how to become the next steve jobs. except, we’re in the netherlands, so in a class that’s supposed to be all about computers, instead of practicing on computer-related companies we are just about to start a business game that will consist in running breweries. beer breweries! they even took us to an actual brewery in eindhoven last week so that we could fully understand how the production process works. yep, free drinks were included.

i don’t really care if i sound like a twat saying it, but i am sincere when i say that i have been long dreaming of this kind of environment, and I think i can safely state that i have never been this happy and enthusiast in a really, really long time. I had forgotten how it felt waking up in the morning (kinda) and can’t wait to do what you have to do. it still feels strange when a teacher calls me by name, but it it’s a warm reminder of what kind of learning system they have here: one that really works. this is what a real university should be like and I’m immensely grateful I’m part of it.

by the way, this is what i really like about the culture here: that everything is there for a reason, and if there is no reason, there’s nothing. what is the point of creating rules that aren’t necessary? if there’s a pause every 40/50 minutes of lecture is because it’s been proven that that is as wide as the attention span gets. if a bunch of international students are to arrive from the four corners of the globe, they are likely not to know that much about the dutch culture, so they give you an introductory lecture where this crazy adorable woman tells you, among other things, how the grading system works, who is the queen, how you address teachers and that professors are not on a higher level than you are, they just have a different role (!). if, on the other hand, it doesn’t really disturb anybody, why not treat yourself to a little fun in between lectures by improvising a tricyle race in the science departement’s main hall? (there’s definitely a picture of this in the cell phone album).

so there. everything makes sense and it’s mostly taken care of: all you have to do is study, think, work, exchange and produce. and studying, thinking, working and all the rest is what I have been doing for the majority of my time in the past three weeks; the workload is distributed all along the course, so we have assignments to do, papers to write (nice, kinda), deadlines to meet and so forth. it’s a full-time job and at the end of the day you just want to go to sleep or get drunk. or both, in tonight’s case. so, apologies again for being a stranger, but it’s all been a bit like that recently; i’m confident i’ll settle down, eventually. I just need to go with the flow for another while and get used to things.

i should get used to the weather as well, but I am a bit struggling with it. no seriously, they should have windmills here: some days the wind blows so hard you can barely walk! a floormate broke his arm falling off the bike, courtesy of the wind. and it’s COLD. VERY cold. don’t you expect anything less when you’ll be over visiting (because you will be).

I miss you all a hell of lot and believe me when I say i think about you people all the time. i don’t miss italy, but i miss you all. you know, it gets quite lonely at times, and more than once i wished i could just get on a plane and back the fuck off to italy, but i can’t. actually, I think i might be coming back the third week of march, but i’ll keep you posted about this.

there are so many other things i’d want to share with you, but now it’s almost 8 in the morning and I’d like some sleep. 🙂

vi penso, vi penso tantissimo. e anche voi dovreste pensarmi, o in alternativa pensate al signoraggio bancario primario e secondario sperovipiaccia ciao.