Contemplating Brussels

I've spent almost five months in Brussels now. In the heart of Europe if you will. In the beginning, my ambitions regarding my blog were high, I wanted to write about the country without government and its linguistic disputes, I planned an entry on the Europe 2020 programme and I gave my annoyance about the city a form of a column in my mind. Five months and all I managed to do was to change the background of my blog (obviously inspired by a nostalgia for a summer in Finland). No in-depth analysis of the European politics, meetings with the EU bureaucrats (among which Commissioner Olli Rehn), the working of the Commission. To be honest, I don't know if I could give one. I hardly understand what my colleagues are doing.

I arrived here as a pro-European, I think I will leave as one as well but with a slightly more critical attitude. Not per se about the European Union and its politics but about the efficiency of the Commission. I see so many things that need to be improved but in this huge institution with over 20 000 employees even the most modest changes have to undergo a hierarchical and bureaucratic mechanism. New ideas and daring visions are transformed into bland proposals during this long process. At the Commission, I have really started appreciating the academic freedom and the liberty academic work can offer to ambitious researchers.

When in June I defended my PhD thesis, I was happy to get the burden of the thesis from my shoulders. But in September I will be back in academia, this time in Antwerp as a post-doctoral researcher. I'm pretty sure I will miss some aspects of the European institutions there but I'm also quite excited about the new research I can start from the scratch (indeed, from a scratch, any ideas?). And Antwerp, in the Flemish part of Belgium, is not quite like the Belgium you learn to know in Brussels. It's pretty, bicycle-friendly and clean - a city that has already entered the 21st century in contrast to Brussels that feels like a place you wouldn't be surprised to find on the other side of the Mediterranean... (Ok, that's it for my daily rant about the problems of Brussels!)

Arrivederci Firenze

The Economist wrote about PhD programmes a week ago and concluded that doing a PhD is waste of time. It was slightly discouraging to read such an article only a few days before I was finishing my thesis but, at the same time, I could only think that the last 3 and half years have been an excellent period in my life and living in Florence was an amazing experience. If I don't manage to translate my extended studies into economic benefits, at least I have had the opportunity to learn about Italian culture, admire painters from Giotto to Michelangelo, and visit dozens of beautiful Tuscan churches. So, I always have the plan B of becoming a tourist guide in Florence...

Of course, the whole autumn (my last one in Florence) was a huge nostalgic period when I was constantly thinking that I will have to give up my life in Florence that I had just now learnt to fully appreciate. Even those two months when I was the first one at the library at 8h30 when it opened (after a cappuccino and cornetto in San Domenico) and left around nine o'clock in the evening and hardly had the time to explore Florence, I was enjoying my stay.

During my last weekend, I strolled around the city to go through all my favourite spots of the city and walked up to San Miniato. It has the best view of Florence. The church itself is also amazing; so amazing that during one of the Florentine wars, Michelangelo protected the church with mattresses against the enemy's weapons. I sat inside for a while and in the comfortable isolation shed a few tears, out of happiness of having had such great last few months in Italy, beauty of the place and melancholy.

The last weeks in Florence were so busy that suddenly, via Cologne's Christmas market and Brussels, I was back in cold and snowy Finland, complaining about Senegalese tomatoes found in the supermarket and bad coffee found everywhere and drunk excessively. Later it was also snowing in Florence, something I've never seen. People who had stayed there posted images and Facebook comments on the chaos in the city. This video as well: