Diskurswelt.de

Saturday, I had my last exam: Distributed & Mobile Computing. Just like Economics and Advanced Databases it went pretty well. I don’t really know what to expect in the two management subjects, but that did not matter anymore that day, because we had a barbecue at our place. Chris was the hero of the day: he had finished his exams the week before and when I returned in company of some friends to our home, we were delighted to see that he had already lighted the barbecue. Awesome!

We spent all the afternoon and evening lying in the grass, enjoyed some of the good stuff, talked about all the world and his brother and did not leave the green before the last rays of sunlight were gone. After dark, we went to the last Erasmus party in city centre. Of course, it was in Anthony’s flat and almost everyone was there. Great fun!

Unfortunately, our friend and housemate Isma could not join us – he had left already on Friday due to another exam in Spain. See you, amigo.

Yesterday, there was a belated birthday party. Isa and Isa, Carmen and Julia, a friend of her from Valencia, Oscar and I went to in Berta’s flat in order to celebrate her birthday. Having a bit of pity with the only German in a room full of Spaniards, Oscar told me „Felix, you have to learn Spanish. You have one night!“
Anyway, it was great fun. Later on we went to The Mezz where we met Klaus, Stefan and Jeremy and danced to great rock songs (‚Killing in the Name‘ and the like) until they closed.

Anthony invited everyone to party in his flat in Talbot Street (Elodie lived there before) on Saturday. Everyone was supposed to wear something green, because of Paddy’s Day. I just have one green piece of clothing: a cap. Carmen just had a scarf. In order to increase the proportion of green, we decided to buy two green cans of pringles: one with good ol‘ sour cream, the other one lime-chilli flavour. Well, actually we bought them, because we were hungry and they were dirt-cheap… anyhow, other guests made a bigger effort.

The atmosphere was a bit strange (as so often people just talked in French) and I did not feel well due to a really sore throat. Hence, Berta, Isa, Carmen and I left quite early.

Instead of going home directly, we decided to go to the Fibber Magees, where Chris and Isma were supposed to arrive soon. We had a nice chat about some weird topics until we became witnesses of a situation that could have come straight from a movie scene: there was some argue between a man and a woman in the middle of the room. Apparently, the man had said something offending or had touched her. In turn, the woman decided to get rough. She took her pint glass and smashed it on the lad’s forehead. Bam! Thousands bits and pieces of broken glass flew through the room and the guy’s face was all covered in blood. It felt almost surreal. Of course, he wanted to take revenge, but people quickly separated them.

Phew! We looked at each other and were just shocked. Usually, it’s really nice and peaceful there.

Do you lack self-esteem? Want to feel really popular? Just bring a bag of nachos to a party. Thanks to Fernando, I was known as „Nacho Guy“ at Audrey’s birthday party on Saturday. We went to his new flat afterwards. Sadly, I promised not to write about the guy who danced with an ironing board. If someone asks, you did not hear this from me.

Last Monday Katharina arrived. She’s a friend of Frau Schmidt from Dresden. As she arrived two weeks after everyone else due to exams, I told her a bit about how the ITT works and helped her to find the right people to talk to. In the evening we went into town, where I introduced her to Isa and Chris. We just love Grand Canal Square after nightfall, so we went there together with Katharina. Well, she seemed to like it, too. Although there’s not really much to see and you won’t find it in a tourist guide, I think it’s really worth going there, because of the atmosphere. Difficult to describe, you better see for yourself.

Wednesday is salad day. Again we met at Carmen’s place. Chris and I prepared a superb salad: iceberg lettuce, cashew nuts, chicken breast fillet, feta cheese, cocktail tomatoes… anything your heart desires. I really could get used to having one proper meal per week. Even in the evening, when we went to the Captain Americas with the InCuSo and everyone ate as if he hadn’t seen any food for a whole week, I was still saturated. Yummi.

On Thursday we got all our exam results from the winter semester. Although my exam results were very much okay, I was a bit disappointed about some of them. In particular HRM, where I really wanted to get an A after all the effort I had put in the project. I asked my lecturer if he could give me some feedback on my exam to find out what went wrong.

Less than 24 hours later I met him in person. That’s really great service! He was extremely punctual („I don’t want to let a German wait.“), well-prepared and explained to me what he expected from his students (a lot) and made clear that most of my answers were rather good, but lacked details. I know exactly that I would have performed better in this respect if there was not the lack of preparation time due to the extraordinary circumstances. At least my English met his high standards. Still, I’m not too happy about the results. I really hope this semester’s exam timetable will be better.

Nevertheless, the weekend was great. Thibaut invited everyone to have a party in his house on Friday and I went to the Lemon with some friends on Saturday. Afterwards we said hello at Natalia and Manu’s birthday party in Tramway Court. Here’s a bunch of last week’s photos:

So much happened this week: a chaotic InCuSo meeting, lots of cooking and great meals, spontaneous socials, Spanish games, crêpes in the city and whatnot. But one event was out-standing.

On Monday, after the InCuSo meeting, we went for a pint to Metro. It was a bit boring until Isa had a really great idea: let’s have a nerdy party; we made plans. As Thursday’s lectures were cancelled due to an exam board meeting, we decided to meet at Isa’s place in the city centre on Wednesday to have the nerdiest party ever. I think we succeeded: a lot of fantasy and some really nice „costumes“, but see for yourself:

I hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I did.