It’s like everywhere I look, everything’s turning to shit.

I’m starting to consider, long-term, getting more involved in the Labour Party again. If only to try and do something to improve this current fuck up of a country.

Please excuse the bad language. I’m mad.

Other than that, it was a most pleasant end-of-exams celebration. I’d originally booked to spend a whole week there, until plans changed for various reasons. But I still got to spend a really nice evening at Marieke’s in Utrecht on Monday – Leonie and Anouk were there too, and we had a fun meal using a piece of equipment called (I think) a ‘gourmettapparaat’ (sort of like a barbecue, except indoors and a lot smaller and with shovels). And on Tuesday night I stayed at casa della Abels in Gouda, where we cooked dinner, watched a political debate, and spoke Dutch all day long. And even the mosquitos left me alone this time!

Thankfully I left the country before the Netherlands voted in its wisdom to make their far-right BNP-lite party the second strongest Dutch party in the European parliament. Apparently we foreigners are not welkom at the moment. And by staying an extra day instead of leaving the day before the election, I’d have run the risk of being driven out of the country by the crazed pitchfork-carrying PVV-voting mob.

For reference, this is the logo of the PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid / Freedom Party):

They could at least try to avoid the obvious allusion to another famous European fascist party [nsfw?].

How could anybody vote for a party led by two such fine specimen as these? Meet Barry “Madman” Madlener and Geert “Pretty Much A Belgian Anyway So Why Didn’t You Just Stay There” Wilders:

So the Netherlands’ second largest representation in Brussels is now led by an ex-estate agent who looks like Toad of Toad Hall and another man with a victim complex worse than Hitler’s and a face like a melted waxwork. Nightmare. How can I moan about English people being stupid now that the Dutch have gone one better? I’ll have to pin all my hopes on ze Germans.

ANYWAY, I got the job! From September I shall be making as much use as possible of my right to work anywhere I like in the EU. I’ve got to do so while I still can, because Britain probably won’t be a member of it any more in ten or so years’ time. So it looks like I’ll be swanning off on a second year abroad, except this time I actually want to go. The woman at the translation agency I’ll be working for literally asked me when I wanted to start, and because of the plans I already have and the fact that I just want a summer break for once, I said September. She’ll help me find somewhere to live, hopefully/probably in Utrecht, which is one difficult job made considerably more straightforward. The pay’s not amazing, but if all I wanted to do was get rich, then for a start I wouldn’t take a job as a translator, and nor would I just up sticks and leave London, because this is where the money is. Oh yeah, and I was quite proud of myself too, because the entire interview was conducted in Dutch.

So, yes. In other news, I get my degree results on Thursday. And then I’ll leave London two days later, with no idea when I’ll be returning. I’m really still not used to not being a student any more.

1. Belgian police are possibly the least intimidating police in the world. Some of them got on the train when it crossed the Dutch-Belgian border (which is practically non-existent anyway, so why bother?) and I was quite unimpressed. They don’t wear big scary kick-you-in-the-balls boots, they don’t carry truncheons, and I didn’t see any kind of individual identification on them. They politely asked to see my passport, I showed them and they went on their way. I expect if I’d told them to get lost they’d have just bowed slightly and apologised for the inconvenience.

2. It turns out that the famed French-Dutch bilingualism of Brussels is just a complete lie. I went into one of the station’s several cafes and asked for a koffie verkeerd and the woman behind the counter just stared at me like I’d just spoken in tongues. Then she replied in English. I just pretended after that not to be English, so continued the conversation in Dutch. She continued equally stubbornly in English. It was quite a ridiculous conversation, really.

3. From the admittedly limited bits I saw from the train(s), Brussels – in fact, most of Belgium – isn’t really that nice. It is quite a shock when you cross the border and see the deterioration in general standards of housing and the public facilities such as train stations. Most of the stations and some of the other trains look like relics from the 1950s. Brussel Zuid station is boring and horrible, even for a train station. All the people look miserable. I’m not exactly excited about spending a week there in August.

And in other news, from September I’ll be working as a junior translator for a company in Zeist, near Utrecht, in the Netherlands. More on that later… now I’m off to vote. Labour, for the record: i. I can’t justify voting Green when they’re so anti-Europe, ii. I don’t want to contribute to the anti-Labour vote if it’s motivated by the stupid expenses rubbish, and iii. the election leader of Labour’s Dutch sister party, the PvdA (Partij van de Arbeid) really impressed me during the TV debate between the six parties on Tuesday night and reminded me what Labour could be like if it managed to cut the crap and focus on what’s important.

I started reading a book yesterday, Het Diner by Herman Koch. It’s in Dutch, but it’s a pleasure to read. I can’t describe how nice it is to pick up a book and read it because I want to, not because I have to. I can put it down and pick it up whenever I feel like it, because I haven’t got to read it by a specific date or discuss it or have any serious thoughts about it. I think this could be the start of a long overdue relationship between me and reading for pleasure.

After I get back from the Netherlands on Wednesday night I will have another week and a half to enjoy myself down in London, and then on the 13th will be heading back up to Nottingham for my final stint (hopefully) at exam marking. Unfortunately, the first day of the job is the day after my birthday… ah well. I can more than make up for that in the meantime.

Now I’ve just got to wait for the results…

Grimmelshausen exam this morning. It went neither brilliantly nor awfully, but again I came out feeling satisfied with it. Perhaps it’s just because I’m aiming so low: it’d have to go really seriously bad for me to actually worry about it dragging my average down, so as long as I avoid disaster in each exam, I should be okay. And although I am notoriously incapable of predicting how well I’ve done in exams, I don’t realistically think I could have done any better with the mood I’m in and the inability to revise that I’m experiencing.

Anyway, in other news, I’ve got an interview in the Netherlands next Wednesday morning for a position as a junior translator at an agency in a small town called Zeist, near the city of Utrecht. Zeist, incidentally, was the place I did the language course two years ago, and the place seems to have some kind of magnetic pull on me ever since. It’s bizarre: a bit like going repeatedly to Market Harborough for whatever reason. I was originally due to go out to Nederland tomorrow afternoon, but for various reasons I’ve decided not to, chief among them the fact that I’m so exhausted at the moment I can barely even think about picking up a book to revise, let alone embarking on a seven-hour Eurostar-and-Intercity trek when I could just come home and sleep for days, which is how I currently plan to celebrate the end of my days as a student.

Totally didn’t know what language to converse in when I phoned the woman up at this agency I’m going to next Wednesday: she’s German, I’ve been corresponding with the third-party agency until now in English, her staff are mostly Dutch, and the job would be translating German and Dutch texts into English. Obviously, my preference would’ve been to do it all in English, then in German, and (because it is my weakest language) Dutch would’ve been my least-ideal language of choice. Anyway, she picked up the phone and did her usual Dutch-telephone-greeting and after that I had little choice but to continue the conversation in Dutch. It would’ve sounded pretty silly, after all, to phone up to discuss an interview for a position as a translator and then have to say “is it okay if we talk in English?”

Right. Expressionism. Film. Leni Riefenstahl. Nazis. Spectacle. Documentary? Weimar. Weimarrrrrgh.

Two exams in the next 45 hours, argh.

Although I did panic when I turned the paper over and the questions were structurally quite different to what I had expected. It was one of those “oh no, I can’t answer any of these” moments. But once I started writing it seemed to fall into place for both of the answers, so I came out of the exam feeling okay. Watching most of the other people coming out and celebrating finishing their final exam was a bit galling, though. Finishing on May 27th is unusually late for UCL – in other years I’m usually finished by around the 15th. I thought finishing late would be beneficial, that it would give me more time to structure my revision and space out my work. In the event, it’s just given me more time to do nothing and feel bad about it.

Four more days, two more exams (Grimmelshausen on Tuesday and Film on Wednesday), and then freedom…