A monotonous autumn and a wonderful little reunion in Dublin

by Vesna

Hello, my dear friends!

How have you been?
I have to admit, my autumn has been quite dull. Rather ambitiously, I decided to finish all my exams during this term (I mean, really, it's time!), so I've been swamped with lectures, papers, studying, research and all those extremely exciting stuff... Since August, I've only managed to go to Croatia once, for a weekend, and I'm starting to miss my friends&family horribly (am really thankful for Skype lately).

I did however manage to escape for a longer weekend to England, about a month ago. Now, that was fantastic. My Viennese best-friend is from Reading and we went to visit her parents there. I must admit, I am quite an England-fan and I thouroughly enjoyed the whole experience - the brick houses, the "village green", I even insisted we go to the local pub named Bull&Chequers in Woodley (the suburb of Reading, where the said parents live). On my last day there, my friend's dad drove us to Windsor, where we admired the huge, ancient castle. Then we went on to see Eton ('cause it was on the way) - and that was scary! It looked like something from the Twilight Zone - the wonderful huge buildings, and nobody on the streets except well-groomed little boys in black tuxedo tail coats and starched white shirts. In the end he drove us to London, where he left us to first tour the major sights (Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Buckingham palace etc.), then have dinner in a quaint Chinese restaurant in SoHo and finally see a musical (I mean, we were in West End, how could we not?).

Life in Vienna continued as usual, mostly studying, only occasionally partying, and then, last Thursday, I set off in the early morning to the CEMS annual event in Dublin. This thing is (as you probably guessed) organised once a year for the CEMS students, where those who managed to fulfill all the requirements graduate, and everybody flocks to the Career Forum and the stands of our Corporate Partners. After everybody tries to charm the pants off of each other (mostly not literary), the main highlight is the party at the end.
First of all, I really enjoyed Dublin. I spent a lot of time walking around (even though the weather wasn't perfect), it's very comfortable, has some great sights and is extremely cultural (it gave the world such literary giants as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and George Bernard Shaw - and my hotel was in the street where Bram Stoker, the "father" of Dracula, lived). People are very sweet and they really seem to enjoy life.
In lovely company (with Jonathan and Tomek) I also visited the Guinness Storehouse, a "must-see" for all beer enthusiasts. OK, I'm not one of those, but I have friends who wouldn't have forgiven me, if I'd been so close and hadn't gone there.
Finally at the event, and even more so, at the party, I was extremely happy to meet many of the Stockholm crowd. Besides the afore-mentioned Dynamic Duo, there were Emma, Erica, Louise, Anna Stig, Felix Badura, Nikolai and Gabor - and maybe more, but I only managed to locate these in the drunken crowd. It was wonderful to finally be able to make fotos like this again:

Now, with my batteries charged (at least emotionally) it's back to some more studying, until the Christmas break.

Love to you all!