What, really, that's Easter over with already?
Hmm, time... it's an odd concept, isn't it? It passes surprisingly quickly, and points in time that seemed a long way off have suddenly been passed. It's odd.
Anyway, first off, I'm obviosly in Luxembourg, working at the ECJ; I've ended up in the Protocol and Visits directorate (somewhat unfortunately, since it isn't really law-related but in many ways more of what the Development Office was doing, except on a slightly less organised - but more vast - scale). I'm basically responsible for... well, not a lot, really - just "making sure I take part in the preparation and running of visits", or some such. Which is wonderfully broad. I'm basically (at the moment, at least) someone who sits in their office (and I do have a pretty nice office, looking out onto the new Court entrance plaza and the Commission's Jean Monnet building across the road), helps with the odd visit now and then, and occasionally gets given stuff that other people are too busy to do. Which, I guess, is what the life of a stagiaire is generally like - at least, in a general office like this one. Were I working in something slightly more law-related (like the Research & Documentation unit I actually applied for!), it'd be another matter... But I guess we'll never know.
The most "legal" bits of my job are the "briefings" that I occasionally get to do to groups that visit the Court - before they go into a hearing, they get told what the case is about and what the parties are likely to argue before the Court, or - at least - what they have put in their written submissions to date (the procedure at the Court is very centered on written submissions, with the oral hearing only if things are still unclear - there's a growing number of cases that are decided without one). I've done two briefings now, which have been relatively fun, but it'd be good to do more. Obviously the Court is closed over Easter, and thus there are no visits, but once normal service resumes in May, we'll see what happens.
Lux itself is growing on me, slowly, as I discover more and more parts of it, and generally get more familiar with how things work, how to get to places, etc. The architecture in particular is something I really enjoy - much like Strasbourg, it has a very unique blend of North European solidity - square towers, Germanic-looking spires, Scandinavian-style apartment blocks (well, these are the names I give these various features in my head, it's a bit difficult to describe them in any other words!) - as well as softer, more South European touches - window-shutters (I don't think they have them in Germany, but I stand to be corrected), brightly-coloured houses, etc. It's particularly beautiful now that leaves are coming out, and all the various trees are in bloom (I noticed on the way to the shop the other day, but didn't have my camera - for once!).
In terms of size, the city is probably a bit bigger than Oxford, and also has a very weird feel - there's lots of people from all over the EU, here on a semi-permanent basis (especially the younger ones) - the Court alone employs something like 2000 people - but yet there's rather little in the way of nigtlife, especially at weekends (given that people often go home for the weekend, especially if they're from France, Germany or Belgium).
I guess it's a slightly self-perpetuating problem: it's a relatively quiet city, so there's nothing organised or going on, so people who want to have fun go elsewhere, so nothing changes. I guess that suits the people of Lux quite well (one of their mottos - not sure if it's the official one, but nevertheless - is "We want to remain what we are"), but it's rather unfortunate for the non-Luxembourgers amongst us!
Having said that, we (me and the other stagiaires) did discover several "nightlife areas" - one in Hollerich and another in Clausen - which are basically spots (both former converted breweries, I believe) with several different nightclubs/bars collected together. Works, I guess, in some ways...
Speaking of the other stagiaires, they're all a pretty cool bunch, and now that the new Parliament ones have arrived (and two of them are living in my house), the house dynamic has changed a lot - I actually see my housemates, occasionally, and been showing one of the newly-arrived ones, Anita (who happens to be from Holland) around the various places we've discovered so far. I've also made a friend at the European Investment Bank, an English guy called Tim, who's been working here for just over a year since graduating from Cambridge - somewhat unsurprisingly, perhaps, we have some friends in common. Aah, the blessings of an Oxbridge education...
In other news, I've started German lessons (and the one I've had reminded me quite WHY I was so terrible both with my previous attempt at learning German and with Dutch - whereas with the Romance languages I get the pronunciation fairly easily, the complex consonant combinations in the more "northern" languages sound weird to me), and I'm also singing in a choir, which is going OK - but the sore throat that I started to develop around the time of last week's rehearsal hasn't been too helpful. Both things are open to all stagiaires from all the institutions, so I've been meeting people from the Parliament and the Commission, which has been good fun.
All in all, then, things are fairly settled, if fairly quiet and leasurely - I'm a bit worried, actually, that I'm already a month and a half into my internship, and in three and a half months' time I'll have to go back to England.
Which brings me to the next part.
Secondly, I'm going to be in England for another flying visit in - err, - 3 days. This is somewhat bizzarre and surreal (see the bit above re time passing), but anyway... I'm getting the Eurostar from Brussels around mid-afternoon on Thursday and getting into London at around 18.30. I then have a scholarship interview at Middle Temple at 10 am on Friday, have to be in Ox for about 2.30pm to rehearse for the wedding the following day, and will (hopefully) be meeting andy_godfrey, sebastiality, one_to_tango and what_is_hesh - and any others that care to join (necaris, peu_de_larme [if you are reading...], shiny_and_new even ??) - for dinner/pubbage, and then actually going to the wedding, this time, on the Saturday - before taking the 8-hour bus (!!) from London at 10 am on Sunday to be back in Lux for Monday morning...
Why "actually" and "this time" re the wedding? Well, you may have heard that I was meant to be back in England around 3rd April for a wedding - two of my friends (well, at least they were... :$) from College, getting married in the College Chapel. Sounded pretty cool, and I'm sure it was a most wonderful occasion. Problem was, I'd lost my passport.
In fact, I seem to have developed a wonderful knack for losing my passport just before I plan to travel somewhere; last time was at the end of January, when I was thinking about coming out to Lux to have a look for places to live. This time, a thorough search of my room the night before I was meant to leave turned up nothing - the wedding was on Friday, and I'd taken only that one day off, intending to travel the same way I'd done before for the interview at FTB (who, by the way, didn't want me - in case I'd not updated anyone on that, which seems fairly likely...).
Anyway, without my British passport, I could easily get to Brussels, but getting onto the Eurostar for Britain would've been difficult (though not impossible - I would probably have managed to, on my Russian passport - but then I coulnd't get back to Lux to come into work on the Monday, as I was meant to). So there was no way I could make it to the wedding (I need to leave Lux at around 7 am, before anywhere would possibly be open, to get to London for just after midday).
To add inconvenience to annoyance, the British Embassy was closed that day, too - they'd closed from that Friday to the afternoon of the following Tuesday to update their computer systems, as luck would have it - so I abandoned the idea of travelling to the UK altogether (there wasn't a great deal of point, after all, with the wedding missed!). I decided to wait for the Embassy to re-open and see what they'd recommend. Things looked particularly grim until one of my colleagues told me about the office for lost items that Lux police run - it's called SNOT, rather amusingly, for Service Nationale des Objets Trouves. Contacting the one person (! - who maintains it for the entire country!) on Tuesday, I eventually found out (by late afternoon!) that my passport had, in fact, been found and handed into the train station some two weeks previously (the day I went to Trier, the nearest German town, with a few people).
So I now have it back, and it's prominently sitting at the top of a dresser thing I have in my room, ready to be used on Thursday. Aah, the adventures I've had with it...
So, there you have it - a summary, such as there could be, of my life for the past month and a bit, with a particular emphasis on the last couple of weeks (which have been, well, pretty interesting). Doubtless there's going to be much more to tell until at least the wedding this weekend, but we'll see if I can bring myself to write anything...
Till the next time!
N x
"Lay down your sweet and weary head
Night has fallen; you have come to journey's end
Sleep now, and dream of the ones who came before
They are calling from across a distant shore..."
Annie Lennox, Into the West (Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King OST, 2003)
Anyway, first off, I'm obviosly in Luxembourg, working at the ECJ; I've ended up in the Protocol and Visits directorate (somewhat unfortunately, since it isn't really law-related but in many ways more of what the Development Office was doing, except on a slightly less organised - but more vast - scale). I'm basically responsible for... well, not a lot, really - just "making sure I take part in the preparation and running of visits", or some such. Which is wonderfully broad. I'm basically (at the moment, at least) someone who sits in their office (and I do have a pretty nice office, looking out onto the new Court entrance plaza and the Commission's Jean Monnet building across the road), helps with the odd visit now and then, and occasionally gets given stuff that other people are too busy to do. Which, I guess, is what the life of a stagiaire is generally like - at least, in a general office like this one. Were I working in something slightly more law-related (like the Research & Documentation unit I actually applied for!), it'd be another matter... But I guess we'll never know.
The most "legal" bits of my job are the "briefings" that I occasionally get to do to groups that visit the Court - before they go into a hearing, they get told what the case is about and what the parties are likely to argue before the Court, or - at least - what they have put in their written submissions to date (the procedure at the Court is very centered on written submissions, with the oral hearing only if things are still unclear - there's a growing number of cases that are decided without one). I've done two briefings now, which have been relatively fun, but it'd be good to do more. Obviously the Court is closed over Easter, and thus there are no visits, but once normal service resumes in May, we'll see what happens.
Lux itself is growing on me, slowly, as I discover more and more parts of it, and generally get more familiar with how things work, how to get to places, etc. The architecture in particular is something I really enjoy - much like Strasbourg, it has a very unique blend of North European solidity - square towers, Germanic-looking spires, Scandinavian-style apartment blocks (well, these are the names I give these various features in my head, it's a bit difficult to describe them in any other words!) - as well as softer, more South European touches - window-shutters (I don't think they have them in Germany, but I stand to be corrected), brightly-coloured houses, etc. It's particularly beautiful now that leaves are coming out, and all the various trees are in bloom (I noticed on the way to the shop the other day, but didn't have my camera - for once!).
In terms of size, the city is probably a bit bigger than Oxford, and also has a very weird feel - there's lots of people from all over the EU, here on a semi-permanent basis (especially the younger ones) - the Court alone employs something like 2000 people - but yet there's rather little in the way of nigtlife, especially at weekends (given that people often go home for the weekend, especially if they're from France, Germany or Belgium).
I guess it's a slightly self-perpetuating problem: it's a relatively quiet city, so there's nothing organised or going on, so people who want to have fun go elsewhere, so nothing changes. I guess that suits the people of Lux quite well (one of their mottos - not sure if it's the official one, but nevertheless - is "We want to remain what we are"), but it's rather unfortunate for the non-Luxembourgers amongst us!
Having said that, we (me and the other stagiaires) did discover several "nightlife areas" - one in Hollerich and another in Clausen - which are basically spots (both former converted breweries, I believe) with several different nightclubs/bars collected together. Works, I guess, in some ways...
Speaking of the other stagiaires, they're all a pretty cool bunch, and now that the new Parliament ones have arrived (and two of them are living in my house), the house dynamic has changed a lot - I actually see my housemates, occasionally, and been showing one of the newly-arrived ones, Anita (who happens to be from Holland) around the various places we've discovered so far. I've also made a friend at the European Investment Bank, an English guy called Tim, who's been working here for just over a year since graduating from Cambridge - somewhat unsurprisingly, perhaps, we have some friends in common. Aah, the blessings of an Oxbridge education...
In other news, I've started German lessons (and the one I've had reminded me quite WHY I was so terrible both with my previous attempt at learning German and with Dutch - whereas with the Romance languages I get the pronunciation fairly easily, the complex consonant combinations in the more "northern" languages sound weird to me), and I'm also singing in a choir, which is going OK - but the sore throat that I started to develop around the time of last week's rehearsal hasn't been too helpful. Both things are open to all stagiaires from all the institutions, so I've been meeting people from the Parliament and the Commission, which has been good fun.
All in all, then, things are fairly settled, if fairly quiet and leasurely - I'm a bit worried, actually, that I'm already a month and a half into my internship, and in three and a half months' time I'll have to go back to England.
Which brings me to the next part.
Secondly, I'm going to be in England for another flying visit in - err, - 3 days. This is somewhat bizzarre and surreal (see the bit above re time passing), but anyway... I'm getting the Eurostar from Brussels around mid-afternoon on Thursday and getting into London at around 18.30. I then have a scholarship interview at Middle Temple at 10 am on Friday, have to be in Ox for about 2.30pm to rehearse for the wedding the following day, and will (hopefully) be meeting andy_godfrey, sebastiality, one_to_tango and what_is_hesh - and any others that care to join (necaris, peu_de_larme [if you are reading...], shiny_and_new even ??) - for dinner/pubbage, and then actually going to the wedding, this time, on the Saturday - before taking the 8-hour bus (!!) from London at 10 am on Sunday to be back in Lux for Monday morning...
Why "actually" and "this time" re the wedding? Well, you may have heard that I was meant to be back in England around 3rd April for a wedding - two of my friends (well, at least they were... :$) from College, getting married in the College Chapel. Sounded pretty cool, and I'm sure it was a most wonderful occasion. Problem was, I'd lost my passport.
In fact, I seem to have developed a wonderful knack for losing my passport just before I plan to travel somewhere; last time was at the end of January, when I was thinking about coming out to Lux to have a look for places to live. This time, a thorough search of my room the night before I was meant to leave turned up nothing - the wedding was on Friday, and I'd taken only that one day off, intending to travel the same way I'd done before for the interview at FTB (who, by the way, didn't want me - in case I'd not updated anyone on that, which seems fairly likely...).
Anyway, without my British passport, I could easily get to Brussels, but getting onto the Eurostar for Britain would've been difficult (though not impossible - I would probably have managed to, on my Russian passport - but then I coulnd't get back to Lux to come into work on the Monday, as I was meant to). So there was no way I could make it to the wedding (I need to leave Lux at around 7 am, before anywhere would possibly be open, to get to London for just after midday).
To add inconvenience to annoyance, the British Embassy was closed that day, too - they'd closed from that Friday to the afternoon of the following Tuesday to update their computer systems, as luck would have it - so I abandoned the idea of travelling to the UK altogether (there wasn't a great deal of point, after all, with the wedding missed!). I decided to wait for the Embassy to re-open and see what they'd recommend. Things looked particularly grim until one of my colleagues told me about the office for lost items that Lux police run - it's called SNOT, rather amusingly, for Service Nationale des Objets Trouves. Contacting the one person (! - who maintains it for the entire country!) on Tuesday, I eventually found out (by late afternoon!) that my passport had, in fact, been found and handed into the train station some two weeks previously (the day I went to Trier, the nearest German town, with a few people).
So I now have it back, and it's prominently sitting at the top of a dresser thing I have in my room, ready to be used on Thursday. Aah, the adventures I've had with it...
So, there you have it - a summary, such as there could be, of my life for the past month and a bit, with a particular emphasis on the last couple of weeks (which have been, well, pretty interesting). Doubtless there's going to be much more to tell until at least the wedding this weekend, but we'll see if I can bring myself to write anything...
Till the next time!
N x
"Lay down your sweet and weary head
Night has fallen; you have come to journey's end
Sleep now, and dream of the ones who came before
They are calling from across a distant shore..."
Annie Lennox, Into the West (Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King OST, 2003)