Af-riikka

I hate leaving. Especially when you've spent five months in a city that has proved to be at least an experience dozen times better than you had expected; or when you've met the most active, greatest and friendliest people Europe has to offer. In short someone is applying and wondering: should you come for a traineeship at the European Commission in Brussels? Yes, you should. Work-wise I was lucky to be in a unit that was less about procedures and more about the content: the quality of aid. I had the possibility to see how the European Commission cooperates - or at least tries to coordinate - with other international donors or UN agencies. I was also lucky to have enough time besides my duties to participate in events and trainings that were often more useful for me personally than for my unit, strictly speaking. During the five months I created, edited and read countless of excel sheets both for work and traineeship activities, organized half a dozen of cakesales and three spee...

I knew it, and was expecting it, but it still hit quite hard when I heard the first proper conversation in Scottish between a bus driver and a passenger going to Glasgow from Prestwick airport: I could not understand a single word, though the meaning of their verbal exchange was somewhat comprehensible from the context. That was a rough welcome to Scotland for me! During the one-hour busride to Glasgow I admired the amazingly green Scottish winter scenery: sheep, a sign for ”watch out for elderly people” (they love signs in Scotland!), the little villages and countryside houses. In Glasgow I visited the gloomy cathedral and a rather presumptuous Necropolis, and was quite surprised to find brochures for whisky tours in a cathedral (only in Scotland!). I took some photos at George Square with Japanese tourists and watched the statues of great Scotsmen being covered by snow. I went for some shopping in the design district, and ended up only buying a tacky Scottish language kitchen towel. ...