WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY
I don’t know the proportions, but the sign atop Lumen must be at least three meters high and several dozen meters long. It’s massive anyway and very bright. It doesn’t look much like a university, more like a fast-food restaurant.
‘Good evening.’ ‘Hi there, what can I get you?’ ‘Uhm, can I have the Bachelor in Communication Sciences?’‘Would you like fries with that sir?’‘Sure, with Joppiesaus please.’ ‘That’ll be 9487,41 euro sir.’ ‘Here you go.’ ‘Thanks for visiting Wageningen University, please come again soon.’This place has it all. Quality education, friendly staff, clean facilities and most importantly: a wild bunch of students from all over the show. I like it here. It is my favourite drive-through-university-town. It is so easy to meet new interesting people from far away lands (like Groningen). And then you meet them all the time and making friends here is inevitable.
But it’s these people, not the city or the clean facilities that form the time bubble that is called Wageningen. People come and go and they take the good times with them when they leave. Like a fast food restaurant – lots of Teflon – no place to stick around.
These are the good days and I enjoy it to the last drop, but the time to move on is just a hiccup ahead. When I step onto number 88 for the last time, I will look back on the best years of my life.
And the sign will still be blazing in the dark. Unless someone pulls the plug, which would be great.