Resource blogger Donatella is gradually sliding into a new life and gently loses the ties with Wageningen, which she loves so much and owes so much to.
The vine yards and the olive groves pass quickly at my right window; the sea, huge and still, draws the horizon on the left. Everything moves fast but the Adriatic, deep blue, following the ride. I’m on a train again. Again this morning I sat on my bag to fit my stuff in it and leave for yet another adventure.
I love summer. The parallel world of travels and swim suits, of puzzling people and places in long and short trips, the sea salt on the skin, the tan lines, the nights spent on the stone steps of the church of my town drinking a beer and people-watching. The love and hate for packing and moving around, the mixed feelings studding these weeks with deep, warm-yellow-light melancholy, excitement, curiosity, relaxation, frenzy – but mostly melancholy.
This summer is pretty special for me – although all are. But this one marks a little bit the fading of an era and the starting of a new one. A rite of passage, a ship to cross the sea between two islands, a path of round stones to cross the river hopping from a bank to the other one.
A plan
I had no idea about how my life would look like after summer, when I first left for the mountains to then hop between the sea the hills and the cities. I had only promised myself I wouldn’t really care and I would try to relax as much as possible and look at my laptop as least as possible. But there’s only so much control you can (let yourself) have on events, and I ended up, of course, keeping up with applications, doing online interviews, and preparing for them between train stations and airports, and they went fine despite the bad connections and the mess of laptoping on the road. The result is that suddenly there’s a plan, an exciting job and lots to learn for after summer and despite my love for summer I’m really looking forward to the after.
Loose ties
The plan will bring me technically away from Wageningen University and from writing these columns for Resource, but the bright side of the corona crisis is remote working, thus the plan won’t physically bring me anywhere else than Wageningen, for now. And I’m happy to have the chance to gradually slide into a new life. To only gently loose the ties with Wageningen, which I love so much I owe so much to.
