my very first day in CEPS

Back in Brussels. Since Saturday night. went to the park, well it is actually more sophisticated. the place is called king's residence Laeken, and we went to the Serre Royales de Laeken, where the king Leopold II built amazing green hauses in 1873. the amount of flowers and odour made me feel dizzy and wonder if a man could be so much in love with flowers.

My first day in CEPS... is the name of the post actually...
CEPS and the ambassy of lichtenstein share one building which is very close to where i am living now. i had to wait for a lady called Xxxxx Xxxxx to install me properly. in an hour, when i went upstairs and made myself a cup of coffee, she still didnt show up. instead there appeared a man, Mahmoud, from Turkey, a visiting fellow, who was just about to showing me around, when we were on the second floor, by the way there are 3 floors. well, we stopped on the second one;

...free like a bird...
there we met Michael, who said he was going to be out in Washington from 23rd to 25th. I was happy to see him, the only familiar face in the whole bloody think-tank. He cheered me up. I told him about coming conferences in Barcelona and in Fulda, which i was sort of going to attend. he said i was 'free as a bird'

...new status: visiting scholar...

he added, ' u are a visiting scholar in CEPS' and u are here in order to make contacts to people from EU Institutions and conduct your research. i felt a bit weird. i guess i am the youngest being in the organisation. all the other visiting and other research fellows and sholars are pursuing their PhDs and writing interesting stuff about interesting stuff. i feel awkward with them. they are all so serious and old, well not old really but older than me, and scholarly.

...rendez-vous in Ixelles...

too late... i was an hour late, i am sure ICEUSers are not wondering, but i really got lost in this bloody brussels. i did enjoy it though. when i found the place which was, as kamila would say, v zhope u chyornogo (PC-cised), the person i had a rendez-vous with was gone. aaaahhh! but his room-mate with her poor english and me with my poor french conversed a bit on where and when i could have another rendez-vous. she was a great help tho, she took a lot of time and energy to explain that she didnt know his 'time-table' and where he was. well the whole rendez-vous was about a room. i am looking for a place to live in brussels at the moment. have to appoint another rendez-vous tomorrow.

looking forward for tomorrow...