Non scholae, set vitae...

It's been a while since my last entry - shame on me! I've had several posts in the pipeline for a while, I just lacked the time and/or leisure to actually sit down and write them. The usual November depression might have had its share in that - it's gotten quite cold here in the past couple of weeks, with a nasty wind. Not very motivating.

In the meantime, I've gone through my first exam period here and am now in the middle of the second study period. As I might have already mentioned in a previous entry, the semesters here are divided into 3 study periods of 8 weeks, 8 weeks and 4 weeks respectively. Usually we have to take 2 courses in the long periods, 1 course in the short ones. 2 courses with around 2-3 lectures per week doesn't seem like much, but since they're only 8 weeks long, the content is rather dense and usually there are lots of assignments due to be handed in, for some courses every week. Another peculiarity here is that most to all assignments have to be completed in teams, whereas the whole team will get the same grade. While most courses' final grades will be a combination of the practical work and an exam, the grade for my Service Oriented Design course was only composed of team assignments, without any exam - something that is rather frustrating when at least one member of the team is not working at all and will still get the same grade. Apart from that, with a group of 5 people there is a lot of synchronisation overhead and things often took a lot longer than if one of us had done everything alone.
My other course however, Concurrency&Multithreading, was fine. Other than SOD the course content was rather theoretical, and not having followed the lectures too attentively, I had quite a lot to study for the exam. The last time I actually had to study for a test was probably in 2008 or 2009 - took me a while to get used to it again. In the end it was no problem. Even having skipped one question, I got an 8.5 out of 10: no reason to complain here :)

This period I'm taking Software Architecture, again a rather practical course with some groupwork - but this time my group works together very well and we're actually having fun! My other course, Distributed Systems, is again more theoretical and theoretically it's a rather interesting and widespread topic...if only the lecturer weren't boring as hell! And, since my Masters Programme is offered by the VU (Vrije Universiteit) in collaboration with the UvA (Universiteit von Amsterdam), it takes place in the Science Park in Amsterdam-Oost, 45 minutes away by bike. You can imagine my lack of motivation to get up for this course at 8 on a cold December morning...

The Science Park itself however is actually quite nice. Modern and well-designed buildings, bright seating and working spaces everywhere, huge rooms with computer workplaces, fancy group workrooms that anyone can use, and most importantly: coffee is cheaper than at the VU!

Another thing that happened since my last post was the retirement lecture of Andrew S. Tanenbaum. Most people outside of computer science or related fields probably won't have heard of him: he wrote several standard text books for computer science (on Operating Systems, computer organization or networks for example...) and developed an operating system called MINIX, which was the starting point for Linus Torvalds to develop Linux (so basically, without him you wouldn't have your Android phone today). He's been working and teaching at the VU since the 1970's and announced his retirement this summer. I had already signed up for the retirement lecture in July, one rarely gets a chance to see the last lecture of such a legend.

To my great surprise, the Aula at VU where the lecture took place wasn't even completely full. I would have expected more people to come. Tanenbaum spoke for around an hour about his past >40 years at VU, where he started as one of the first three employees of the at that time not really existing computer science department. Videos were shown, memories were shared, colleagues praised him... all in all a very entertaining and humorous last lecture.

And, what was probably typically Dutch: Along with wine, champagne and orange juice, they served milk and buttermilk at the reception afterwards.

I don't think we're in Karlsruhe anymore...

We mostly spent the past weeks here getting our apartment set up: Multiple trips to IKEA for picking, buying and returning furniture (-parts), multiple trips to the hardware store and carpet/flooring shops, and many hours of my dear flatmate torturing me with possible apartment layouts, furniture arrangements and flooring options – we both aren't naturals or in any way talented at interior design, but while I myself seem to have come to terms with that and don't mind unprofessional furniture arrangements, he spent a lot of time with an interior design program trying out different options. He also seemed to be incredibly keen on laying out laminate himself in our living room and eventually he got what he wanted: 27m² of laminate are now lying downstairs, waiting to be unpacked. I do really appreciate his efforts though – we have an amazing apartment (in a quiet street just off Prinsengracht! With garden and balcony!) for an incredibly cheap price considering we are in Amsterdam and it would be a pity if we didn't furnish it nicely. Did I mention that the apartment comes with a fish pond, visiting cats, and a huge shower? I also really love that one of the tourist horse carriages, with a driver wearing a tailcoat and a top hat, drives through our street from time to time. The first time I saw it through our historically accurate window I thought I was dreaming...

Why, Mr Darcy, OF COURSE I want to come to the ball!

O hai!

  

Settling in from an administration point of view is also yet to be completed: I don't know if it is because things here just don't work as well as they do in Germany, or if it is because we are expats: Everything. Seems. To. Take. Ages.
I already mentioned the famous BSN in an earlier post, which is a tax/social security/citizen identy number. In order to get it you need a valid rental contract – which might take some time to get considering the housing market in Amsterdam. Then you need to get an appointment at the Gemeente for getting a BSN. Students like me can just show up, hand in their documents, and get their BSN within one week by mail. My Significant Other however spent 45 minutes on the phone talking to various clerks in various offices, just to get an appointment for handing in his documents some time in mid-November. It remains questionable how long he will have to wait after this appointment.
Without a BSN, it is not possible to open a bank account – or so I was told. In the end I did not need it at the bank, but it did take more than 10 days until I got the letter that I could pick up my PIN, which had not been sent to the bank branch where I had opened the account, but to a completely different branch further away. Ugh!
This bank account was necessary for signing up for gas and electricity, for getting a mobile phone contract, and most importantly for signing up for internet! Our internet connection will already be enabled „within 3 to 6 weeks“, possibly on November 3rd. How the hell am I supposed to procrastinate without internet?!


University is quite demanding as well – yes, I do have 2 days off every week at the moment, but trust me, I'm still not getting bored, since my courses are laid out in a way that we theoretically have to work around 40h every week. In practice, I had assignments due every thursday evening and every 2 weeks on friday, and since all of them were team assignments a lot of evenings during the week and most part of my „days off“ was spent coordinating and working with my teammates. I am still not sure whether or not to like the amount of teamwork we have to do here. One of my courses' grade is solely based on those group assignments, so it definitely sort of sucks to have others partly responsible for your grade. And there were definitely times when I had the feeling that I could have done the work faster and better on my own (ironically, that was for my Multithreading course – talk about synchronization overhead!). Then again: We can divide the work so I don't have to do the parts that I don't like (I'm completely fine with writing long text, but please don't have me do any diagrams!). And it does give me the opportunity to learn more about group dynamics, motivating others, etc. pp., all things which I might need when I'm grown up and want to manage projects. Haha.
At the moment I'm preparing, or rather: should be preparing, for the exam in said Multithreading course. The Dutch university system is a little different from the one we know in Germany (or at least: the one youknow; I've never attended a regular German university!): there are 2 semesters per year, both of them divided into 3 periods of 8, 8 and 4 weeks length. Typically students take 2 courses in the long periods, and 1 course in the short period, exams are at the end of each period. There is no real break between the periods and none between the semesters: only July and August are „free“, and 2 weeks around christmas and New Years.
Now, don't dare calling me a lazy student again!

Fiets: check!

I think I already bothered everyone I talked to in person during the past couple of weeks with this fact but: The dutch language is sometimes onomatopoetic in a simply adorable way and this shows especially in the words for bike and motorbike:
A bike is fiets in Dutch. And a motorbike is a bromfiets!
(You might have to read this one out loud..)

So, one of the basic clichés about the Netherlands is not only a cliché: Really everyone here is going everywhere by bike in probably every kind of weather and I was told some people even move house by bike. And, having left my faithful old bike back in Karlsruhe, I needed one, too!

Fortunately one of the activities during the Introduction Week hosted by the university was the Expedition Hashtag, a sort of scavenger hunt through Amsterdam. On three different locations, we were given several hints according to which we had to find small cards with a hashtag sign. The first 5 people for each location to find one of these cards won a customized university bike, as easy as that.

My subconscious seems to have been quite eager to win something, as it presented me the night before the Expedition with a classic nightmare that ended with me missing the expedition since I was late and didn't have the shirt we had to wear. Yay.

I was quite relieved when in reality everything went well for me: I was on time at the meeting point behind the main station, did not drown when we took the ferry and managed to find one of the first cards at our first location in Amsterdam Noord. Hello new bike!
The other locations where we had to hunt were Jordaan and the beautiful Vondelpark - both were not so pretty in the cold, cold rain. Once we were done (apparently we were the fastest group they had had, probably due to the rain) we went to a belgian pub, to warm ourselves from the inside with a beer or two.


 

Today I could pick up my new means of transportation and was provided with the best possible weather to take my little beauty for a first ride! Since we had to collect the bikes at the VU campus down south in Uilenstede, my way home took me along the Amstel river, past Amstel park, and through some rural areas with sheep, cattle, ponies and lots of flowers. And I saw my first windmill!

On a side note: as it might be possible to glimpse from the photos, the bike, as most bikes around here, does not have any gears and no hand brake. I'll definitely have to get used to that.

Arrival in a new home...

View from our temporary apartment
(was able to catch a stretch of good weather)

So, on Monday evening we finally arrived in our new home city - later than we had planned, thanks to the Deutsche Bahn which as usual did its best to present us with a variety of excuses why we had accumulated yet another hour of delay.

These first days have been quite busy and it is only today, with the rain pouring down since the early morning, that I manage to find some quiet time to write down some first impressions.
Ah, the rain, I guess I'll have to get used to it: with more than 200 rainy days per year in Amsterdam we decided that our strategy should be to be happy every time the sun is shining instead of complaining about the weather. Buying a rain-cape is on our list as well. The last days have been rather Irish, with fast changes between sun, clouds and rain...while today it's just rain and thunderstorm and I don't feel compelled at all to leave the apartment (not even to check out the cake store around the corner someone on Twitter recommended!).

On Tuesday I went to see my university for the first time (yes, I applied to VU without having ever been to the campus!), and got enrolled at the International Students' Office Arrival Days. Finalizing my enrollment, a short chat with a faculty advisor about choosing my classes and signing up for the ESN was all I could do there unfortunately: In the dutch system, a lot of official things (creating a bank account, mobile phone contracts, ...) require you to have a burgerservicenummer (BSN), which is obtained during the registration at the municipality (Gemeentelijke Basisadministratie Persoonsgegevens/GBA). This registration is only possible with a valid adress and a rental contract - since we haven't found an apartment yet, I'll have to sort out the bank account and some insurances myself, and couldn't profit from having all the companies and the municipality officer there at the Arrival Days. But the important thing is: I'm enrolled and now officially a student again!

Wednesday passed quickly as well: Introduction day at the university, with several welcome presentations by university faculty and alumni, a campus tour (of course) and a short dutch language class. Among the international students, Brazilians, Germans and Italians seem to present the majority, but that might be just my personal impression. I was able to find several of my classmates for the MSc CS, from what I was told we will be about 80 students all in all, distributed over several specialization topics. And I was told that (although I'll only believe this once I see it myself) there will be around 40% girls in the Computer Science Master, ha!

Iamsterdam logo in front of the Rijksmuseum