Leidenlove

Greeted by the incredible weather in Holland, with lots of sunshine and heat and the hot sands on the beaches and water just warm enough to swim and play in the sea, I decided to finally take some holidays. I followed some maths and tried reading on my own, slowly started my courses and such, but mostly I have been spending the past month with friends, making new friends, swimming in the sea, biking around Leiden, relaxing, reading books and discovering new things. 

The sea.

After this month of mental hygiene, I am feeling relaxed and optimistic. Sure, I still occasionally feel I am not enough and should not even bother trying. Especially if I compare myself with my classmates, it is rather easy to start feeling second-rate. I am so fortunate to be surrounded by 10 other Algant students (albeit all male and in a tiny office), most of whom are pretty cool and a couple of them are a real treat. I am slowly meeting again all the students I met during my previous stay in Leiden, I have good flatmates and I even discovered the nice people from the other side of the building, doing dynamial systems. Or this is what I imagine them to be doing, to be fair, I only ever see them in the common room drinking coffee... But first weeks were difficult, moving, all the exhaustion from being at yet another place, but mostly since I was asked again and again to comment on my Regensburg experience and that is still very stressful for me.

Now I feel I am getting over that. My mentor in Leiden hasn't given up on me (and so many thanks for that!!!), I think my courses will give me the nice variety of topics I need, we are preparing a "workshop" on ranks of elliptic curves on Monday in Heidelberg, so I get to think about how to define and convey the Tate-Shafarevich group as a local-to-global obstruction in the easiest terms (which does exclude mentioning both torsors and Galois cohomology) and I feel happy about my life. I am heading to Prague now for an interveiw that could open some interesting Ph.D. options for me, then a week in Germany and then back to my beloved Leiden, back to studying seriously, back to all my homework, classes, long evenings working in the office, complaining about the Dutch weather, questioning the Dutch food and beverage choices... If only one could combine the Czech beer and cuisine with the Dutch beaches and their tranquil life...

But for now, I want to enjoy the few moments I get to spend at home, in my country, taking the train between Blansko and Prague, as I have done perhaps 40 times since last September. I still haven't got tired of the pale yellow fields and actual hills and deep green forests and meandering rivers all around. My life is good.