Last year I made a promise after winning the Dutch round of the Jessup competition that I'd come back the following year to hand over the winning-cup to this year's victors. And being a man of my word, that's exactly what I did. So after spending Friday afternoon in London being briefed on my Summer-scheme to be, I boarded a train to Stansted for a journey that ended up taking considerably longer than it should have done. All the time wearing a suit, my plane was delayed for an hour-and-a-half (it left Edinburgh for Stansted after it was supposed to leave Stansted. My train from Schipol to Den Haag then broke down at Leiden. All of this wouldn't have been too bad had it not been for the facts that it freezing and raining, and my hostel closed at 1am. Fortunately I got there at 12:30am, so all was good. but getting up at 7am the next morning for the competition was less good.
The competition was fun, but unfortunately the Utrecht team didn't win this year, although they did make it to the final round and split the judges 2-1. So this year the Netherlands will be represented by Leiden, who amazingly had a guy who I know from my Jones Day vacation scheme on their team. It never ceases to amaze me just how small this world of ours is.
It was great to see people again; Emma, Bart, Lobke, Ellie, Rachel and Sabs, to name a few and I'm thankful to them all for making me feel so welcome. But it was really heartening to see how it didn't feel strange being back, walking down the Oudegracht felt quite normal - just like going home to Cornwall does in the holidays. In fact, the strangest thing was how it didn't feel at all strange. I guess I expected that more would have changed, but there's no reason for it to have done as it's only been 7 months since I lived there. More odd was knowing that so many of the people I spent last year with have moved on, or back to where they came from. Andrew wrote a fantastic essay for the Erasmus essay competition which sadly and unfathomably wasn't appreciated by the competition judges, but I think he summed up this feeling perfectly, and I hope he doesn't mind me quoting a little here:
[Our accommodation was a] blank page which I realize, we entirely filled out and erase in our departure. The glad, cheery heat of a family which left with the last of us, leaving - only to be renewed by other faces. If we return, it is as an intruder: a true stranger out of history - without his family - who are flown across the surface of the earth. You wound yourself by your disappointment when you rediscover the place unyours.
It's hard to disagree. Utrecht is the same, but it's not mine, or ours, any more. A new generation of people have taken over and made the city their own. Graf Floris isn't my hang out any more. Going back to Jessup really brought this home. While it was lovely seeing the new team and seeing them moot (and not having to do it myself!) nothing could be a clearer indication of how things have moved on there, and I suppose that I must too.
But really, I have one request to Easyjet. The train company First Great Western puts on special trains from London to Newquay in the Summer, presumably because the general crowd going to Newquay would make a 6 hour train journey rather unbearable for people going elsewhere. This is a fantastic idea. You can always tell which flight is the Amsterdam flight at Stansted; it's the one with all the British stag/hen party entourages crowding the boarding gate before boarding has started (invariably with the wrong boarding card) and generally hollering to each other. Why not have special stag/hen flights? Even I'd pay to put them on one!
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