Dreamland

Beautiful Sunday morning,

I hope you have slept well. It is the time of the week when the church bells go crazy in stark contrast to the empty and quiet streets. I decided to start writing my blog in English this week, though I had sketched it out first in Czech, because I thought I should make it more generally accessible. Now I know that Google Translate integration in browsers has my back, which is amazing because that means that this time I do not have to write with a specific audience in mind.

I am slowly burning through the time given to me to complete the third semester of my master studies. It would not be the first time I am getting sentimental too early. I remember when I was about to graduate high school, I was contemplating since September the fact that one day I would not be doing my 8:00-15:00 at the same building as always. Sounded crazy to me. Though the life at uni is different, it seems that we have crossed the half-life of our cohort and that many people are already thinking of leaving.

And that is great, but I have to admit that for me it is also hard. I find it hard to call a new place home, but it seems that as soon as I do it is time to move on. I remember saying goodbye to Groningen, but being ready to move on. But what I was kind of hoping is that the new destination could be home. What was also pulling me to Zurich was the upward mobility. And anybody who visits me here is stunned: in the heart of Europe, but still so much more rich than anywhere else. It is hard not to be charmed.

But that absolutely means that a lot of people come here for the charm, make it a link in the chain of their career, rather than a part of their life. Same as in Groningen, the number of people who actually want to be integrated is quite low, and I have to say that makes me quite sad. Somehow relationships from the start seem somewhat shallow. That would totally be a fault of my own as well. Having a long-distance relationship, I do spend most of my evenings talking online on the phone, and when I get a long weekend off the last place where you can meet me before I fly off is the airport. So it absolutely goes both ways.

What makes me sad is that this is not how I imagined my life. I hope that at one point I could find maybe a community of people, where I could stay and I could see a future in. It is only myself who I could blame for this emotion, but it seems that this is rather individual for everyone. If I want to fit in to the community that I am in right now, I should be jumping on the first opportunity of getting out of here to chase something else.

I just realize that I have managed to leave Brno, and I have managed without thinking to leave Groningen. However, now I am thinking, where is the next place I will leave for? And why? What for?

Lately, I have been listening to the song called Dreamland by Fox Stevenson. It goes like this:

Does everybody live in a dreamland?

Is this dreamland all that we know?

Swallowing us up in an avalanche and blurring these lines with smoke

Maybe Zurich just as well could be the dreamland. Too good to be true. Everybody’s dream, but nobody’s true life.

I always like to say that I turn dreams into reality, but maybe what is missing right now is the ability to turn reality into home. Maybe it has to do with how I would pride myself on achievements. Well, Fox Stevenson has it for me.

They tell me that I should be a real man

But my pride’ll be the first thing to go

I gotta get out of this wasteland

Cause this wasteland ain’t home