Standing in the hallway I looked up through the glass exterior of Carnegie Mellon University’s Gates-Hillman Complex and saw something I didn’t like: rain. A Chinese co-worker came out of his office. I hadn’t seen him here before.
“You’re going home?” I asked suggestively, “perhaps you’d better wait.”
He looked outside and nodded in agreement.
“How long do you think it is going to take?” he asked while frowning.
“Trust me, this won’t be over soon,” I assured him.

Frak, it was nearly a quarter past seven, I wanted to get home. I sat down and starting flipping through a weather application on my phone: the prognosis didn’t make me happy. When the rain seemed to settle down a bit I walked outside: bike helmet in one hand, keys in the other. However, when I briefly stepped out from below the protruding roof to feel the rain, it was really a bit too much. Think: what are my options?

Twenty-two hours earlier I was walking down Forbes from Oakland towards CMU with two colleagues. One of whom said:
“I am going to take the shuttle.”
“Shuttle? How often do they go?” I asked.
“Every three quarters of an hour deep into the night,” he replied, “it’s very convenient”.

Back to the present, back to the rain. Ah, of course: the shuttle. CMU runs shuttle buses that can be used by everyone with a CMU card. These are intended to take people to their homes safely late at night and service a number of surrounding neighbourhoods including Squirrel Hill: my destination. I quickly grabbed my phone and looked up the schedule. Luckily the first shuttle would be leaving half past seven from right in front of the university: great!

I waited near the bus stop. The streets looked rainy and bleak. The shuttle arrived exactly on time. I embarked together with a Chinese girl. We were the only two passengers. The driver, a gray-haired middle-aged American man, informed me he would be able to take me to an intersection close to home. I sat down in a comfortable seat about two rows behind him. The shuttle looked like a white mini version of the traditional American school bus.

“Man, the weather is rainy, is it always like this?” I asked.
“Well sometimes it can rain very violently here,” the driver replied, “and in a few months it will also get really cold.”
“A shame, I prefer sunny weather, what about you?”
“Hehe,” he laughed. “You’re talking to a guy who loves cold,” he said while turning onto Schenly Drive. “I go skiing quite often, I was even an instructor at some point, do you like skiing?”
The bus shook heavily as we drove over a badly scarred road. I recalled the last time I was on skis: as I descended I lost control. My right ski ejected, and flew several meters up in the air, while I landed with a thud on my back. Autch!
“Only did the indoor type, and based on falling a couple of times, I can say that it’s not exactly my thing.”
The Chinese girl chuckled. She commented she had tried it too, without much success.
“Indoor: it’s just not the same. You should really go out on to a real piste,” the driver said.

Like many Americans, the bus driver too was a good storyteller.
“I remember this one time when we were going down a huge mountain at night: it was pitch black. We were with a group, skiing down with torches making turns, you know,” he started.
“At one point,” he continued engrossed, “I lost control and went tumbling down the mountain.”
“Oh dear,” I replied. The Chinese girl, also listening, gripped the seat in front of her tightly and leaned forward.
“So, there was this big fence down the mountain. Like this huge thing,” he briefly let go of the steering wheel and gestured.
“So, did you hit it?” I asked.
“I tumbled down like an unstoppable freight train, but miraculously came to a halt just inches before the fence,” his face, reflected in the front window, looked contorted.
“Wow!” The Chinese girl and me uttered in unison.

We had come to the girl’s stop, she got off and darted into the night. I was the last remaining passenger.
“I always find it surprising when people come back from skiing all tanned,” I said with mixed amazement and envy.
“Yes, you’re closer to the sun there and the white snow reflects all the light, so people tan very easily under those conditions. Hell, they even get sunburn.”
“I am lucky: I never burn,” I replied confidently.
“You can get burned though. I mean: everyone can get sunburn, no matter how dark their skin is.”
“Okay, I’ve never noticed it.”
“You can take a lot more than the average white person though. A lot more.”

It was dark, each street light alternated to illuminate the interior of the bus. The Carnegie Mellon University logo on the side of the vehicle reflected on the windows of the cars passing by: traffic was dense.
“Okay, so there’s this one thing I don’t understand about colour,” the driver continued.
“Tell me,” I replied leaning forward in curiosity.
“So, if you wear something white, it keeps you cool in the sun because it deflects the light, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And if you wear something black, it warms you up, because it absorbs the light.”
“Indeed.”
“So, why is it then that people with a dark skin can tolerate the sunlight so much better than those with white skin, shouldn’t that be the other way around? Doesn’t make any sense, right?” He shrugged his shoulders and threw his hands out.
“That’s a good question,” one with a complicated answer.
“So, these are the kind of things I think about.”
“That’s cool,” I replied with a big grin.

“So what’s your name?”
“Chuck, and yours?”
“Almer.”
“Good to meet you Almer, I’ll be driving this route on most days.”
“Great.”
“This is your stop, I’ll let you out once I cross the intersection.”
A minute later I got up, walked to the front of the bus and jumped out.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem, bye bye.”
He closed the door with the extended handle and drove off into the night.

“Hello, is this Almer?”, a female voice.
“Yes, who’s this?”
“You mailed me about housing?”
“I mailed a lot of people, what specific housing option is this about?”
…
“Ah, yes, okay go on.”
“So, I have a room with a separate living room, bathroom, and kitchen for eight-hundred dollars.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
“I can show it to you, but if you like it you’d have to sign right away.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’d have to sign if you like it.”
“Well, I am quite sorry, I can’t promise that: I’d need time to think about it.”
“Okay, it would only become available on the 1^st, so if you’re still looking for something around that time, please contact me.”
“That’s okay.”
<click>

The same lady calls me back only three or so days later, way before the 1^st.
“I have available, in the same house, a room for nine-hundred dollars.”
“That’s a bit steep.”
“So, what price where you looking for?”
I am thinking: what is this a garage sale or something?
…
“Okay, you can get it for seven-hundred dollars if you pay it all up front.”
“I am not sure if I can do that, but I am willing to come over and have a look,” I say, “but, I am sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name” (… because you didn’t say it yet).
“Oh, uh,” she hesitates, “You may call me Joanne, I am the concierge here.”
“Okay.”
“My son can pick you up, where are you?”
…

We agree to a pick-up location about a block away from the busy street in front of the University, because, for whatever reason, they don’t like to drive on that street. I wait at the corner. Ten minutes after the agreed upon time a gray, big, air-conditioned car pulls up next to me. The driver is a heavily bearded young Jewish chap with a Kippah: not unfriendly, but not very talkative either. He drives me to the place.

The house looks good from the outside. He leads me inside.
“This is it, I’ll go upstairs to fetch my mother.”
I look around, the front section is apparently a living room, about as large as a small office. The place is dusty and looks trashed. The radiators appear like they were placed there when Abraham Lincoln was elected the first time. The carpet is thick and stained. Glass shards litter the windowsill. The adjacent room of similar size is a bedroom with a large, also heavily stained, bed. There is a mini kitchen in the back and a very dirty bathroom as well. The place has a weird scent: this hasn’t been cleaned in a long time.

I hear footsteps: someone is coming down the stairs. An old Jewish lady appears at a wooden door in the back wall of the kitchen. She asks me what I think of the place. I say that I am not sure, and will have to discuss it. The price is way to high for what is being offered, within reason: probably twice over. Perhaps I should have simply said no straight away, as this obviously did not rank high on my places-to-live list. However, I hadn’t found a place just yet, and it’s always good to keep options open when you’re still looking.

There were supposed to be other students living in the house, but I hadn’t seen, or been introduced, to a single one of them. The lady takes a passive stance. She seems very much concerned with just getting someone to rent the place, and very much not concerned with making the interaction pleasant: not a single smile. It’s clear that I have to do the work, so I try to make the best of it. We chitchat as we stand on the front porch, then make our way back to the car. The lady has trouble getting down the stairs since she is carrying a foldable chair. I help her by taking it over, carrying it down, and putting it in the gray family car. They drive me back to the University.

A couple of days later, after several other viewings and making a final choice, I sent an honest mail stating that I’m not interested. The main reason is that it is too expensive compared to everything else I’ve viewed, and not worth half the highest asking price: nine-hundred. I further add that she probably would have more success finding a tenant it if she’d thoroughly clean the place.

I get a response which starts off reasonably:

“Thank you for your feedback. Would you like to give more details about what you mean with properly clean the place?”

Then turns into a rant concerning the entire interaction we had. I read it open-mouthed. Her first point is regarding me explaining to her during the viewing that I am looking at multiple places to compare options:

“… taking your good old time to be snotty and turn off people.”

Uh? Then she continues about a conversation we had about my roots while standing outside on the front porch. Regarding this topic I assume that people do not know exactly where my country of origin is, as in my experience: most people don’t. Apparently, she heard something different.

“And when you mentioned your home country you said something like of course you never heard of it. How patronizing, how disrespectful, how would you expect someone to want you around at any price with that attitude.”

She’s clearly on a roll here:

“You don’t respect people you don’t respect their time in servicing a short term lease with a person behaving with dishonesty and condescension.”

And finally the kicker:

“As you are in graduate school subsidized you have a perceived obligation to review your `notes’ prior to making comments and to express yourself with articulation. Besides representing yourself you represent the sponsors of you and please consider to do it with more grace and honesty.”

I had to turn down a number of other places I viewed as well. However, I never had a single response like this: not by e-mail, not by telephone. People were happy for me that I found something that I liked, some even offered to socialize, and to some others I offered to help them find a tenant by suggesting places where they could put up advertisements.

It never seizes to amaze me how people can respond and treat others: it’s just incredible. By the way: I did not bother to respond to her e-mail, and I forwarded her message to the housing registry here, requesting she’d be removed. Good luck finding tenants in the future …

I stood on a brown front porch, rang the doorbell, and waited for the door to open. Nothing. I decided to simply call the guy I was supposed to meet.
“Hi, this is Almer, I am at your front door.”
“Ah, don’t worry, I’ll be right down.”

A young chap in his early twenties opened the door.
“Hi, I’m Jason, come in,” he extended his hand to shake mine.
I entered, the place looked quite posh.
“Should I take my shoes off?”, I asked.
“No man, the girls may care about that, but I don’t”, he said dismissively.
The front living room was large with a big table and several chairs arranged on a carpet. Several cabins and tables were neatly tucked in various corners. There was a huge stairwell in the middle of the room. However, instead of going up we first walked around it to reveal the back part of the living room. It contained a number of benches, sofas and a flat screen television.
“The mother of one of my roommates is an interior decorator,” Jason added.
That explains it. We passed into the next section of the house.
“So, this is the kitchen,” he spun on his feet.
“Cool.”
“We have a small backyard too, with some herbs.”
I peered through the window. The number of spices down there would make even Jamie Oliver jealous.

He took me down to the basement where there was a large pool table, and finally upstairs to the bedrooms.
“So, this would be your room, it’s actually the largest.”
“So, it’s unfurnished, right?”, I asked.
“Yes, but I could leave some of my stuff here, and we can move a queen size bed in if you’d want that.”
“Great, let me know if you’d like to have anything for that.”
“No problem man, you can have it, we’re all here to help each other.”
Okay, I thought: that was friendly.
“So, I’d be renting it for only a couple of months, that’s not a problem?”
“No man, it’s okay, you can crash here for as long or short as you’d like.”
“Okay, but, so you’re moving out and the two girls would stay, correct?”
“Yes, exactly. I am moving to Bloomfield, since most of my friends live there. This is a fine place though, the girls are relaxed.”
We walked downstairs.

We stood at the table in the front part of the living room. Jason turned to me.
“Unfortunately, the girls couldn’t be here right now, but we can set up an appointment with them if you’d want.”
“Yes, that’d be great, because when you’re living together it’s quite important to have some chemistry,” I advocated.
“Yeah, I feel you man, I’ll contact them so we can set up a time for that.”
“Great, let me know.”
I was about to head out.
“Oh, one thing.”
“Yes?”
“The girls really value tidiness and cleanliness, so I am not sure if you’re like that, but: emphasize it a bit if you can.”
“Sure, sure, thanks for the advice.”

This seemed like a great place. I was quite enthusiastic. The girls would be there the next morning, so I mounted my bike at ten past nine. Unfortunately, the climb towards the house was a bit more intensive than I had anticipated, so I arrived about ten minutes later then I was supposed to: out of breath, sweaty and with a pounding headache. Frak, this was going to leave a bad impression. I checked my phone, there was an SMS from Jason: “Make me proud man”.

Same house, same brown porch. I rang the doorbell. A plump girl with curly brown hair opened this time.
“Hi, I’m Donna.”
“Hey Donna, I’m Almer, sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay.”
I went inside and took off my backpack and helmet.
“You’ve already seen the house, right?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like something to drink?”
“Water would be great,” I understated: the bike journey had dried me up.

We chitchatted in the back part of the living room. Donna seemed friendly, if somewhat distant.
“So, you grew up here in Squirrel Hill?”
“Yes, been living here all my life.”
Someone was stumbling to open the front door. The person came in, out of view, and sprinted up the stairs.
“Kaaaaarrreeen”, Donna called out.
“Yeeeahs”, came down.
“Do you have a minute? Could you come down?”, Donna shouted.
“Yeeeahs, in a bit.”
She came down: a tall thin girl with short black hair. She looked confused.
“Hi, I am Karen,” she peered at me with jittery eyes.
“I am Almer, nice to meet you.”
“So, you’re here for the room, right?” she said in a flat business-like tone.
“Right.”
“So, I know Jason put it up for five-twenty-five, but it really should be six hundred. I mean, I am not sure if you’re okay with that. It’s her house though,” she pointed and looked at Donna, “your choice.”
I didn’t respond to this as I didn’t think we’d reached that stage quite yet.
“Sorry, I am in a hurry,” Karen continued while she fumbled with her shirt.
“One thing: are you gay friendly?”, she asked.
I was prepared for strange questions, like “what Smurf would you be” or “what would you take to an uninhabited island”, but this flabbergasted me. I honestly couldn’t care less about my housemates’s sexual orientation.
“He’s from Holland”, Donna quickly interrupted – apparently she held the belief Dutch people are by definition gay friendly.
Karen left to pick up something in an other room.
“I am sorry,” Donna said, “but her grandmother just passed away.”
“Okay, that’s pretty bad,” I nodded.
Karen was preparing and dressing up for the funeral and therefore in a hurry. Donna had to leave the room, Karen came back to pack her suitcase. She didn’t say a word, neither did I: I didn’t feel like it. Although I understood and sympathized with her situation, she’d been pretty rude and abrasive and somewhat succeeded in alienating me. Why take it out on me anyway?

Donna returned a bit later.
“So, where are you living right now?”
“In a hotel.”
“You’ve been living out of a hotel? Wow, that must be really hard,” she looked compassionate.
“It’s not the most pleasant thing, no,” I replied arms crossed.
“As I understand you’d be here for only a couple of months correct?”
“Yes, until about December.”
“Okay, you’re obviously a great guy, but we’re looking for someone who’d stay a bit longer”, a mixed expression of sorrow and regret appeared on her face. I was not going to get this, but by this point I kind of felt okay with it.

She guided me out of the front door.
“We will call you before the end of the week, is that okay?”
“Sure, please do, I have to get out of my hotel or extend by then, so please let me know.”

They never called.

Note: names and locations have been altered to protect the privacy of the people involved.

The fuzz of you leaving is beginning to die down as the people back home become caught up again in their own lives: you’re here, they’re there. Thus, as is usual after a week or two, feelings of nostalgia set in: Why did I leave home in the first place? What am I really doing here?

The food doesn’t taste as good anymore, the streets start to look gray, rain pours down. The initial novelty and rush is starting to wear off and your emotional circuitry is kicking and screaming to get you back to your old environment including friends, family and roommates. As the Kaiser Chiefs sing: “Oh my god, I can’t believe, I’ve never been this far away from home!”

But, you know what: I think that’s kind of healthy. I’d be concerned if it weren’t this way, since what would that mean? That I’d have few or weak bonds with people back home, which apparently isn’t the case. Good. So, what now? You resort to other things for comfort. While walking through a huge grocery store you grab the things that you know and recognize: suddenly the Bertolli pasta sauce looks really good while it’s admittedly way overpriced both here and overseas. Never mind, you take it and hold the little^[1] glass container as if it was a precious child in need of protection.

What is this? Are this supposed to be fries? Where’s cheese soufflé, the vegetable croquette? I am tired of eating bagels, and: why put a hole in a perfectly decent piece of bread anyway? Help! Where are the Dutch crisp bakes? Where are the milk chocolate sprinkles? Where is the cheese? Aaah, oh wait, finally, yes: I’ve found a piece of Beemster mustard cheese. Way overpriced. In the Netherlands I would not even have looked at it, preferring other brands instead, but now I carry it home with a grip so tight and fascination so strong that it would make Gollum’s obsession with the ring seem normal.

Sometimes it just feels great to be and act really Dutch.

“Can I help you, sir?”, the man behind the counter asked.
“Uhm, yes, so, I need a bike,” I uttered, “I guess I’ve come to the right place.”
He smiled and showed me around the huge three-storey bicycle shop. He was in his early thirties, had a ring beard, and was slightly taller than me. An engaging salesman, not pushy though, and willing to listen to my situation and offer good advice.
“I don’t have a lot of options in your price range, but I can show you some discounted bikes, and if you’d like to try one you can take it out for a spin.”
After some browsing I chose a nice black Cannondale bike, which seemed sturdy enough for the mountain work here in Pittsburgh.
“But, how does it work with biking? I mean: there are no bike lanes.”
He leaned in and gestured with his hands.
“You basically just act like you’re a car. Traffic lights, turns, right of way, it’s all the same as for the cars.”
I nodded in agreement.

Thirty minutes later I was walking through Squirrel Hill district, but now with a bike fitted with a kickstand and click-on lights. Perhaps it’s because I am Dutch, but I already missed biking after being in Pittsburgh for a couple of days. I am not the walking type of person, and I developed a severe disgust for buses. Why? I had to ride them to get to school for years: two hours, or more, a day. Missed connections, too hot or too cold inside, traffic jams, abrasive bus drivers: I’d seen it all and I didn’t want to go back there.

I mounted the bike, soaring down Squirrel Hill to Oakland. Oh my God, this was going pretty fast. What they call a `hill’ here is practically a mountain for Dutch standards. No wonder everyone’s wearing helmets here: I’d bought one even though I always thought these things look pretty uncool unless you were doing the Tour de France. I applied some pumping braking techniques and all was well. Or not? Suddenly the six-lane street narrowed into three one-way lanes: not in the direction I was going. I stopped near a junction and approached a middle-aged fellow biker standing near the traffic light.
“Sir, can you help me? I need to cross through Oakland for about a kilometer or so,” forgetting that he probably didn’t have the slightest clue what a kilometer was, “but this is a one way street, so how do I go from here?”
He looked at me intently.
“Well, you could take the pavement, but if you’d want to do it the official way you’d have to take a right here and turn left at the next intersection and continue on Fifth Ave.”

Alrighty, I thought, let’s not anger the abundant police around here. I took a right, then a left, turning onto the crowded three-lane Fifth Avenue. I cycled for a bit, keeping to the rightmost lane, but soon realized I had to take a left somewhere. Huge American cars were soaring by my left side, one just narrowly missed me. Hold steady, remember what he said: “act like a car”. I took a deep breath, extended my left arm, and: lo and behold, the car to my left made room for me so I could change lanes. After crossing one more lane, I turned left. Phew, after just a couple of blocks more I was back at the hotel.

Seven hours before the previous post I was waiting at the end of a long security check line right before the gate. An elderly American couple joined behind me. We briefly exchanged looks. “Are the lines always this long?”, I asked. “No idea, it’s the first time we’re passing through here”, they replied. The two of them had just completed a trip through eastern Europe and were headed back home. They asked me how the `polders’ were created and how tulips are grown: typical. As I was explaining something about dikes our conversation was interrupted by a security officer as we’d reached the front of the queue.

I sat down in the overly filled waiting room after passing through a fancy full body scanner and being patted down. A fragile gentleman, sitting perpendicular on a bench to my right, was anxiously shoving his laptop around. I was checking the news on my smartphone, but stopped as his behaviour attracted my attention. He seemed to be in his mid fifties, had a short gray beard and glasses, and was tall and thin: could have been a professor. He stood up and nervously waited until a confident ground stewardess crossed his path. His voice was trembling.
“Sorry, I can’t access the WiFi here and I have to let me wife know that I switched to a different flight.”
The stewardess explained there was nothing she could do for him, leaving the man behind in an even more anxious state. I stood up and walked to him.
“Can I help your sir? I have Internet access on my phone, you can use it to send your message.”

I boarded the plane and approached the row I was supposed to sit in, but two guys occupied it, one of whom was in my seat. I was about to say something, but heard a pleasant, but serious female voice behind me and turned around.
“Are you guys supposed to sit here?”.
I looked at her: American, dark blond, late thirties, tired. She would be my travel companion for the next eight hours or so. Her vibe was formal and distant, but accommodating. She was on her way home to Boston, where she’d lived most of her life despite being born in New York, returning from a business trip to Belgium. She had been partying till the early hours with colleagues the day before: that’s why she looked tired.
“So, do you like beer or wine?”, I asked.
“Uhm, both, my husband actually works in liquor distribution, so I get to try a lot of things.”
She smiled broadly. This was a woman who’d probably enjoyed lots of wild partying and drinking during her early twenties, before sailing to calmer waters as she approached thirty.
“So, yesterday, you alternated between both beer and wine?” I said playfully.
She laughed.
“No, no, just had Belgian beers.”
Her two children were now with her husband in Finland, but would return in a week or so. She would have some time to party with her girlfriends in Boston. I told her to get some sleep during the flight. Honestly, I had slept terrible the night before, so this way I could also recharge.

In Boston I was waiting in the non-US passport immigration line. I felt like a second class citizen. A girl queued behind me. I said the obvious.
“So, you’re not American either?”
She smiled.
“No, no, I am from Germany.”
“Cool, I guess that makes us neighbours, as I am Dutch. Where in Germany are you from?”
Turns out she was a biology student from Hannover visiting her father in Boston. I asked her whether she thought biological systems had a discreet and finite number of arrangements. She didn’t think so.

After passing through immigration I walked to an elevator to switch terminals. A man in working clothes handling a cart with utilities was standing there: waiting. He was impatiently tapping his right foot.
“The elevator is taking its sweet time”, I said.
“Yeah, yeah, it is”, he replied.
He was tall, strong and his hands had a thick layer of callus. He’d been working at Boston Logan for twenty years and told me about the new parts that had been recently built as we crossed the footbridge together.

Upon reaching the other terminal I joined the next security line followed by a cute American girl. She eyeballed me, I don’t remember what I said, but we were quickly engaged in conversation. Her parents had a business in Slovenia and she was headed there. She was flying first to Amsterdam in the exact opposite direction as I had shortly before. Before I knew it we’d reached the point where I had to take off my shoes and pass through security. I walked through the metal detector, but froze in the middle.
“What are you doing, buddy?” The TSA officer laughed, “just walk all the way through.”
The full body scanners had confused me.

I boarded my final plane that would fly from Boston to Pittsburgh. I installed myself in the window seat and waited until the person supposed to sit in the aisle seat arrived. Let me just say it was a well `rounded’ American. We had a brief chat.
“I am originally from Chicago, but I am living down south now, people are far more relaxed there.”
“So, you traded the Gangsters for the Cowboys?”, I replied.
He chuckled.
“I am from the Netherlands”, I said.
“Great, Amsterdam, I’ve been there, love the place. The women were good, if you know what I mean.”
He looked at me with beady eyes and blinked as he nervously twitched his thumb and index finger.
The plane was having delays. A lady, and her luggage, were `offloaded’. The weather got rough and stormy, further delaying take off. He was getting annoyed.
“Shoot me in the neck, it’s always the same, one thing goes wrong: this lady, leading to five other things. Dammit.”
The plane took off and flew to Pittsburgh. But once there, we had to wait to actually land. Maintaining a holding pattern we flew through storm clouds. Turbulence: the small airplane was shaking violently. I had to hold on to both the left armrest of my seat as well as the head support of the seat in front of me. People exchanged frightened glances. The American next to me was unsettled.
“We’re circling”, he said.
“Yes, it appears so”, I replied.
He shook his head in silent disapproval. We landed nearly an hour later than planned.

The bus from Pittsburgh Airport to the Oakland neigbourhood was stuck in a heavy traffic jam with five other buses blocking an intersection. I was tired: just let me reach the hotel, so I can sleep.
“Is it always like this?”, I asked an Indian guy sitting behind me.
“No, no. In the year I’ve been here, I’ve never seen a traffic jam this bad.”
The bus was delayed about twenty minutes or so. When I reached my stop I walked together with an Egyptian student who would stay at the same hotel. He’d been there before and was hoping for a `clean’ room this time. I wasn’t reassured, but luckily my room turned out to be nothing to complain about.

How many lives did your cross during your last trip?

… or roughly 10 kilometers above the ground, that’s where I am now as you are reading this: in an airplane following one of the North Atlantic Tracks. In two hours I will be landing in Boston, going through security checks, and transferring to a national flight to my final destination: Pittsburgh. Since few people, me included, have an intuitive feeling of where that actually is: it’s on the east side of the United States, in west Pennsylvania: here. The timezone used there is Eastern Standard Time: six hours before Central European Time. So, if you’re in Europe: I will actually be in Pittsburgh by midnight your time.

So, you must be wondering: that’s all nice, but why are you on a transatlantic flight headed towards Pittsburgh, anyway? If you’re thinking: not for the “quality” in-flight food, popping eardrums, and cute flight attendants^[1], you’d be right. I will be at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh for several months as a Visiting Scholar, specifically at the Language Technologies Institute, and more specifically with Jamie Callan and the students working with him.

Roughly that means that I’ll be collaborating with students, getting an impression of CMU and the people there, all whilst continuing my own research on peer-to-peer web search engines. Of course: I have some time to explore Pittsburgh and other parts of the United States as well. Expect some US focused blog entries the coming months.

As most people that leave their home country for an extended time to go off to a far away place, I too am thinking mostly about what I am leaving behind: friends, family, roommates, a familiar environment. The fact is that when I return none of these will be the same anymore. Truth be told: they would also not remain static when I would have remained here. However, due to the gradual changes this would be far less noticeable. One thing is for certain: by the time I get back I will have changed as well …