For the past 32 months, flights from Geneva to Amsterdam brought me to my family, and flights from Amsterdam to Geneva brought me home. But on this day, the 28th of January in the year 2022, the big blue bird that is going to fly me to the Netherlands will be bring me home. To the country where my heart is, where my family lives, where my bikes are, where my future rabbits will be born, and where I will continue chasing my dreams. Farewell Switzerland. Hello again the Netherlands!
Okay, this is not my last trip from Geneva to the Netherlands as I need to come back in a couple of weeks to get my last stuff, to hand in my keys, and to arrange my emigration. Also, I will continue collaborating with my current supervisor and colleagues, and I am looking forward to future research meetings here in Geneva. Nonetheless, today’s trip feels like the closing of an important chapter in my life and the start of an even more important next one.
The Geneva chapter is filled with numerous experiences that helped me grow on the personal and professional level. With respect to the latter, my stay in Geneva represents an important stepping stone to my next challenge, which I will touch upon in my next blog post. For now, I want to focus on the personal level by thanking everyone who contributed to my fruitful stay in Switzerland.
In particular, I am thankful for the love and support from my family and friends, and I am sorry that a lot of my decisions in the past years were at your expense. Notably, I left my wife and grandmother behind in Groningen, and it hurts that I can only make up for lost time with one of them. I also left my parents behind which is something that almost kept me from leaving the Netherlands in the first place (as I wanted to make as many memories as possible with them while they were still in good health and spirits). Needless to say, the horrible diagnosis that turned our lives upside down only four weeks after my emigration felt like a nightmare coming true. While on the other hand, I must still be dreaming because it feels unreal, given this diagnosis, that we could bring together the full squad during three subsequent holiday seasons ever since.
At last, I want to conclude with a word of thanks to you, reader of one or more of my blog posts. I feel honored by you taking some of your previous time to read about my research experiences. My topics are probably not always interesting to you, possibly because some blog posts come across as therapeutic writing exercises. Nevertheless, I hope that visiting my website has been sufficiently rewarding in the past years, and I hope that you will continue stopping by once in a while.
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