To cut up a subject matter in two...

...might be the best way to tell you about starting my Masters in European Law at Leiden University.

1. The studies
So far, I have had a great time during the lectures and seminars here...all the teachers are enthusiastic and really know what they are talking about, like...
Prof. Lawson, who belongs to the fanclub of Judge Bonello because of his dissenting opinion in a case before the European Court of Human Rights and jumps up and down when his wife and daughters walk by the window;
Ms Koffeman, who was so nice as to not lose patience with us when we tried to find a case for our paper but failed to read the instructions so that she had to keep on telling us to pick another case;
Prof. Eijsbouts, who is generally very keen on Apple products, but detests PowerPoint and likes to use the word "intelligible";
Prof. Sacha Prechal, who is now a judge at the ECJ, but still found the time to come to Leiden to speak to us about the Charter of Fundamental Rights;
and lots of other people who have been kind enough to help me get started with my studies here in Leiden. If the year continues like t has begun I will be a very happy person!

2. The life
Just like Lüneburg, where I lived before, Leiden is a rather small, but picturesque, city so you should not expect too much from the nightlife. There are however tons of bars and restaurants to go to, plus, Amsterdam is just 30 mins. away if you really wanna party...
Settling in here has been a bit of a of a hassle: The apartment we rented from the University's housing service proved to be stinking of nicotine and was molding. The apartment that we now have (in the same house) is not owned by the housing service, so that we had to cancel our contract. Now the housing service is refusing to pay back the 'contract fee' (when I never even signed a contract with them). Also, if you don't have a rental contract in Holland you can basically do nothing of importance: Importantly, you can't register at town hall (therefore can't complete registration at the University) and you can't get a bank account (therefore can't pay in a lot of places). As you can imagine, that was pretty annoying. Fortunately we have now sorted out everything but the 'contact fee'...hope that that also works out in time.
Otherwise, life is very nice here, Leiden is a beautiful city where you can easily get everywhere by bike and I get happy every morning when I pass the bike roundabout on my way to Uni....