How did I ended up here?

I really don’t know how to start this series, I have the feeling there is so much I need to explain first. So perhaps that’s how it starts. My story how I ended up being 33, still in university and now doing an exchange semester, which has the reputation of partying all the time. Believe me, I feel my age.

It kind of started more than 10 years ago, when I was in my early 20s and having friends who study. I was working at that time, because I was a school-dropout who thought she never will be going to university. But I saw all my friends had fun being students, going on exchanges and I didn’t liked my job much… so I started to think about how to change my life and in the end I decided to do my Abitur, which in Germany is a higher school degree than I had before. At that point I just hoped to get a better job with it, so I started to go to evening school. There I realised that I actually like learning and being good in school. On evening school the teachers were much more friendly than in my old schools and the other students were “losers” like me.

So I made a quite good degree on the end and felt like I could achieve everything. I moved to Berlin, start university. And because all my friends did when they went to university, I wanted to go on an exchange semester. I went to the information event for Erasmus, which is a program of the European Union, to find out my possibilities. I found out that I could go to Prague, which I always liked, is okay-ish with prices and is not that far from Berlin and got all excited about it. Till I was home and telling my current boyfriend about my plans. To say, he didn’t liked it, it’s an euphemism. And because I was in love and didn’t wanted to jeopardize the relationship, I stayed in Berlin. 

What a mistake!

Of course, after a while, we broke up and I felt so stupid that I didn’t took the chance to go on the exchange. At that point I was on the end of my studies and just wanted to finish and hadn’t enough of a clear mind to think about going in that moment, so I made my Bachelor degree without being abroad. After getting the bachelor degree it took me nearly a year to continue my studies but when I did I kind of swore to myself, that I’ll be going on an exchange. I checked out where I could study my subject and which languages I’ll need and I was sad, that Prague wasn’t in the list, but than I detect Bologna and knew, I’ll go there. 

I was already once in Bologna in January 2018, with an theatre show, I worked for and somehow I liked the city from the start. I remember that it was small enough to I didn’t need public transport, big enough to have all important things nearby, it was a student city, so full of young people and affordable bars and in Italy spring will be coming much earlier than in Berlin. Also I already learnt a bit Italian and hoped to get along easily. So I decided to go and now I am here.