The spring 2009 was mostly cold with a lot of rain. There were only a few days when the weather was sunny and warm. I went to Keukenhof (the park with tulips) with my friend Rahwa from Ethiopia who also studied marketing at the Wageningen university. The flowers already went out of bloom in May, but they still look nice in the pictures. There was a big exhibition of lilies when we arrived there and we took hundreds of photos.
I used to go to the Forum building to write my thesis there. I spent one month doing a literature study and after that I conducted data collection. I basically had to replicate the research of my supervisor which wasn't difficult, but I didn't have much opportunity to be creative.
I met a guy in Wageningen, I was 26 and he was 50 at that time. There was a mutual sympathy between us but I think there was an insufficient understanding. He was a keen entomologist and dendrologist but I couldn't understand most of the time what he was talking about and I usually lost focus very soon. We spent a lot of time together, we went to the restaurants and cafes in Wageningen, we travelled to Breda and to the sea. We cooked together many times, sometimes chicken or fish, but I was often trying to prepare cheese fondue, which didn't turn out well sometimes. It was usually eatable but sometimes the liquid part separated from the solid one, probably because I overheated it.
I used to meet my friend Rahwa very often too and we were cooking together Ethiopian food, mostly tomatoes with onion and a lot of spice. I had a final presentation of my thesis in August and I left Wageningen in September 2009. I took my final exam at the Czech university of Life sciences in February 2010.