(no subject)

I may grump a lot about my weekly horse sitting thing (that, as often as not, doesn't even include sitting on the horse), but today was such a gorgeous day - picture perfect autumn landscape, clear, sunny, blue skies, not too cold - that I'm rather glad there was something to force me outdoors. Trees every shade of brown, russet with yellow highlights, maybe not particularly spectacular in the overall effect, but closer up broken up in brilliantly colourful views... bright yellow beech trees against the dark green of spruce trees; riding uphill through a forest of tall beech trees, landscape almost like a painting in its clear, artistic simplicity - the ground a shade of green speckled with brown, grass still visible beneath the old and new fallen leaves, stark straight trunks of the trees, silver-grey, yellow-tinged-with-russet crowns catching the sunlight. Still enough leaves on them to be mostly in the shade below, riding though a patch of sunlight and suddenly everything, the leaves on the ground, the very air, is swirling gold. A bit later we were going through a younger forest, everything around dipped in glowing yellow.

On a more prosaic note, horse had had a roll in the mud, covered with it to the tips of her ears. So much fun to clean that off wearing contacts, with the dust flying just everywhere, preferably in your face. :: snark ::

.:.:.:.

Ever feel like you've been seeing the end of something? Maybe it's just my perspective changing with the transition from (over-)protected child from a family of jurists with high flying, if not very realistic dreams to disillusioned academic reject, working a not intolerable, but certainly not very interesting, under-payed job with no real hope of improvement in the foreseeable future.

Still... when I started studying (until after I finished my diploma thesis, even) there were no university fees. Now I don't think even the Green Party is seriously suggesting to abolish them again. I've grown too far out of touch with all things university in the past few years to be able to judge the impact and change of atmosphere since, but I remember those years with a good kind of nostalgia. Now I certainly didn't have the, shall we say, most realistic outlook on my possible chances even as they might have been then, and I'm paying now for my misplaced idealism combined with lack of career planning, lack of dedication and whatnot, but I still think that freedom was something worthwhile in and of itself, regardless of economic considerations. Being able to experiment a bit, to learn things because they were interesting without the additional pressure of having to weigh that against the cost of € 300something per semester.

And now there's a generation growing up that's never even know that feeling...

From what I hear there's a major university-reform in the making that will change pretty much everything - faculties, institutes. Couple of years and I guess the university like I used to know it won't exist any longer...

We should have been warned when the then newly-appointed minister of finances stated that no one needed obscure subjects like Oriental Studies anyway.

(Public transport was free for students when I started university - that was limited and subsequently abolished a few years later.)


I wonder, is it just me who seems to be so badly equipped to deal with the direction the world is changing around us? I realise I might, for a variety of reasons, need security and stability a little too much, but much of what's happening now seems to me to be overdoing things, either out of ignorance, carelessness or because it serves the interests of our new ruling party... but then, in Germany things are the same, except there the government is made up of Social Democrats and Greens. Might be my perception of things is distorted by personal disappointment and bitterness, but with the current state of politics I have no idea who to vote for at the next elections. Does it even make a difference any longer?


And whenever did it turn 1am again... :: le sigh ::