Recently in March '24

March had quite a lot of highlights for me, despite the bike shituation. Let’s take a look and recap what has happened the past month. I always have to go through my calendar and check stuff for these posts!

🍄 Life

At the beginning of March, I did a small trip with a few friends of mine to a city in 🇩🇪 Germany, and then two other cities in 🇨🇭 Switzerland. We started off in Eindhoven, and then took (multiple) trains to München. We stayed there for a few days, and then went to Zürich and Genève, also by train. On the way back, I took the TGV from Genève to Paris, and the Eurostar back to Rotterdam.

The most expensive train in this trip was between Zürich and Genève, seriously. In addition, every train was on time, which was quite nice, despite being a bit suspicious (looking at you DB). Besides, I had the opportunity to ride on one of the newer ICE trains, I think. At least, it matched the interior photos I saw online.

It was very nice. It was great to see some friends from Portugal again, and convince them to take the train from Eindhoven to München instead of flying. They had to fly to Eindhoven, and then back to Portugal, so that was already accounted for.

I also want to note that it is always crazy to see the staggering amount of Portuguese people that live in Switzerland: it’s the train conductor, it’s the guy at the supermarket, it’s the receptionist at the hotel, it’s the cleaning lady at the hotel, it’s the owner of another restaurant, it’s the cashier at the supermarket, etc. You can’t avoid them.

On a different note, I started a new Dutch course for level B1. It’s been quite nice and I have my presentation (spreekbeurt) next week. My plan is to talk about 🚊 international train travel, nighttrains, and some of the greatest problems at the moment. Very on brand for me.

💪 Health

Not a lot of updates here besides the fact that I didn’t feel any consequences for my long walks in Vienna that I mentioned last month. I’ve been keeping going to gym three times a week when possible, and I would say it’s going great.

📚 Reading

I finally finished reading Harry Potter en de Gevangene van Azkaban and have started the next one, Harry Potter en de Vuurbeker. I’m already way over half of the book, so I hope to finish it during the first week or two of April.

🍿 Entertainment

In the series department, I have watched One Day, which I really enjoyed. The turns and twists of the story were completely unexpected for me, which made it a nice series. I’ve also watched the third and last season of Young Royals, and I’m glad with the ending. I think European series in general deserve more visibility.

On the movie department, I have watched quite a few movies. But I want to recommend Dune: Part Two, Robot Dreams and Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person. The first one certainly doesn’t need introduction. The second one is… heartwarming. The last one is a French Canadian movie and the title is pretty descriptive.

Have a nice April!