Artium Baccalaureus!

 

For a very long time my days have followed an immutable rhythm; I go online at seven-thirty at the latest, work through until around five in the afternoon, and only then venture beyond the confines of my tiny apartment. After doing the needed shopping there’s time for a couple of beers at Café Schwabing before heading home again. Then there are crackers, cheeses and paté for my supper. There’s white vin ordinaire and, with luck, something pleasantly extraordinaire to read on my Kindle until it’s time to fold down my Murphy bed and call it a day,

Until the end of June I was outputting on weekdays not less than two thousand words of German-to-English translation while Saturdays and Sundays were devoted to work on my manuscripts. Since July, and the loss of my main translation client, I have on the one hand had much more time for my writing but, on the other hand, I am confronted with dwindling financial resources. Indeed in this latter respect an ultimate vanishing point looms large on the horizon. All the more reason to adhere strictly to this minimalist and essentially solitary daily cadence.

Given this background, Thursday, Friday and Saturday of last week were an astonishing break with routine. 

“As I make this entry in my pocket notebook on Friday evening, the bell of the St. Servatius Basilica opposite has just struck seven, after the carillon pealed two bars of the Ode to Joy. On a façade across from all the cafés lining the east side of Het Vrijthof square a son et lumière projects an evocative history of the city of Maastricht.”

Jessica’s graduation was simply not to be missed. On Thursday we left Munich at five-thirty in the morning. Mother and daughter shared the driving for eight hours. There was time to freshen up and change in the rooms we had booked through Café la Cloche. Just round the corner from the café on Het Vrijthof they offer six well appointed chambres d’hôte in a quirky house dating back to 1690 with the most tortuous narrow staircase I have ever encountered.

Suited and booted it was time for Jessi to round up her posse before the ceremony scheduled for three o’clock.

That posse! The names of her closest friends, those seen in the slide show above, were so familiar to me from out Skype messaging throughout the three years of her studies, And now here they were in person, flanked by proud parents coming to terms with the reality that their offspring would very soon be entitled to call themselves Artium Baccalaureus.

The proceedings in the Aula of the University of Maastricht were not weighed down with undue pomp and ceremony. The two speeches were short, almost affectionate and lacking in tired clichés. Soon it was time for the group photo and for hundred of digital snaps for the family albums. The diplomas were handed out, the graduates applauded and then it was time for a short stroll in the unseasonal sunshine to a tavern where wine flowed freely at a reception hosted by the University.

It had already been arranged that a good number of Jessi’s friends and their parents would dine together on the Thursday evening. 

There must have been around twenty of us who dined very well indeed and almost filled Le Virage restaurant. The evening was marked by lively, intelligent conversation and for our family there was a real surprise. It emerged that the parents of one of Jessi’s closest friends were a couple with whom my ex-wife and I had often had often had drinks back in 1982 in Munich, well before children were on the agenda for either pair!

A substantial breakfast was served on the Friday at Café la Cloche, and although only a few of us were staying in the chambres d’hôte other fresh graduates and their parents joined on until there must have been sixteen of us in all. The staff were very tolerant of all the furniture re-arrangement that this involved. They were also mightily impressed when the bill for all the extras was settled by the step-father of one of Jessi’s friends, a man not easy to overlook since he had been Federal German Chancellor back in the nineties.

A smaller group of us spent Friday afternoon exploring the town, the girls fully aware that this was a kind of farewell after three years, the parents getting to know the environment in which their daughters had been living for all that time.

At the Trattoria Senza Nome they had set a table for fourteen at the very front by the windows. I ask my readers to imagine how unusual it was for me to be dealing with so many people… and enjoying it hugely.

Since it was, after all, Friday a good number of the most enterprising girls felt obliged to make last visits to the late night clubs which had been so important in their lives for six semesters. There were hangovers which none bothered to disguise when a final breakfast round assembled at Café Zuid in the super-modern Centre Céramique neighbourhood.

We got back to Munich in about seven hours on Saturday, each of us a bit dazed and exhausted. I have the feeling that the Maastricht adventure was important on many levels, not least because it was an expedition that we really could not afford!

In future two beers on my own in Café Schwabing of an evening may be just too reclusive and misanthropic, even if Jessi does join me a couple of times a week. We shall see!