A “B.L.A.S.T. (Blog Late Addition Summarizing Text) from the past”-posting.
A couple of days after our arrival from Umag the Digital Media class of 2004 – the first Masters of Science in Engineering in Austria ever – had its graduation. It is the moment every student dreams of … until it finally arrives and he (or she) realizes they are dreading it. For it signifies not only the coming of age, the transformation into a respectable member of society, but also the end of student life, departure from the beloved university and, most importantly, saying goodbye to great a many friend accumulated over the years of hard work …
These were the exact feelings I had ever since returning from Umag. After five years spent in Hagenberg, after all was said and done, I had finally time to play PC games over the intranet with my friends, go out, drink, be merry and otherwise enjoy student life … and with the fast nearing graduation date it was all to end before it began. True, my future look out was not one of the bad ones: I had two and a half months of vacation to look forward to (yay!) followed by 9-month long civil service (damn!). However, the irony of our leaving was not unnoticed. With the school stress gone the freedom I dreamed about for five years was tainted with “end of days” feelings.
It began already during the trip to Umag since some of my friends (Mony, Julian, Berni) could not come with us, because they had other plans. And not long after we arrived back home, it was clear that everyone was looking to get out of Hagenberg just as fast as they could. As any college class we came to Hagenberg from all parts of Austria and while I would be seeing some of my closest friends over the summer and the following months of civil service in Vienna (André, Flow, Julian, Mony), others would return home, move farther away or stay in Hagenberg (Wolfi, Phil, Jakob, Berni) and the chance of seeing them again in the foreseeable future were minuscule. In addition, the last week was so hectic with the graduation and moving out of the iHaus that nothing of the aforementioned activities could be enjoyed any longer – our time in Hagenberg has ended for good.
And so our graduation arrived. It was held not in Hagenberg, but in Linz’es Redouttensäle because they had the fancier rooms. Of course everybody’s family was there and it was no easy task of getting them there (mostly because only a few members of my family speak any German and I had to coordinate their arrival at a place I myself was unsure where it was). In addition, the weather was only suitable for bathing with 30°C and not a cloud in the sky. The result was all of us sweating like pigs even though the graduation started at 10 in the morning. After we were led into the room the graduation commenced with the usual stuff – speeches from politicians, those “responsible” for our success, and of course our teachers. Next each student was called on stage while his/her thesis topic and grade were read aloud and received his/her diploma while having a picture taken with the aforementioned politicians. After all this was said and done my friend Wolfi held the alumni speech (he was the only one who volunteered to do it) and thanked our teachers from all of us. And that was it. What followed was a small reception with drinks and some food and the best 5 years, 1826 days, 43 824 hours, 2 629 440 minutes and 157 766 400 seconds of my life were officially over. In the afternoon I was joined by my father and Tina for a celebratory lunch in the Pöstlingberg Schlössl which was organized by my friend Julian and featured his family, as well as André and Flow and their families. All in all it was a great way to properly celebrate the end of my student life.
The following days were spent with moving out and cleaning of the apartment. Since we were all moving out (our flat-mate Jochen had to unfortunately move into another apartment in iHaus due to a mix up with the owner), we had to leave it crystal clean and that was no easy feat. Moreover, getting all of my stuff back home was a challenge in itself as I had no idea how much stuff has accumulated over the 2 years I have been living there. I guess I should not wonder since it was the place I came to think of as “home”. You tend to fill that place with lots of bullshit. This tedious task was pleasantly disrupted by a quad-bike ride event Christina (Wolfi’s girlfriend) organized for him as her graduation present. It was very close to Hagenberg and I was invited (again, thanks for that Sina!), together with a bunch of other guys and we had a lot of fun, even though my track time was far from usable. In other words, I sucked 
Finally, at the end of the week, it was time to give our apartment to the next tenants, take our last possessions and leave Hagenberg forever. To say that it was bittersweet would be a lie – I make no secret out of it, those 5 years were the best of my life. I will miss not only the friends I made there (some of whom I’ll have a hard time seeing again), but also the place itself. It represents for me the freedom to be as geeky as I like and the certainty that I’ll meet someone who is still a bigger geek than me. And that, my friends, is very rare indeed.