At the end of my Master's, I decided to lengthen my study a little bit and did a research project in Birmingham, Alabama. Since I gave up my room in Nijmegen -it was a good moment to force myself out of the comfort of a student's life and grow up- I really moved again. Birmingham Metro is a city of around 1 miilion people and relatively small compared to American standards. In the summer it's hot and humid, but it was a great experience.</p><p>I first rented a studio apartment close to the University and the artistic centre of Birmingham (Five Points South). I believe it was 1500 12th street south. It was at the back of a wooden house and was not in a very good state, which was not much of a problem except for the roaches, but I was almost never at home. I quickly had a good social life and frequented many bars and quickly someone offered me to rent a spare room. I stayed there a couple of months (Idlewild Circle) during the winter and it was a good warm house with everything in it. Then, the last couple of months I moved in with my girlfriend who lived on Highland Avenue. The 12th street studio was quite small and the carpet was smelly. I tried to wash the damn carpet tiles a couple of times, but if they didn't try quickly enough there would be the smell of mold. I had a bed, a tv, a walkman, a coffee maker and some tools to make dinner. The place on Idlewild Circle was a lot nicer, but basically it was someone elses house and I had no stuff of my own. The same at Highland Avenue, although I did feel at home there. As important as a house is a car in the US. Luckily, my boss borrowed my his car, a nice volvo that they didn't use anymore. A good car, although at the end of its life time, although it never failed on me. The semi fifth gear didn't work anymore, which made it noisy above 120 km/h. It also had been in an accident causing the frame to bend which made the car wanting to pull to the left all the time. Just keep your hands a the wheel was the remedy. I also leaked some fumes from the manual transmission, but hey.