”Sadness at takeover. Air France swallows up KLM”, the Telegraph headlined on news that Dutch air carrier and national symbol KLM is merging with Air France.

Urban planner Smari Johnsen, 27, from Reykjavik, Iceland, is a 2003 graduate of Delft”It’s been two months since I completed my two-year Masters degree program at TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture.

Feeling lost and hungry for home cooking, first-year PhD Anish Patel found happiness in a meal under the golden arches.”Man, I miss the good ol’ USA, its burgers and bottomless cups of coffee.

Trendy techTechnological degrees are gaining popularity in the Untied States, according to the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE).

Last Sunday, CDA politician Antoinette Vietsch read Delta 27 ”over coffee and cakes”. She was taken aback by the stories about foreign scientists and the visa delays for their partners and families (‘Red tape costs TU human capital’ and ‘Victim of the system’).

Once the leading computer science country of the former Soviet Bloc, Bulgaria is now powerless to stop its best minds fleeing to foreign universities, and taking some of the country%s hope for a brighter future with them.

Each month the English Page meets a member of TU Delft’s foreign community. Verónica Rubio, 27, from Quito, Ecuador, is a first-year MSc student studying Petroleum Reservoir Geology.

Every year, the third Tuesday of September is the day when the Queen reads the ‘Speech from the Throne’, outlining the government’s plans for the coming year.

Gloomy studentsMany of TU Delft’s first-year students are pessimistic about the future, according to a survey conducted by three Christian student societies.

The 2003-04 academic year is proving to be the year of the visa hassle. TU foreign students and researchers are suffering from a bureaucratic Dutch visa system that can%t handle the university%s relentless drive toward internationization.