1. What was your favourite subject during your student days?
The history of Dutch by Guido Geerts, former editor-in-chief of the Van Dale dictionary. What he did was sociolinguistics: which elite with which power in which century was able to establish which standard language of Dutch. 

2. Have you ever failed an exam? If so, which subject?
Too many to list. I repeated my first year in Leuven because I was quite lost. And falling in love for the first time takes a lot of time. In my master's programmes, I never failed, neither in Dutch and English linguistics and literature in Leuven, nor in political science and international relations in Louvain-la-Neuve and Konstanz (Germany).

3. What is the strangest thing you have ever done to relieve study stress?
I may have done strange things, but certainly not for that reason. I didn't know how to relieve study or life stress! I was too ignorant for that. 

4. What was your most memorable student experience?
In my second year in Louvain-la-Neuve, I wanted to go to Germany on Erasmus. I went to see the Erasmus coordinator, Prof. Michèle Schmiegelow. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘What do you like best, skiing or sailing? Kiel or Konstanz?’ Me: ‘Um, neither. I do like walking in the mountains.’ ‘OK, then it's Konstanz and I'll be your master's thesis supervisor!’ And that was that. She was nuts and wonderful! 

5. Did you ever have a student job? What was it?
I wrote for the KU Leuven campus newspaper. I interviewed Erwin Joos before he founded the Eugeen Van Mieghem Museum in Antwerp. But even better: I was a tutor and research assistant (HiWi) for Prof. Thomas Risse in Konstanz. Would I be able to do it? ‘Aber natürlich! Sie machen das schon.’ 

6. If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?
Don't stay alone for so long; break out earlier by going abroad. 

7. If you hadn't become a professor, what would you be doing now?
I would be an English and Dutch teacher at a secondary school. I did teacher training for that – back then it was bizarrely called ‘Aggregatie’. I never understood why, because aggregation wasn't part of it. 

8. What was your first thought today?
‘What a crazy dream.’ 

9. What is your favourite book, and why?
I don't really like superlatives, so I have several: in political science, my favourite is Commerce and Coalitions: How trade affects domestic political alignments by Ronald Rogowski from 1989. In fiction, I recently read Alkibiades by Leonard Pfeijffer and Ik ben er niet by Lize Spit. Absolutely fantastic European literature. 

10. What music or artist do you like to listen to?
I am a passionate classical music lover and connoisseur, with a special connection to the Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach and the symphonic Spätromantik of conductor, composer and grand bourgeois Richard Strauss from Munich. I also enjoy many other types of music, but I can hardly remember any names in pop music. 

11. If you could meet one historical figure, who would it be and why?
That would intimidate me quite a bit, as I am rather shy by nature. 

12. What is a travel destination that is still on your bucket list?
Because I met my German wife while living in Florence, when we were both doing our doctorates at the European University Institute, I love the architecture and art history of Italian cities. I have never been to Urbino, where there is supposed to be a beautiful ducal Renaissance palace. 

13. What is your favourite way to spend a free Sunday?
Depending on my health, which can fluctuate quite a bit, it could be a standard Sunday routine where I read the newspapers De Tijd and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung far too thoroughly, maybe do some gardening in my garden and cycle to choir practice in the evening. But of course, a trip with my wife and/or family is just as enjoyable. 

14. What is the most interesting thing you have learned recently (outside your field of expertise)?
Oh dear, superlatives! I am very curious, but also a bit lazy by nature. 

15. What is the most adventurous thing you have ever done?
One of my brothers, who has been living and working in Quito for a long time, took me to the snow-capped Cotopaxi volcano, at an altitude of 5,500 metres. While he climbed to the summit with someone else, I sat with my eldest brother and his wife in the morning light, looking at the Cordillera de los Andes from Colombia to Peru, including the slight curvature of the earth. 

16. What is your most precious possession?
I don't think I own anything completely. I consider my good voice a gift. 

17. How do you relax?
Feeling an old deciduous forest come to life; being with my wife; singing bass in Bach choral music; seeing a large solitary tree; being with my eldest brother; ... 

18. Do you have a hidden talent that your students don't know about?
I really enjoy devising architectural walks in historic city centres for small groups of family, friends, colleagues or students. Using historical building records, I illustrate who was in charge during which period. 

19. When you look to the future, what do you see?
A beautiful family life and a seemingly disoriented, perhaps even overly aggressive world, which, as always, will involve a lot of love and suffering. 

20. What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
For something so didactic, you'd have to be in class, and I'm not. Life isn't just a school. It offers too much wonderful depth and richness for that.