I'm trying install a lamp to my apartment but it didn't light up as I expected. I recently moved in and this is the first time I'm trying to install a lamp here. The spot where I'm trying to install the lamp is just a hole in the ceiling with three wires hanging out: Two brown (live?) and one blue (neutral?). Some Googling revealed to me that the separate live wires can be used to control specific bulbs in a multi-bulb lamp. Nearby there is a switch on the wall with two buttons which I assume is for these wires. So apparently the idea is that current flows from each live wire through the bulbs to the common neutral wire when to buttons are toggled on. One live wire and the neutral were connected in parallel to a connection strip, while the other live wire was connected alone to its own connection strip.
My lamp has a spring-powered connection strip with L and N labeled holes so I simply took one of the brown wires to L and the blue wire to N.
I removed the connection strips and tried to measure the voltage to see if the problem was somewhere else in the circuit, and I noticed that each of the live wires measures around 50-54 volts with respect to the neutral, even though the AC line voltage in my country is 240 volts. Even stranger, I measured this voltage regardless of the positions of the switch buttons! Only when I removed the fuse I got 0 volts.
So I assume the reason why the lamp didn't light up was that the voltage was way too low. Could somebody point what is it that I'm doing wrong, or is there something wrong with the wiring on my apartment?