One Month Later – 1. Thoughts about Things

So many memories ….

Wow, so yesterday it’s been exactly one month since I left India. Sometimes it feels like ages ago, surreal and almost like a dream, and sometimes it feels like it’s only been yesterday, and I catch myself seeing news and events and restaurant recommendations from Pune thinking about going there as well, only to realize I’m several thousand kilometers away on a different continent.

I can’t let go of the fact that you can spend nine months of your life in a different country, with a bunch of complete strangers, and before you know it that foreign country is your home and those strangers are your family. And then, in a matter of hours, you’re back in your old home, but it doesn’t feel quite so much like home anymore, because you have another home now as well, and you can never have both “homes” at the same time.

I guess for people like me this is especially true: Ever since I was old enough to think, I wanted to leave the village I grew up in and travel and see the world. Sure, I always had family and friends there, which kept me from ever leaving completely, but over time, all my friends moved away for University or jobs as well, so the ties to my hometown became less and less close. And then I spent the next few years while I was studying moving around, studying abroad and traveling: First my small room in the dorm, then together with Tanja and Lisa in our awesome flat in Hochheim, then one year in Poland, back to living in a different flat in Hochheim (sometimes alone, sometimes with ever-changing flatmates for a while), then in Dublin for a while before going on a roadtrip through Ireland and the UK, a short intermezzo in Cologne and then finally nine months in Pune. So, over the years, I’ve accumulated at least 6 different “homes”, and no idea how to reconcile them.

Because of all this moving, traveling, constantly arriving and then leaving again, I never thought of myself as bad at goodbyes. Quite the contrary, I never really understood why people would cry so much when leaving for a longer trip or going back home after a year abroad. Well, you can ask the others who flew back to Germany with me, I cried a lot. Constantly. One minute I’d be alright and then I’d cry and then everything would be okay again until I started crying again. Everything was okay until we reached the airport and suddenly, I actually, really had to leave Pune. Indefinitely. Forever maybe? I even started crying the next day in the train from Frankfurt Airport home, when I suddenly realized that it had been a little less than 24 hours that I was in a rickshaw on my way to the airport. And a few days later when skyping with the bf when I realized again that Batch 18 and all the other lovely people from Pune would all of a sudden not be around me everyday anymore. And a few times more ever since for the stupidest of reasons. I think what made leaving this time so hard was that on the one hand, we really were a very close-knit group of people who lived, worked, traveled, laughed, and cried together for almost a whole year, to such an intensity which you rarely have even with close friends or family. On the other hand, I am now getting to a point in my life where the decisions become more permanent. I’ve finished studying, I’m done with internships, and in January my first “real” job will begin (more about that in a later post). I still want to be free, travel and explore the world, but I’m also thinking about “home” a lot more than a year or two ago. I guess it really is true that the older you get, the more you think about settling down 😀 No worries though, my globetrotting days are definitely not over yet!

It’s also been very weird and to be honest quite difficult living with my father after living on my own for the past 7 years, especially since I didn’t live with him growing up either. And what might be a slightly weird situation is made into actual hell because I cannot do anything an my own here. Actually, scratch that last part, I can’t do anything at all here. We live in this super tiny village, there isn’t even a shop here, I don’t have a car, public transportation is almost non-existent and nothing is in walking distance. There is exactly one decent connection here, so theoretically, once a day I can go to the nearest grocery store and back again. And I do that quite a lot because it is literally the only thing I can do. And in addition to all that, the cold and constant darkness is really dragging me down. I really need to get back to some warmer climate soon 🙂

The only good thing is that now I have time to catch up with all the TV shows/movies I missed, so if you have any recommendations, let me know! I finally finished Graceland season 3 only to find out the show has been canceled, why? I really liked it. Watched Season 1 of Jessica Jones and thought it was okay? Not a big fan of Jessica Jones herself, but I liked the idea of “everyday” superheroes and I enjoyed the supporting cast quite a lot. I’ll also have to catch up with season 2 of The Knick, the first season was quite brilliant but already very “dark” and heavy, so I’m wondering if it’ll be too much in season 2 or if it can find the right balance. I also watched the first episode of Scandal, I thought it was okay but didn’t blow me away as much as How To Get Away With Murder did, so I’m wondering if I should continue? (I probably will anyway because I have nothing else to do.)

I’d love to hear what you think about that whole traveling/being at home thing! Have you traveled a lot, or stayed close to home? Have you studied or worked abroad, went backpacking through New Zealand, or do you prefer 10-days all-inclusive resorts in Tunesia? Or maybe just recommend me something to watch to pass the time, that would also be great 😀 So probably still today or tomorrow I will upload the 2^nd (maybe even 3^rd) part of my “One-Month-in-Germany-Post”, showing you a bit of what I have actually been doing here other than watching TV 😉