from my journal today 11 Aug. Written on the train from Stuttgart to Berlin. Edited here.
No, I´m in Germany. For a moment I thought I was back in England, but no; I´m not. Last night I couldn´t sleep. It was my last night in Donzdorf with the Saurs. 4 in the morning I was up putting together a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle because I coudln´t let myself lie awake where there were so many things to be sad about. Frau Saur came into the room, squinting in the light. I must have left my door open and she saw that I wasn´t in bed.
“Go to bed!” she told me in German.
“I… I can´t sleep” I said in English.
“Was ist schloss?”
But I didn´t know what was wrong, and couldn´t have answered anyway.
She finally guessed it. I couldn´t sleep. She shrugged and left the room.
I sighed and looked at the puzzle. I had put together barely a corner of the pretty photograph of an autumn tree against a mountain. You couldn´t tell what it was. I began to pick up the pieces a few at a time and tossed them in the box. That´s when the tears came. They were little, but I knew why, I didn´t want to say goodbye again.
My mind was churning last night. I don´t know why, but it wouldn´t let me drift off into dreams. It wouldn´t shut up. But the thoughts were interesting thoughts.
Staying with the Saurs made me question some things. I´ve staid with the Saurs before. I learned to walk in their house. I learned my first English word there, and my first German. My parents had lived there, in the apartment upstairs. My dad was in the military before the wall came down and he had been posted at the US base in Goeppingen, I think it was, now closed down.
Susi had shown me pictures from that past. A photo of her, 13-years-old, big round glasses resting on her nose, and in her arms a smaller version of me. A photo of my family in front of my grandparents´home in Bethesda. I can tell by the ivy that climbs up the hill and by the boat that sinks into the mud, never used. My parents are happy; my mother has a smile on her face; I smile as I cling to her leg. I´m not more than 5. And my father has his head cocked to one side and his cheeks dimpled by a real smile, the kind that became rarer as the years went on. It´s been five years since I´ve seen my dad´s face. I said goodbye to him a long time ago, but his face in that picture felt like a little bit of home; I miss that home.
The Saurs are a close family, geographically as well as being tight-knit. Susi and her boyfriend Kai live in the apartment my family used to live in. Her parents live downstairs. Her sister, Tina, and her family live next door to Tina´s in-laws. It´s a 10 minute walk to Herr and Frau Saurs´. Watching them laugh and talk and eat and eat and eat together, loud as they wanted to be, I missed my family, my 4 uncles and 4 aunts, my 8 cousins all my grandparents, my mom and Tom and Kristin and Daisy and Chester.
“It´s time for you to settle,” said that longwinded voice inside my head. “Choose a place and stay there for a while. I want to go to Edinburgh, Scotland, but if I did thatmy family and friends would be an ocean away. Life could go to shit any second, I see that now. War, recession, disease. I see it everywhere I go. As much beauty as there is in this world, there is still suffering. The world is not fair. I want a bit of stability. A job, health insurance, but I want open doors and I want to keep them open. But what I want most is to stop saying goodbye.
Too many goodbyes. That´s why I can´t sleep. I don´t want to go to Berlin and Munich. I want to visit Caroline, Camilla, Tess. I´m tired of “traveling” around Europe. I want to stop “traveling.” I want to stay in one place for a while, see what it´s like, see the same faces everyday. I say that, but my family says keep going, my friends say I envy you, strangers say it´s great that you have this opportunity. I say yeah, it´s great, too. And it really is, but all I want right now is to see my friends. I don´t want to see Alexanderplatz or the World Time Clock or Reichstag or Checkpoint Charlie. I can see Berlin in books and pictures.
I don´t want to be alone for the next week. I´ll be alone tomorrow. I have to say goodbye tomorrow. again.
I´ve said goodbye to so many people. It´s always so great to see them again. This trip has been a trip of meetings and reunions and goodbyes.”
As I lay awake on my back, staring at darkness, this is what my brain started to think to keep itself company, it´s a list of all the people I´ve met, but it´s not exhaustive…
“I met a friendly Irishman on the plane who´d done his trip around Europe about 20 years ago. I met Kara again in Paris. I met her friends there. I met a Spaniard named Fredy and his sister Paula. And they drove me all over Paris, speeding around and around the Arc de Triomphe. I met the English boys, Tim, Ricky, Danny and Luke in Barcelona, and Natalia the Russian, the 5 of whome were there with me when Barcelona won the cup. Oh, and the German boys as well, Uli and Benjamin who navigated the city to the Joan Miro exhibit the olympic stadium, the castle. I didn´t really make friends in Morocco, but the people at the hotel who made me tea when my guts were trying to jump out through my throat… how could I ever forget their kindness and patience? And the woman at the teleboutique who let me cry on her shoulder whether that´s what she´d meant I should do or not. And in Italy Kara and I met up with Brian. Joanmaria when I was alone on the train to Milano. He didn´t know it, but he made me feel a bit more comfortable after spending 3 days on trains without a shower. He was someone I was able to talk to when I needed it despite the language barrier. And in Greece I got to see Mum. And in Turkey I met a million wonderful people… Carissa, Udalrigo, Robbie (who I got to see later in London), Jimbo and Sebo and the Aussie who´s name I feel guilty for not remembering, and the Romanian, the Kurd who taught me some Turkish while I failed at teaching him English, Deb, the Aussie, and the Kiwi working at the hostel, and Fuat and Zahide, the Turks I met in the park, and two gorgeous American brothers from Portland, and three boys from Philly, two of whome were triplets. And in London all the NYUers like Joe, Jess, Emily, Elaine, Megan, Nada, James, Melissa, Sam, Tabby, Chauncy and so on. And there were Paul, Guillian and John at Oxford who put me up for the night when I got stranded. In Edinburgh, there were the Minnesotans–Mark and Kara– and their Singaporean friend Rishad. There were the uber-friendly uber-drunken Scotts. And the band members like Nev who had a cute habit of standing on his toes while playing the guitar. And there was the film-major rick-shaw driver. Later there was the cute waiter in Cardiff who kept calling me “madam” until I finally asked why and he said “it´s normal.” And the friendly woman from Oxford who helped me decide where I wanted to go. And the boy with nice eyes in Reading who helped me find the express train back to London. Oh and the Swedish woman on the train to CDG airport in Paris. And of course, so many friendly French people like the woman who invited me to go first in line at the grocery store when she saw I had only one thing. And in London I ran into Lex on the street. We first met in New Zealand. And I got to see Tim (who I met in Barcelona) again when I went to Leeds. I met his friends and his mum and his cat. And when I left, I was sad because it was a little piece of home. And then there were the Saurs. And I will see Camilla, and Caroline and Tess and Steffi.
And as I thought these things, I formed a plan… leave Berlin early and knock on Camilla´s door. 4 days till I´m “home” again.
Drea