Farewell

I'm struggling to sit down and put fingers to keyboard (since putting pen to paper is now virtually obsolete) because I'm so bloody restless and I suspect writing anything about Berlin impressions now is bound to sound a bit trite. Apologies for that. I can't guarantee that any of the following will be coherent. I'm at that excruciating stage of slooooowly placing one item after another into a monstrous black suitcase whose contents are mostly strewn across the floor, as they have been for the last week. I've made three piles of clothes: 'definitely taking back', 'unsure', and 'to be donated to charity so that fashion faux pas committed in Berlin will be buried in Berlin'. (For an example of the third category, see previous entry 'Shaking it at salsa' and the photo of my dancing shoes). Luckily for my luggage weight and hopefully the Red Cross, the third category is pretty big.

There have been several small farewell events, all of them lovely and low-key, all of them Last Times and accordingly laden with watery glances, heavy sighs, and clumsy words that spectacularly fail to convey that I'm actually going to miss you very, very much. To the point where it actually physically hurts a bit.

Unlike so many other life experiences, the goodbyes never get easier, no matter how many you say. Yes, it's a cliche but it's unfortunately true. In three years, I've done two exchanges at two different unis plus a language course and all of the goodbyes were horrible. As much as airports often mark the start of exciting adventures, I also partially despise them for the amount of tears shed during very public goodbyes I've had there (and I think I'll always have nightmares about Frankfurt am Main main train station). Those goodbyes are messy, messy affairs which are often a bit unreal, as if I'm watching this one incredibly morose, devastated-looking person holding onto this other incredibly sad person in some over-dramatic movie scene and I swing between despair and not quite being able to take the whole thing seriously. Crazy. Yet in the last three years, I've never figured out how to avoid them.

Aside from missing the people, I'll no doubt pine after Berlin itself. Berlin for me is graffiti, cobbled footpaths, flat shoes, mad cyclists, currywurst, quaint traffic lights, hipsters, art galleries in odd places, the wall, cheap rent, smoking inside, war history, funky cafes, the U bahn, Ersatzverkehr, beer at the Spree, boat trips, and one really hard uni course that unfortunately took time away from the fun stuff, but at least I met some very nice people. And I learnt a few things, I think. Like how to say, 'the constitutional complaint has prospects of success' in German. It may come in handy one day, you never know.

I'll be back to Berlin one day, I'm quite sure. Not soon, as there's the little matter of a job I've got to attend to in Australia, but eventually. At the very least to visit. Ich habe ein Stueck von Berlin fest ins Herz geschlossen und werde an die Stadt und alle meine sehr liebe Freunde hier haeufig denken. Macht's gut, Leute und viel Spass, bis demnaechst.