Chowing down on the best doner of the trip
trying to capture Berlin
the view from the abandoned driving range where we barbequed and listened to Michael Jackson
Our new friend Fred and a view of a building in his neighborhood in Friedrichshain
Christoph and I sit at the top of Victoria Park
Elisa and I are apart and that is the sign of another trip come and gone. I am writing from San Diego and wishing I could use all the luxury of time I have now to fill in the gaps in our blog updates where we just didn’t manage to paint pretty pictures. It feels a bit wrong to do this at present, maybe out of fear of inaccuracy or maybe out of sheer laziness. So, I think I will refrain from going into depth about stories that are sadly becoming more and more stories and less and less something I actually did. Alas, this is the nature of memory and the passage of time.
On a more uplifting note, we had a really really wonderful trip. Elisa and I were talking in Paris, dog tired after Prague and Berlin and with only one day left to spend with each other, trying to remember if there were any really bad parts to our trip. Sure we had mishaps here and there but we agreed that everything went pretty smoothly and there were so many more ups than downs. I came home feeling like I had gotten just what I had wanted out of a post-graduation trip. But, what did I exactly get? My friend Theo asked me, when standing in the massive line at the SF food fest to get a pupusa, if I learned anything about myself on the trip. I tried really hard to give this question ample attention and I could not help but reply with a tinge of reticence that I don’t think I really did learn anything about myself. I saw a lot of awesome things, have an entire new pool of experiences, and shared some quality time with people I care about…but I don’t think there were too many epiphanies about myself this trip. The one thing I could say was that I came back from Europe hungry to go back. I am leaving to teach English in Spain in a month and my feelings about it have been wavering throughout this summer. But, I can now say with full confidence that I am ready to go, to try my best and to take whatever Spain throws at me. I cannot help but be enamored with my vision of what a European lifestyle entails—a hierarchy of priorities and different taste for life that I have seen far less frequently in the US. Perhaps living in Europe is just what I need to pop this bubble, this illusion of the European rhythm but perhaps it will only pull me in further. So, even though I don’t have anything new to report to you or to myself as far as personal discoveries, I know that new challenges are ahead and thus new lessons. I am sure that new realizations and processing of a time and a trip will trickle out eventually, unexpectedly, you can’t force these things.
Elisa, wherever you may be, thank you for such a wonderful time. It would not have happened without you.
