Best of Luck

I’ve now been home for a full week, and this is the last post I’ll be writing. People ask me how my trip was, and I of course tell them I loved it. They ask me how it is being back, and I never have a good answer. It’s interesting. Things certainly make a lot more sense being in the town I grew up in. I’m more relaxed and I’m not constantly under the gun. There’s air conditioning and credit cards and English conversations on the streets. But I certainly miss Germany.

I miss my friends and the crazy adventure of being in a foreign place, comepletely not settled in yet. I miss how openminded and up for anything the students I met were. I’m really looking forward to going back to campus, where friends are waiting for me. I look forward to being a real student again (the German university system is a joke).

More than anything, I’m ready for the rest of my life, for new adventures. Burnt out as I was by the trip, I could tell, even at the very end, that it had given me a new perspective on life. The world really is my oyster, and I get to choose what I do next. When I was taking my last tram ride to the Hauptbahnhof that would take me to the airport, I put my headphones in to listen to some music I had downloaded back in January, just as I was coming to Mannheim. One of those songs on that first playlist had lyrics I couldn’t understand until I was heading out:

We are moving through our lives

The way the light moves through the morning

Fading in and out of grade

Disappearing without warning

I-----

I am sending you the best of luck

May the world be waking up

Right by your side tonight

Wherever you may be

Wherever you may go you’ll find

Something better than you left behind

The past will always be a dear friend

Even when you do your best to shed your skin

Your mind takes pictures of everywhere you’ve been

And everything that’s lost can be found again

The Last Days

As you go through study abroad, your feelings will vary radically from hour to hour. Mornings will be depressed and boring. Nights will be lively and fun. You’ll hate where you are sometimes and revel in the greatness of it all at others. Just like the first semester of freshman year, you’ll have to adjust to a whole new world. You’ll make the best friends you’ll ever have, and you’ll need to Skype people from home just to keep your sanity.

That analogy really is accurate, though. When I first came to university, I needed my lifeline from back home. But now, six semesters in, those new strange friends I made in the first semester are exactly the lifeline I use to keep my sanity in Germany. And the place I’d never adjust to became my home. I’m sure that if I were here another semester (or five!), I’d come to feel about Mannheim exactly as I do about my college back home.

If I got to stay back there, maybe I’d spend more time relaxing on the Neckar, or I’d get another chance with that lovely girl who just couldn’t make up her mind. Maybe I’d find out about more “regular” spots for my friends and I to spend our time in. I’d see more sunsets, eat more Turkish food, drink more 1€ liter beers, and find more time for the people I cared about.

While this might seem like a list of regrets, I like to think of it as a list of hopes, and fond memories. They’re the kinds of things I know I will try to do when I go traveling again.