It was great to see them after the 10 months of me being abroad. Picking them up from the bus stop made it feel like no time had passed, and because we had all been staying in touch with each other since I left, we knew just where to pick up with conversation. They were visibly exhausted though, having spent 10 hours on an overnight bus from London and having had a bustling itinerary in England that didn't include a lot of sleep.
Because I'm writing this two weeks after-the-fact, I can't recount exactly everything that we did (I need to get back to writing these posts in a timely manner...), but a few things stand out to me still. Mariel made it clear to me a few weeks prior to visiting that they didn't want to get the "tourist treatment" while in Bonn, and I completely understood. Most of my joys from traveling just come from walking around the cities, doing normal everday things like grocery shopping or taking a tram, and people watching. Mariel and Sarah were no different, but I did owe it to them to show them the Koelner Dom (see one of my first posts about visiting the cathedral), one of Germany's, and the world's, best cathedrals. A brief 10 minute visit was enough and afterwards we headed home from Cologne to Bonn. Taking the train back was also a good lesson in normal everyday life; because they don't always check tickets on the trains you can run the risk of not buying a ticket and getting home for free. I had much success with friends in the past not buying tickets, so with Mariel and Sarah it was no different--except the result. Within 5 minutes of boarding the train we had a controller come by asking for tickets. I pulled my 'confused tourist' spiel, always packed in the holster for times like this, and luckily to my surprise we weren't given the fine by the controller, just the opportunity to buy our tickets on the train. Catastrophe averted.
Later that day, after dropping bags in my dorm room, we jumped on a subway and headed towards the nearby castle for a few hours of hiking. We were also meeting up with my old host brother Jannik, who I hadn't seen since October and had just gotten back from 2 months in Cuba. We hiked to Drachenfels, the old ruins at the top of the hill, and passed the Drachenburg castle along the way. The weather was nice and crisp during the hike which made eating ice cream at the base of the hill a great reward.
The rest of the time in Bonn remains a blur; I introduced Mariel and Sarah to my friends here, took a few nice long bike rides with them, sat out on the parade grounds with sketchbooks and snacks just talking and drawing, and mostly just relaxing. The time spent with Mariel and Sarah was great. Just catching up on little things from back home (like how the friend group back home dwindled to include Mariel, her boyfriend Colin, Sarah, and her boyfriend/my roommate Aaron since everyone else is in Europe) and explaining things from being abroad was special. It really gave me some perspective as to what I've gone through these past 10 months and how, well, foreign, it still is to many people back home. Mariel has never lived in a city that's not her hometown, and up until my year in Germany neither had I. In July Mariel is going to Australia to begin her semester abroad and we are all going back home to the US, so unfortunately our week together in Bonn will be our only time of intersection over the course of 16 months.
The rest of Mariel and Sarah's travels have gone well. They arrived in to Bonn after having spent time in Dublin with a friend of a friend, Nottingham with Samson and his friends, and London as tourists waiting for a bus out to Germany. They spent time in Cologne and Bonn and got a small sense of German life. We traveled to Amsterdam on our last two days together and camped out in a park. After we parted ways in Amsterdam they traveled to Paris, then went to rural France to live on an organic farm for a few days for free (work on the farm for food and housing + meet cool people also interested in farming), and are wrapping up there European vacation in Italy visiting Samir. Truly an eclectic vacation with samplings of a few cultures, a few friends, lots of laughs and headaches, and many memories. Glad to have been a part of it!
Over the course of a year abroad you go through a few pivotal moments that make you reevaluate the whole situation. For different people these experiences are different things, and I've had many many many of them since arriving here in August. Hosting Mariel and Sarah and reconnecting with two of my best friends from home was the latest in the sense that it showed me what I have to look forward to when I get home, and just how short I have to wait. The majority of the time abroad has been phrased "I've been here _____ months," but more recently, as my calendar has only one page left to turn and the phrase goes from months to weeks, it also changes into "I only have _____ weeks left." Scary change. It helps me remember, as sometimes I am prone to forget, that this experience has an expiration date, that I can only speak face-to-face with my friends here for a few more weeks, that some experiences, sights, and opportunities are running out of time. I'm enjoying my time here and know that when I'm back home I'll be missing it, but I also feel ready to go home, see friends and family again, get the ball rolling for my last year of university, and feel the comfort of old friend groups, restaurants, and sights. It's a divide that often has me swinging like a pendulum a few times a day. It's a weird feeling.
But on a lighter note, I'll end the post with a few pictures I took from Mariel and Sarah's visit.
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| Prost! Sampling German beer with Sarah (left) and Mariel (right) |
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| Once enough beer has been consumed, döner makes the perfect dinner |
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| Our camping place in Amsterdam. Blue skies, green trees, good company, what else do ya need? |
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