Aufwiedersehen

Now, at the end of ten days, I am tempted to recount what remains.

What I have are snapshots of a great time seeing everybody again, not fully fledged stories themselves but all the more important to me for their unexpectedness. That’s the essence of friendship to me, not the planned events of seeing each other again, but the moments in between when, gripped by spontaneity, something completely unforeseen happens.

One evening: waiting for some movie or the other, sitting in a friend’s flat, he and I got talking about travelling destinations. Not the holiday kind of travel, the science nerd kind of travel (or rather ‚bird nerd kind of travel‘). We got talking about books, about things we would like to see before we die: remote islands, rare birds. The things stopping us: money and seasickness. 

A short evening trip to the beach with another friend after an evening out for dinner and some cocktails. Standing with our feet in the North Sea, gazing out at the lights of the fishing boats on the dark horizon, being perfectly content and all alone on the beach.

These moments are memories of being acknowledged for things I rarely get to live at home, or if I do then never in the way I did here. It’s not the same kind of friendship, it’s a different kind because it builds on different interests and different circumstances: my time with my friends here nowadays is always painfully limited to a few days where I try to squeeze in everything they and I have missed in the past half year or so. That’s no way to live and I felt that trying to prove to myself that I still belonged there, too. Moving on is hard, but sometimes it’s also just plain not necessary.

I am finding my way. I am moving towards what I want, and misguided as some of my attempts may be, I think I’ve got the overall direction right.

Sunday evening, seven on the dot in front of a frituur somewhere in Oostende: seeing my old flatmate get out of his car and and walk across the parking lot towards my friend and me, waving like crazy. Us, waving back and smiling like we can’t stop. 

Sunday night, talking Dutch to an old acquaintance and for the first time realising how much we have in common and how many shared interests we have. Finding words, losing words, making up stories and laughing about silly impersonations of people we both know. 

The cinema in Oostende: two friends and me spontaneously deciding on a different movie from the one we agreed on and laughing all the way through it just like old times. Stuffing ourselves with too much junk food and too many soft drinks, me crying a bit at the end of the movie. 

Lying on an improvised beach towel before the rising tide, moving back a couple of metres every half an hour or so because we’re too lazy to leave the waterline behind altogether. Swimming with the skyline behind us, looking out onto the open water (trying very hard not to think about the kind of junk that gets dumped into the North Sea - if the seabirds can make it, so can we). 

The last morning, standing on a train platform and laughing one last time about old stories half forgotten. Consoling each other with words that aren’t quite right. We’ll see each other again in six months, until then we’ll have to confine ourselves to Skype and Facebook and various other messenger services out there. Communication is easier nowadays, but it doesn’t help you when you feel like you’ve got nothing to say to each other. A few words here and there every other month have to suffice.

And then, the last memory is always stepping on the train, sitting down, unwrapping a sandwich and staring out the window without a last look at the sea, already waiting for the next time to go back.