The Final Installment.

I’ve shed jet lag, but it took a week. I woke up at 10 yesterday, which is funny, because the first time I’ve slept past 8 I of course had a doctor’s appointment (zoom) in half an hour. I was still tired after that, so I did more of my latest favorite thing to do, which is to sit in front of a fan with a book and the cat.

Actually I slept until 2:30 in the afternoon on my first full day back. I told my mom, as she sat perched on the edge of my mattress, that I had never felt so much like a pancake (read: physically incapable of moving) while entirely un-sick. “Well, you did just travel a long way in a long time,” she said, handing me the glass of water I didn’t know I needed after fifteen and a half hours of sleep, “cross three time zones, sit through a four hour exam and essentially pull two all-nighters in a row.”

It’s true. A direct flight from Germany to Boston should take between seven and eight hours, the sum of my travel time (not a direct flight) between Freiburg and my coastal town north of Boston took amounts to about 25. In “Verletzungspech” you may have read that I left Freiburg five minutes after midnight. This is true. I arrived in Boston around the same time 24 hours later. (Including, of course, the train ride(s), the wait in the airport, the first flight, the layover in Dublin, the second flight, and all that taxing). Baggage collection was unusually fast, and the drive home uneventful. Which was a relief. And at long last not having to think. About connections or forgetting a bag or which theorist said that comic theater was for the bourgeoisie and which insisted that it could only portray aristocratic characters. Or about what to cook for dinner. And gosh, someone even drove me home from the airport. 

Home. The original one. The one with wooden floors that creak and crickets that make me think of Charlotte’s Web and loaf upon loaf of fresh bread and no sirens and parties downstairs and window that opens sideways and upside down. I love this house where I grew up that still has my pencil drawings (“drawing” being a generous term) on the wall where my first bed stood, with cobwebby timber frames and a string of sleigh bells and a canoe slung from the ceiling. 

But I miss my other one. Freiburg. My roommates teasing one another in the kitchen, coming home dressed in rain pants and little covers to protect their shoes and jackets zipped to their chins. I miss cycling over the blue bridge gazing at the bluer mountains, passing the parks with families and friends sprawled on blankets eating pasta salads or folded into vinyasa poses or smoking tiny cigarettes they’ve rolled themselves. I miss the lit house, with its brilliance and humor, the roll of cookies we shared whenever somebody made coffee. The library with its law students carrying books as large as cinder blocks, so big they’ve had to attach handles or carry them slung over their backs like anchors. Cappuccinos that were 3.60 euro instead of 4.20 dollars, street corners that teem with life at 9pm rather than crawl into slumber by 5. That empty coy pond, where revelers dance Bachacha on Tuesdays, salsa on Sundays and whatever somebody with a speaker and a good playlist feels like every evening in between. Searching for a place to park my bike, wading through row upon row of filled bike racks. In a city where whether or not you have a driver’s license (I don’t) is irrelevant. Watching audiences spill from the theater after a matinee, pouring into the street, which is cobblestone and usually devoid of cars. The tram rolling over a track that cuts through grass, the square with the bearded man that blows the bubbles and the fountain through which children run whooping and gleeful and shirtless and sticky from ice cream. 

I want to go back. To haunt the coffee shops, to read the bulletins I missed. To the university library, to ask the old woman who has a locker in the foyer if she’s studying—in the politest curiosity: why now? To the Antiquariat by the Irish pub without a list but with an afternoon free. To the ice cream shop on the intersection, the one by the river, the one by the mountains, the one by the bakery, the one… to my favorite bookstore with the step up to the children’s section and the recommendations shelf and the just published section and the back door that leads to the coffee shop. 

You’d think I’d had enough. Especially if you’ve read “Verletzungspech.” I haven’t. I’ve just gotten started.

I studied mixed metaphors (Katachrese) for my theory exam. I’ve mixed many of them in these essays. It shouldn’t hurt to mix a few more. Departure is pure baker’s chocolate, I’ve said. Except when it’s pure sweet milk chocolate. Learning to love a new place, learning to live there for five short months, and then leaving it, is like eating half a piece of chocolate before exiling the bar to the top shelf of the pantry. You can reach it, but only with a chair. 

I can reach Freiburg, but I need an airplane. 

It’s odd, knowing that I may never live there in the same way again. I feel changed. As if when I glance in the mirror I will see someone else. But the city beats on. Unaware of the life it has touched—small, unimportant—simply marching (rolling, dancing, vinyasa flowing) on.  

For anyone considering studying abroad, and especially those considering Freiburg, I hope I’ve convinced you that the former is life-changing and the latter is unrivaled. For anyone who's made it this far: thanks for coming along for the ride. It has been an honor to share it with you.

Cheers to chocolate and sleep, 

C.