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Bridge in Peja (Peć), Kosovo

Today’s bridge is nameless and broken.

Peja is one of the larger cities in Kosovo, located in the West of the country close to Albania and Montenegro, in close proximity to the Prokletije mountain range. You can see it in the background of my picture, and I think the mist that covers the mountain tops adds to the idea that is in their name – Prokletije means the „cursed“ mountains. I wish I had been able to see more of the beautiful nature around, and the monasteries that are part of the UNESCO world heritage. I have written more about Kosovo in general in this post.

While I found Kosovo to be fascinating, rich in culture, full of beauty and culinary delights (I have forgotten the names of all the dishes, but I absolutely LOVED Albanian and Kosovar cuisine!!), there was no denying its burdensome recent history. Bullet holes in walls and houses in ruins were to be seen everywhere. What I found interesting was that while usually media show the supression of Kosovar Albanians, I here came across the bombed out Serbian neighborhoods and came to understand a little better that victims and perpetrators are not necesarily easily identified. This destroyed bridge was one of the sights that made me painfully aware of Kosovo’s past.

If you have read My Mission statement, you know why I love bridges. To me they are the most universal symbol of connection, of bringing people together and overcoming anything that may seperate us. I want to present to you pictures of bridges that I really love in places that I really love on my blog every Sunday. If you have a picture of a bridge that you would like to share with my readers as a guest post, feel free to contact me!

Bridge at Wollaton Hall, England

Juni 9, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 1 Kommentar

This is a bridge of great simplicity, and in that I found it to be genuine and unpretentious.

It is a very small bridge that leads across the creek surrounding Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, England – a beautiful country house in Elizabethan style that is most famous for featuring as Wayne manor in Christopher Nolan’s last Batman film The Dark Knight Rises. It sits majestically on its hill, and walking towards it across the infinitely wide lawn I feel like a character from a Jane Austen novel. But I guess that is just what all non-English European girls cannot help feeling when they see a country house in England.

As Andrew and I have walked past the manor and downhill, and have circled the little lake at the foot of the mound where the rhododendron dip their lilac blossoms in the water, we get to the bridge that leads us back into the immediate grounds of Wollaton Hall. Its unostentatious red brick stones and its slight curve don’t match the grandeur that I see on the hill – but as I cross the tiny bridge, I think how good it is that there is both: overflowing, pompous beauty and small, discreet beauty.

Books Shaping Travels – Part II

Mai 8, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 4 Kommentare

I explained last week in Part I of this post how before I left on my big trip to the Balkans in 2010, my friend Christoph came up with an idea. He wanted to give me a book that I could take, and when I was done with it I was to exchange it for a new book, and I was to do that with every book, and bring him back the last one. I loved the idea and agreed. I have told you about the first three books that took me through the first two countries, Hungary and Slovenia. Funnily enough, the next three books lasted me up until the end of my trip through nine more countries.

I couchsurfed in a lovely flat with five wonderful people in Maribor in Slovenia, and I asked them what books they could recommend for me to read that were related to their country or the Balkans in general. They came up with two suggestions: Vladimir Bartol’s Alamut and Ivo Andric’s The Bridge over the Drina. When I went to Lujbljana, after Maribor, I found the greatest English book shop in all my travels, Behemot. They happened to have copies of both books in English and I bought them without second thought. It stepped on the point of having to exchange books for one another a little bit, but I really wanted to read these two novels and exchanging books had proven difficult so far anyway.

Alamut is a novel by Slovenian author Vladimir Bartol – which is why I started with it, since I was still in Slovenia. At first sight one wouldn’t think that it had anything to do with the region. It is a story set in 11th century Persia and tells of the training of assasins in service of a political leader. It is a deeply moving story of almost epic proportions about love and friendship, sacrifice, honour, pride and deception. It would be easy to oversee the actual tie to its author, who wrote it as an allegory for Italian fascism under Mussolini, being part of the Slovene minority in Italy himself. I loved everything about the book that took me through Slovenia and Northern Croatia almost half way through Dalmatia.

I gave away Alamut to a girl I met at a hostel in Split. I had a feeling she would appreciate it and gave it to her gladly.

Following this was the reading of something particularly special to me. I have written about the meaning I attach to Ivo Andric’s wonderful novel The Bridge over the Drina when I wrote about, well, the bridge over the Drina – because it is an actual place in Eastern Bosnia not far from the Serbian border, the magnificent Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge in Višegrad. This picture certifies it for me that I did sit on the very bridge as I finished reading the book. It was not just a dream, I truly did it.

Ivo Andric actually won the nobel prize for literature for this book in 1961 – even if the book was published in 1945 already. In it, he connects the fates of people living in the small town of Višegrad to the fate of the mighty bridge. The town’s life seems to circle entirely around it, and as I sat on the bridge, I wished that someone would come by and sell me a piece of water melon, like it was described in the book, so that I could try and spit the seeds as far as I could into the turquoise waters of the Drina.

I finished reading The Bridge over the Drina and couldn’t just get myself to leave it somewhere for anyone to find. Besides I needed a new one in exchange. I went back to Mostar, that city of cities to me, and saw my Canadian friend Aasa again who I had met the time I had been atround before. She knew about the book and had wanted to read it for a long time, and now the prospect of getting her hands on it excited her much. I couldn’t have found a better person to give it to. In exchange, Aasa gave me Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

An absolute classic in Balkan travel literature, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon has well over 1,000 pages and is a non-fiction account of a journey that Dame Rebecca West took through what then was Yugoslavia with her husband in 1937. It is a right brickstone, and quite a few people pronounced me completely whack carrying it around with me through Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, again Bulgaria, again Macedonia, and Kosovo.

I never finished the book. In fact I was not so much reading it as reading in it. I didn’t do a linear reading, chapter by chapter. Instead I went directly to parts Rebecca West had written about cities I got to know and love. I was indignant over the fact that the chapter on my beloved Mostar was so short, but I loved whenever there was talk of meeting locals and being welcomed with open arms in so many different situations. Often I marvelled at what had not changed, and sometimes I was startled by how different my own impressions were. All of the time I was thinking about how I would describe the places I read about in Rebecca West’s writing.

I left the book with my couchsurfing host in Prishtina, and Irish girl who had as desperately wanted to read it as my Canadian friend had the Ivo Andric novel. Again I am confident that I left it in good hands.

While writing this, I had completely forgotten how the story ended. I was already prepared to have to tell you now that it had just escaped my consciousness what had happened with Cristoph’s and my deal. In fact it only just came back to me that I gave Black Lamb and Grey Falcon away in Prishtina. And similarly, it just now came back to me what I brought back for Christoph. There is another fabulous little bookshop in Prishtina called Dit e Nat. It is a good place for meeting both locals and expats and the have a good selection of English books and delicious coffee – plus and unbeatable atmosphere. There, I bought an English a novel called Ministarstvo boli (The Ministry of Pain) by Croatian author Dubravka Ugrešić that I brought Christoph back to Germany. And thus it was a perfect circle – leaving with a novel in German, coming back with an English translation of a Croatian one, leaving with a book on academia, returning with one on war traumata and cultural identity.

What books in your travel has shaped your experience? Do you read when you travel?

Tales of Gdańsk – Narracje

Dezember 9, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / 4 Kommentare

The last time I went to Gdańsk, I came into town for a Contemporary Art Festival called Narracje that consists of light installations that are projected on walls of different buildings throughout the city. Narracje [English: narrations] is held in Gdańsk for the fourth time, and its motto is the Shakespearian „Art thou gone, beloved ghost?” The website had me so hot for it that I just had to come and see it, and it has been all over my facebook feed, too. Speaking of ghosts, spirits, unearthly relics of the past in a place like Gdańsk and transforming all of this into art – there is basically not a thing about this that I do not like.

We are a group of six when we make our way to the Gdańsk shipyard where a large portion of the installations is set. I am beyond excited, because I have never actually been on the territory of the shipyard – and when we get there, it is so tangibly laden with history. Walking those grounds is like walking along where the Berlin wall used to be. I sense how the entire place is filled with energy, with spirits, how the area tells both of endurance and revolution, of suffering and victory.

We end up on a tour of the installations in the shipyard that is done by the curator of the entire festival, a Canadian of Polish descent named Steven Matijcio. I find his explanations very inspiring. All of a sudden so many of the installations make sense when at first glance they don’t tell me much, even though some of them are unbearably beautiful. I don’t know squat about contemporary art, but Steven combines theories, ideas and notions that I know from literary studies with a material that is strange to me. For every piece, he explains the installation’s immanent meaning first, only to relate it to the building that it is projected on and the entire space that it fills. In some cases, the work of art would be only half as meaningful, had they projected it onto a different wall. We start talking to him about 10 minutes into the tour. One on one his personal passion for all he artwork he is presenting in this festival comes across even more intensely. The day after I go to his tour of the installations in the Old Town, talk to him more, and enjoy it to bits and pieces that I can get all the questions of my chest that come to mind.

There are many, many, many installations that would be worth mentioning. I will just talk about two that I found most moving, but in very different ways.

The first is by Belgian artists Aline Bouvy and John Gillis and is called Venusia. We see it on the first night, projected against Hall 42a’s outside wall in the shipyard. The name of the installation being inspired by Venus, it is obviously a piece about human interaction and relationships. A collage technique filmic installation with powerful, almost sacral music played to it, it is of eerie beauty and intensity with its sudden images of arms trying to reach and lips meeting each other. Prominent to me in it all are the takes of Eyes of different shape and color, all merging into one as though to create the image of one vision for the world, one love, and one mother goddess of all emotion. It is truly aesthetic and as I stand there, I wish I could see the whole 8 minutes, but we don’t have time. I found the installation on the artists‘ website for you though. Click here and scroll down to the very bottom of the page!

Past and Present blend into each other at the wall memorial at the Polish Post Office

Angels of Revenge shows close-up film clips of people attired with horror movie props talking about what they would like to do to the person who has wronged them most on their lives. They are not actors, but real people talking about other real people and about real events. Having been cheated on. Having been stabbed in the back for a job or money. All of them adress their tormentor directly – they talk to the camera as though it was the person who has done wrong unto them. In effect, an onlooker of the installation feels like they were addressed. The hatred, the thirst for revenge, at times disappointment, but mostly just blind anger – all of it is hard to take and very disturbing. The things they say are just phantasies – but are they? Very, very bad words are used. The installation is in English with Polish subtitles. I finally start to read and try not to listen, because in English, without any notable language barrier, all the emotion hits me with yet greater force. The entire yard is buzzing with accusation. Connected with the history of the place, it is almost too much for me. I am glad that we cannot linger too long because I might cry. But if art is supposed to tear us out of stupor and make us feel and think and re-evaluate, than this has certainly done it.

I have not managed to shoot any decent photos with my iPhone. I recommend Algebraiczny for stunning pictures. And I did put the 5^th edition of Narracje in my calendar. I will be sure to come to Gdańsk for it next year.

First times and the Magic of Advent

Dezember 2, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / Kommentare deaktiviert

My cousin recently posted a meme on facebook that read

„When was the last time you did something for the first time?“

I had to think fast, and yet I couldn’t really come up with a good answer, and that made me rather sad.

When we are kids, first times present themselves constantly. As we grow older, there are fewer opportunities for them. Partially because we have already done so much, but also because in our daily life and routine, we seek them out far too seldomly. Aside from seeing all the places on my Bucket List (and more) – what about my everyday life? Where’s the new, the unknown? It’s not like there aren’t things I’d like to do for the first time. I have never had absinthe. Or Haggis. Or snails. I have never done kite surfing. Or rock climbing. Or swing dancing. And there is bound to be more. I should really try to keep in mind that every day may grant me the opportunity to do or try something for the first time.

I think that the magic of first times is what we celebrate in Germany when we celebrate Advent. The number of first times, even if just for that specific year, increases dramatically in December.

There is the first of advent (which is today!), the fourth Sunday before Christmas Eve, when the first candle on the advent wreath is lit. The wreath holds four candles, one more will be lit each Sunday until Christmas. Christmas isn’t coming without and advent wreath or fir sprigs that hold all the little decorations I have found in my advent calendar over the years.

The advent calendar of course is most exciting, most special on the 1st of December. It consists of 24 little surprises, one for each day between December 1st and 24th. Mine is an embroidered beauty of the 26 letters of the alphabet, all formed by little Santas, surrounded by tiny packages that hold chocolates. It took my mom 6 hours to finish each letter when she handmade the calendar. She really must love me. But then again, for what by now must be 15 years I stand before the filled advent calendar every year on December 1st and am overcome by a childlike excitement and joy, and I know that Christmas is coming, and for some reason, that means that all will be well.

This year, December 1st and first of advent were both in one weekend. And that wasn’t all. This weekend also had the first snow – huge snowflakes in a graceful dance outside my window, covering the yard in a thin sugar coat that makes the grey and dull sight so much prettier. Unfortunately in Berlin, more often than not, snow melts right away. The city’s steaming body gets to it too fast. Still there’s magic in snowfall.

I also went to the Christmas Market for the first time this year and had mulled wine (now it wasn’t the first mulled wine of the season, but mulled wine is just too delicious to wait for it until December every year!). Weihnachtsmarktzauber at Gendarmenmarkt may be the prettiest of Berlin’s more central Christmas Markets. The white tents with the large Moravian stars on top of them are bustling with people of all ages. Some of them sell delicious Christmas Market specific food, like roasted chestnuts and sugar roasted almonds. In others they sell handicrafts, usually very pretty, but really expensive. Christmas Carols are played as well. Lately „Winter Wonderland“ and „Let it snow“ have driven out the more traditional German songs, but let’s face it: You can’t be sure that Christmas is coming until you’ve heard Wham’s „Last Christmas“ on the radio for the *first time* that year anyway, so you may as well make your peace with the fact that English Christmas Carols are saying that the holidays are coming just as much as German ones.

Even though all these Christmas related things are „first times this year“, not „first times“, they remind me of the beauty of a new start and of the fact that I should treasure *first times* and try to make them happen more frequently.

By the way, I did come up with a very first time after I read my cousin’s meme. I had a dream that was entirely in Polish for the first time when I was last in Gdańsk. The realization of it made me feel giddy and exhilerated. Blessed with the new and unknown, with the excitement of discovery. What a feeling!

Bearpit Karaoke – Mauerpark on a Sunday

Oktober 16, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / Kommentare deaktiviert

When I find myself shaken with travel fever and I am really itching to get away, but I’m stuck in the grey, weird, awesome and stressful monstrosity that is Berlin, Bearpit Karaoke at Mauerpark is a remedy that has proven to be helpful every single time for several reasons. I’ll take you on a quick stroll through a Sunday afternoon at the pit to explain to you why that is.

On any given Sunday between sometime in Spring and the last halfway decent day in Autumn, I will get to the pit and there will still be a gymnast, a magician or a stand up comedian heating up the crowd that is bound to be sitting on the steps already. As long as they are still going, I will peform the art of choosing the right place to sit (not too close to the speakers, perfect distance from the stage, preferably in the sun etc.). When around three o’clock the artist of the day will have wrapped it up, Joe Hatchiban arrives with his orange bike that magically transports everything he needs to get the show started – including speakers specifically designed for the pit’s acoustic conditions, wicked!! And the cheering begins. And I cheer, too, for Bearpit Karaoke heals my travel itch, as it is a bit like travelling in itself. And here are the reasons why:

Reason #1: It is a place completely out of space and time. If you took this little patch of land and isolated it from its surroundings, there would be no way to tell where you took it from. The language that is spoken most is English with any given accent, and the German accent is not necessarily the most common one in the crowd. I could forget that I am not abroad when I am here. There literally are people present aged 1 through 80 from any country with any background.

Reason #2: Everyone’s equal in the pit. Because the crowd – I am horrible with estimating numbers, but appearantly there are more than a thousand onlookers on a sunny day – will cheer with equal enthusiasm for someone who is really horrible and for someone who is just rockstar amazing. The people will reward what the performance manages to get across – and even someone who cannot sing can make a thousand people dance, or laugh, or just plain feel something.

Reason #3: When I am there, it is easy to believe that the world is a good place. There is an image that is among my most favorite memories ever. Joe always walks around with a tin collecting donations. The way that everyone stretches out their arms to him is getting to me every time. People are doing it not because they want to take something from him, but because they want to give something to him! There is this immense willingness to give back for all the joy that this event imposes upon everyone who is there. And it looks so beautiful when Joe is jumping up and down stairs and arms are reaching for the tin from every direction to underline the feeling of gratefulness that encircles the pit. Really I am not here to flatter, but Joe is a pretty awesome dude for making this all happen.

Reason #4: Unexpected things happen. A blind Brasilian girl is led to the stage, seeming insecure, and then she’s singing the Scorpions‘ „Rock me like a hurricane“ like an absolute pro. A plain, short, bearded man that in teh street you would easily overlook is coming into the centre and then singing a German version of Sinatra’s „My way“ with so much soul and ernest that you’re just completely taken by him (granted, he is not bearded anymore and also he does this every Sunday, but the first time it is really unexpected! And also, it doesn’t cease to be endearing). Most recently, four people are starting to sing „Gangnam Style“ and all the remains of the pit are storming the stage and starting to dance. There are marriage proposals. Declarations of Love. And just plain old good entertainment.

Reason #5: When I travel, I never have to care about tomorrow – just about the moment. When I am singing for an audience, I feel the same way. Yes, I am a sucker for the stage. I love singing, and I love the funny things that stagefright does to my tummy – especially when there is an audience that I do not know. I find it much harder to perform for people I care about, because I put a lot more pressure on myself. At the pit I go in there and I’m allowed to forget about my ambitions. I just let go and sing. And I return to my seat with adrenalin shooting through my body, and I am feeling alive. There really is no need to be afraid of a performance at the pit. Nothing to lose. Just a whole lot to gain.

As I make my way back to my bike through the park when the show is over, past all the people with their guitars, their drum sets made from cans and boxes, their artwork, their dancing, their hula hooping or whatever else they may have on display, I can’t believe that I am walking on what used to be the death strip. To my left – the former West. To my right – the former East. Today it’s multiculturalism at its best. And a whole lot of happy up for grabs.

Two Germanies

Oktober 3, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / 4 Kommentare

There is a story in the family about me being four years of age and explaining to my mom that there were two Germanies, the Federal Republic and the GDR, and that we were living in the Federal Republic and the people in the GDR were the surpressed ones. Only I didn’t say surpressed, I said squished – easy to confuse „unterdrückt“ and „zerdrückt“ for a little girl.

I do remember the day the wall came down. I was barely five years old. My mom and dad were crying and I had no idea what was going on, but there were lots of people on TV celebrating and appearantly all was well. I asked my mom about that day many many years later and she said that aside from the births of her children, it may just have been the greatest day in her lifetime.

Another family legend tells of the time between the wall’s downfall and the reunification when my parents took my sisters and me to see Schwerin. My dad, who never spent money lightly, had to change a certain amount of GDR currency that we needed to spend, and there was a fair, and we were allowed to go on rides until we almost threw up. I have a very faint image of a rusty merry-go-round in my head.

I think I speak for most Western German children of the 1980s when I say that we grew up with certain ideas about the GDR, the majority of which were grey, dark and solemn. Also, by the time most of us were old enough to judge for ourselves, we didn’t find that part of German history to be much of an issue. It’s not like it was World War II and we were, as a collective, to be blamed for the deaths of millions of people. It was an unfortunate epoch that now lay behind us. No big deal.

Only when I moved to the former East when I started college did I realize that it was different for other people my age – namely for those who didn’t grow up in the West. They had actual memories of things changing. Their parents had gone through identity crises when the political change came upon them. Everything they knew was re-evaluated – from their breakfast cereal to the educational system that made up their schools and kindergartens.

One friend told me that she was the first year not to become a pioneer anymore. The Thälmann Pioneers were a youth organization in the GDR, in the younger years they were like a scouts movement; the older the children got the more ideological the contents became. The initiation to the pioneers was a big deal and my friend told me that she was heartbroken because she would not get the necktie that belonged with the uniform.

Another friend told me that she was riding the city bus with her mom, and the way she had gotten used to, she started singing, and she sang her favorite song from kindergarten. But right away her mom shushed her and said harshly: „You’re not allowed to sing that anymore!!!“ It was the song about the red Soviet star.

All of a sudden there was room for me to realize that while nothing had ever changed fundamentally in my own life, it was different for my friends. And I keep trying to understand the differences that came about between us with this political event every day.

In Berlin the course of the wall is indicated in the street pavement by the use of different looking paving stones. Every day on my way to work I cross this line on the ground as I go from the former West to the former East. It has become somewhat regular, but on most days I still smile when I do. The idea that it would have been impossible 25 years ago is unspeakable.

Who would I be if Germany had not been reunited 22 years ago today?

I could write a long list of speculations here that I could not possibly prove. I’ll just make one statement that I am fairly certain about: I wouldn’t have been able to leave my heart in so many places. And man, I’d hate that.

You want to know what Sehnsucht is?

September 27, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / Kommentare deaktiviert

Today after singing class I meandered around my hood for a bit, doing some grocery shopping, having coffee and a delicious piece of rasberry-mascarpone-cake at one of the coffe places that spring up around here like mushrooms as of lately. On my way back home I passed by the church and I figured it was a good time to drop by and give a few words of thanks. And so I did.

Neukölln’s Genezareth church is modern, plain and rather unspectacular. When I do go to church, I still go there because it is close to home. Also, I quite like the community; it is a very colorful and weird mixture that in a group of maybe 30 people attending a service may include anything between young semi-alternative hipsters and disabled homeless people.

So I am there lighting two candles for people who have moved me within the last week and saying a little prayer for them. And then I’m sitting down to think about all that has been happening inside my mind since I came back from Gdansk last Friday. I think about my Places of Desire and about Eastern Europe and how much I am drawn Eastward. I don’t even notice that tears are running down my cheak until a sob is breaking free from my throat. It is ridiculous how I am physically feeling a void inside of me now that I am back in Berlin. Did I mention that finding a new Place of Desire is like falling in love? Well, having to leave it is like being lovesick. I can’t comprehend how three days should have made such a difference, but they have, and I am sitting here feeling like life hasn’t taken me out of Gdansk, but that Gdansk has been ripped out of me. But then again that is not right. Gdansk is a part of me now and it is ever so present. Maybe it would be more fitting to say that the parts of me that have taken on Gdansk fully and completely are stretching out their arms to be reunited with their urban manifestation.

The funny thing about this is that while I am crying, I am not sad. I am nothing but grateful.

How Gdansk became a Sehnsuchtsort

September 21, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / 3 Kommentare

There is no adequate English translation for the German term Sehnsucht. Dictionaries propose „longing“, „yearning“ or „craving“, but those words only actually tell us about the first half of Sehnsucht, the Sehn-part. The second half, Sucht, means „addiction“. Sehnsucht is not only a wish for something that is not present. It is a state that one gets caught up in, a way of existing rather than a way of feeling that is enjoyable and painful all at once and that is hard to fall out of or consciously quit. It may be one of the most intense shades of my emotional range, and in my personal case it is intertwined with curiosity, with a passionate will to learn new things about this world, a constant desire to get to know new places, new people and new things and to understand their past, present and future.

I have a notion in my life that I call Sehnsuchtsorte, places of Sehnsucht, that lacking a better translation I will call Places of Desire for the sake of readability. I refer the term to those places I have come to love on a level that I myself can hardly grasp. It is reserved for the places that have provided me with a sense of coming home to a strange city; the places that have given me beauty beyond belief. Places where I encountered the most amazing people and have learned the most things about the inner workings of this world. They are the places that inexplicably have touched upon a place in my soul that I didn’t know existed, each of them a different one. They are not a rational phenomenon, they are the embodiment of all that love means to me. Places of Desire are what gives me drive and strength, for whenever I think about them I know that if such inner and outer beauty exists, the world can’t be all bad. They are the places that I always miss, in every moment of my life, and in the craving that I have for them lies the seed of my ambitions to make the world a better place. They provide me with my idealism and they remind me of my love for life. They are my most concrete, most tangible, most important ideals. They make me who I am, because they are my home abroad, my Sehnsucht at home. I used to have three of these places: Krakow in Poland, Mostar in Bosnia and Hercegovina, and Istanbul in Turkey. As of now, I have a fourth one. It is called Gdansk.

The flight from Berlin to Gdansk passes but in a heart beat. I am going through my newspaper, folding and re-folding on my narrow plane seat. We have barely risen up when we are already coming down again.For just a moment my eyes slide to the right and out the window, just to check how low we’re going – and the newspaper goes to my lap forgotten, my eyes spellbound on the view. Underneath me I can see the Old Town of Gdansk like a labyrinth of dollhouses, each of which seems to have been painted carefully by hand and set in its rightful place with great care. From its midst, Mariacka’s, that is St Mary’s church’s towers are reaching for the skies, as if they wanted to greet me and bless my visit. The waterways running through the city are dark and go on to open up to the Baltic Sea – a glistening blue mirror of the sky that seems to touch upon eternity. Everything is lit by the soft tones that can come into existence only at dusk, a pastel-colored city, but the red brick stone that I love so much is still the dominant feature of it all. Townhouse upon townhouse with their beautiful rolling gables, there are the city gates, and the shipyards are over there, and way back I can see Westerplatte where World War II started. I have the same feeling of simultaneous fear and awe that I had when I went there by ship last year: the feeling that history in this place is of such density that it is hard to take. I am looking for the monument for the victims of the shipyard strikes in 1970, I cannot find it, my eyes are caught again by Mariacka’s beauty, by the wonderful hanseatic city center that in its style is so familiar to me. The intimacy of this moment between me and Gdansk is almost driving tears to my eyes. It is too pretty to actually be there, an idealized model of a city, unreal and magical; I see things slide by, Długie Pobrzeże, Długi Targ, places I know, places I have been to, places that actually exist down there, right before me, and I’m almost there, I will walk on those cobble stone streets, in this picture book city, my head starts spinning and I am falling, falling into the feeling of Sehnsucht, I am overcome by an addictive desire for this place; and although I’m there already, I am actually longing to be there more, and in this very moment Gdansk has gone from being a town I like to a town I love, it has managed to break through to the height of happy moments in my life, and it has just now, in this moment, acquired the status of being my Place of Desire.
I get off the plane at the airport and I turn west. The sun is setting in the now misty sky. It is pink, not red, but neon dark glowing pink, hot and wonderful, an expression of the passion that has just crept upon me and taken hold of my heart.

Two nights later I am meeting Aga, Karol and Marek for a night out. I met them when I stayed at Happy Seven Hostel last year. We are going up Góra Gradowa hill to the millenial cross. I have never been, and now at night the view offers me new enchanting perspectives of the city. That and the company of three exceptional people are making me giddy, and granted I have had two glasses of wine with dinner, but this is not the effect of that, this is me being drunk on life. How can I put in words the way it makes me feel to be here, in a strange place that is not strange to me at all, with friends who have been showing such appreciation, such joy at the fact that I am coming to visit? What have I done to be blessed like this? Finding a new Place of Desire is like falling in love. Disbelief. Inexplicable happiness. Overflowing energy and restlessness. Gratitude, first and foremost. For the beauty. For the people. For the privileged life that I am leading. Underneath the stars, at the foot of the cross, I have to take just two seconds to myself to take it all in. And I swear I will try to give something back, one way or another. I don’t know what or how. But my Places of Desire will get me there.

Homecoming – Worldviewing

August 6, 2010 / bruecken_schlag / 10 Kommentare

Looking back on the last five months, everything seems a bit unreal. It seems unreal that in March I sat in Kathrin’s apartment in Berlin and she did tarot cards for me. That in April I took my first swim of the year in the Adriatic. That in May I slept on a beach in Albania. That in June I roamed the streets of Istanbul. And that just a few weeks ago in July I had coffee on a small market square in Kosovo. It even seems unreal that now I am writing these lines in Munich. Is it quite possible that all of that was me? Or was I a different person in all of these situations? I cannot seem to quit re-traveling all of the places I have seen in my mind. I have written out the list of countries I visited in my travel journal maybe a dozen times. To me it is precious beyond words.When I took stock at half time, in Albania, I wrote about what I have gained on this trip and through this trip. I have lost a few things as well. Two t-shirts. Quite a bit of weight. A ring. A tiny part of each of my ears for two new ear piercings. The key to one of the hostels. My long hair. My fear of public transport in strange countries. My clearly cut out career plan. The urge to be in control of my life – that might be the most important one.

When you travel the way I did it, you quickly notice that nothing can be controlled. Plans never stick. And why would I forcefully hang on to a plan if what life has in store for me offers new, maybe better opportunities? I always thought I was flexible. Now I think that I didn’t know what flexibility was before I traveled. I will never cease to make plans – but what I learned on my trip is to enjoy the moment when a plan fails because it has been replaced by a new, maybe a better plan. A plan is not a law by nature. It is supposed to guide you to a destination. The less clearly defined this destination is, the more enjoyable it is to move between shifting plans and pick the one that suits the circumstances the best. And what my trip has also taught me, literally and figuratively, is that you always arrive somewhere. It may not be your favorite place – well, then you can pack your bags and leave. It may be the best thing that ever happened to you – well, stay and enjoy it for a while. This goes for a journey and for life.

I feel like I have lost a lot of heavy baggage and exchanged it for a myriad of experiences that are light to carry, but have an immense impact on my life. Every now and then pictures come to my mind out of nowhere, memories of pure bliss. People have asked me a lot as of lately if I never had a really bad experience. Of course there have been the occasional rip-offs by taxidrivers or the obligatory ignorant people in hostels, and the asthma attack on the bus between Berat and Saranda in Albania wasn’t my favorite moment of them all. I wouldn’t want to miss any of that. In fact it is almost scary how smoothly everything went.

Yes, there were moments when I was unhappy. However, there have been infinitely more moments when I was unhappy in my life in Germany. Did that make me want to leave the country? It did not. Neither did the tough situations on my trip make me want to come home. I was never homesick. But then I feel that being homesick is just not a disposition of mine. I know home is always there waiting for me. And isn’t home more than anything else a place where there are people that I love and that love me? I am in the fortunate position to have such a place, in fact I have more than one. And now, after my trip, the number has risen once more. Yet again, the world has become a little bit smaller, and that is because of two reasons:

Firstly, I have friends in the Balkans now that I know will welcome me again at any given time, people who I will see again in a nearer or more distant future that I share a special connection with. They have shared their lives with me and helped me to approach this region that I am fascinated by and that I have come to love with all my heart and soul. I truly wish to welcome them in my world one day and allow them to see why it is that I love my home country as well. My last couchsurfing host Nina, upon me singing „Đurđevdan“ in her yard by the fire, said: „You have strange hobbies for a German girl. Shouldn’t you be working in a Hypo Bank and have a boyfriend that you just see once a week?“ There is lots to learn about Germany. Now that I am back here, I appreciate on a deeper level what it has to offer. I can be a traveler inside my own country, recognize and acknowledge its beauty and share it with other people.
Secondly, meeting people from all over the world has put places on the map that I didn’t know of before and that now I want to visit. Traveling has put me in touch with people from backgrounds that are very different from mine. There is an infinity of lifestyles to discover, and my trip has enabled me to get a vague idea of some of them that I want to understand more thoroughly. It has also restored my faith in the fact that there are many many good people in this world. There are a lot of bad ones too, but why focus on that when I know that there are so many places in this world where I have never been to and where I will be welcomed by friends that are willing to let me be part of their lives?

The people, in the end, are what made my trip what it was. All my couchsurfing hosts, all my travel buddies, all the wonderful travelers I met at hostels, all the hostel staff. Places supplied me with beauty, with atmosphere, with a feeling of being at home. The people I met gave me life in all its richest form. I have too many to thank to mention them all here. I am extremely lucky.

Keeping Bridges in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

What will happen to me now? Where will I go, what will I do? I do have a plan. It is rather vague, it may be more of a bunch of ideas than an actual plan, and a few months ago with a plan like mine I would have felt lost, like I was without orientation in a confusing world without anything to hold on to, swimming in an ocean without control over the force of nature. How important perspective is! I now feel like I can surf the waves on that ocean with ease and that they will bring me to a new shore that is mine to explore. I do hope that this feeling will last and that returning to a daily routine, to artificial lights in libraries and to a cold grey German winter, will not steal this energy from me too fast. But when life puts me down, I know what to do. I have to get on the road again. Because the road is where I can find myself.I have always loved the last scene of the movie „American Beauty“. I love it more then ever now because it comprises the feeling that I have come back to Germany with. To all the people that made my journey what it was, I wish that they will at one point in their lives experience the feeling of fully understanding this quote:

„It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain. And I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.“

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