Thanksgiving

It’s American Thanksgiving, and I’m sitting panic-stricken and over-caffeinated in the basement of my Canadian university’s library, typing combination after combination of keywords into Google in the hope that maybe this time, Google-magic will work and the perfect source will appear to make all my problems go away. With four papers due in the next seven days, and the threat of an unlikely but still very possible mental breakdown looming ahead, it seems I have very little to be thankful for.

But really I do.

I’m thankful for my family, first and foremost, because first of all they’re all amazing, and second of all, they have never ceased to be my cheering fans, supporting me every step of the way no matter how far away I am or how impossible the tasks ahead of me seem. I’m thankful that they tried so hard to get me to be able to come home for the holiday, and I’m thankful they didn’t question my decision or guilt me (any more than necessary) when it turned out I wouldn’t be able to make it. I’m thankful for their unrelenting awesomeness, because seriously, how do you guys do it all? And I’m thankful that no matter the distance, they’re always in my life.

I’m thankful for my friends, spread around the globe as they may be. I know some of the coolest people on the planet, and I’m constantly amazed by the things they’re coming up with, the places they’re going, the opportunities they’re finding, and the hilarious things they’re saying. I’m thankful for the people who have been in my life as long as I can remember - you know who you are - and the people I just met this year (shoutout to CFQC for being hella awesome). I’m thankful for the conversations that can happen with years in between that feel like we’re picking up right where we left off. I’m thankful for midnight snapchats and random good morning texts and throwback thursdays and that time we ran into each other totally unexpectedly and screamed just a little too loud. And even though there are a lot of people I’ll probably never run into again, I’m thankful for the memories we made together that I’ll always have.

I’m thankful for the little things, the privileged things. Yeah, I hate that word too, but it has to be said. In the light of everything that’s been happening this past month - this past year? - I’m more thankful now than ever to have grown up in good circumstances, to have been born in a country as a part of a race and a class that mean I will probably never have to fear the threat of violence and gross injustice in my life. I’m thankful that I can be here, at university, studying to make the world a better place. I’m thankful that I have a roof over my head, food to eat (and good food at that, thanks roomie!), and the resources to travel and go to concerts and buy books. I’m thankful for the little things, because I certainly don’t think about them enough, and I’m ever so lucky to have them.

So I guess, in a way, I’m thankful for these papers I’ve now been procrastinating on far too long. Because what it means to write papers is to have the opportunity to get an education many will never receive; to have the ability to think clearly and write soundly (I hope) and to have my biggest complaint be the amount of work I signed myself up for. And that’s actually pretty great.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's Snowing...

It’s snowing.

I haven’t seen snow in almost eleven months - unless you count that one day I hiked up an Alp in converse sneakers. I’d almost forgotten how mesmerizing the powdery whiteness floating absentmindedly down from the sky could be. Right now, the flakes are small and close together, veiling the world behind a shroud of what looks like fog but is actually cold, wet, glittering, glorious snow.

I love the snow. I love the way it lands on my skin and gets tangled in my eyelashes, the way it slowly builds up on the edge of a fence until one moment you look outside and suddenly there are piles of it everywhere, softening the sharp man-made edges into a homogenous landscape of drifting dunes with the occasional green or brown tree rising out of the whiteness. I love how silent the world becomes, every sound dampened but the crunch of ice and the swish of the powder under your own feet. I love the smell of it - that clean, earthy scent you only smell when you bury your face in it and feel it melt under your hot breath.

Sometimes I wish I could move to a warmer climate - a place without winter, without seasonal affective disorder, where I could live in eternal warmth without ever having to pull on layer after layer of sweatshirts and scarves and the occasional toque to be warm. But then I remember Christmas break in 2004 when my brother and I built snow forts in the backyard that lasted until April, and how half my neighborhood got in on a snowball fight, and that time my dad and I spent all morning building the perfect ramp for a snow saucer to jump off of, which my neighbor and I then rode until long after dark. And I realize there is no part of me that could ever leave this life for good, no matter the hell that the rest of the winter may put me through. 

I say all this not as a justification for my joy at the third snowfall this week despite my roommate’s constant frustrated yells of “four more months of this shit!” And it’s not a case of wishful thinking that maybe if I list all the wonderful things about snow I’ll be able to bear it.

I’m writing this from a crossroads in my college career, one that could make or break my future. Or maybe it’s not that dramatic - maybe it won’t determine whether I succeed, but rather in which way. Either way, I’m stuck between going to DC next semester and staying here to finish my degree at McGill.

On the one hand, I’m so sick of this toxic environment at McGill. I’m sick of the culture of all-nighters, of competition for unattainable A’s, of prioritizing my GPA over everything else, including my own mental state. I’m sick of nights without sleep and days without food because I focus better when I’m a certain level of hungry. I’m tired of waking up in the morning with nothing to look forward to but a disapproving professor and a disappointing grade. I’m tired of disappointing myself, I think, but there’s no way to escape the constant spirals downward from hope that this time, the paper was perfect, only to be dashed by someone else’s undervaluation of my accomplishments. 

And I’m so exhausted by the Future.

I used to have a plan. I used to know: McGill for undergrad, UBC for law, and whatever happens afterwards will be handed to me on a plate. Now I know that’s not going to happen - once I graduate, whether in June or October, I’m on my own to find a place to work and to start creating my future. And I’m so tired of lying awake at night, trying to imagine anything beyond the blackness that hangs over my images of anything after graduation. It’s like my life stops once I’m no longer in uni, and sometimes I catch myself wishing that it would - that I could simply cease to exist the moment I’m handed that diploma, rather than having to take on the Real World on my own.

This turned into more of a rant than I wanted it to, so I’ll draw it to a close here. The snow has slowed down a bit. I’ll have to go outside soon, to where it’s slippery because the fresh powdery snow just covered up the black ice that coats the sidewalk. It’s going to be a difficult walk tonight, but I’ll take it slowly, one step at a time. I’m sure I’ll slip once or twice, but if I do it will be because I’m not used to the winter walk yet. I’ll learn with each step and my body will readjust at some point.

And of course, I’ll get to enjoy the sight of the snowflakes in the glow of the streetlights, the feeling of them landing on my eyelashes and my tongue, as the invigorating cold fills my lungs. I don’t have to go out tonight - I could stay home where it’s safe and warm. But I’ve never been one to take the safe option. No, I’ll make the journey tonight, no matter how treacherous the conditions…and I’ll enjoy it.

"Miraculous"

It’s a Friday morning. My first class is at 3:30 in the afternoon, so if I were a normal college student, I’d be sleeping in - maybe not even setting an alarm - to take advantage of this one free morning after a short but busy week. My curtains would be closed against the autumn sun that usually streams through my window onto my face as it rises around seven, and I might have a pillow over my head to drown out the sounds of construction happening across the street.

But I’m not doing any of that. Instead, I’m as wide awake as would be possible at 8:00am, and my feet are pounding against the ground of the trail up to the top of Mount Royal. My music is loud, but over it I can still hear my rhythmic breathing and the splash of the gravel that scatters when my feet land on it. There are a few kindred souls out running with me, and whenever one of us passes the other, there seems to be a momentary camaraderie between us - If you can do this, so can I. If I can make it, so can you. I run on and on, not really conscious of the distance, and only vaguely aware of the passage of time when the song changes and I realize I’m already halfway through the Paramore album.

Every once in awhile, I wonder why I’m out here, fighting with a mountain and pushing my body to its limits when I could be at home in bed or eating pancakes or doing literally anything else. I feel the pain in my legs as my muscles cry out in protest when I try to force them to run faster up the stairs to the top. I tell myself, You can make this, and then I give up on being all self-motivational and just switch to, Come on, body. Please? Just to the top of the mountain? and finally after much pleading and pushing, my face set in lines of concentration so heavy I can feel them on my skin, I reach the point where gravel meets concrete, and stumble at last onto the flat, paved area we call Lookout Point. I slow my pace and gasp for air as I walk to the railing to look out over the city, not really caring what I see, just longing for respite from the run.

As my breath returns to a more normal level and my muscles relax, I start to notice how beautiful the city looks at this hour. The sun hasn’t come all the way up yet; it hangs just over the tallest skyscraper which - from here - actually doesn’t even seem that high any more. I close my eyes and breathe in the fresh autumn air that’s cold enough to feel as it enters my lungs, bringing with it the scent of fallen leaves still damp with dew and a hint of drying earth. I don’t usually appreciate this body of mine enough, I think. But now I am suddenly very aware of the beating of my own heart and the way it pumps the blood through me and how my muscles expand and contract to make me move and carry this rock-solid skeleton of mine wherever I want to go.

Do you ever stop think about just how amazing the human body is? Bones stronger than concrete, a brain with greater processing speed than any computer in existence, a mind capable of sentient thought and emotion and empathy and imagination, grief and joy, procrastination and motivation, creativity and love. Do you ever think about what a miracle your existence is? That out of all of the possible genetic combinations and mutations and reproductions and transfers you ended up you - improbable, seemingly impossible, miraculous, fantastical, and yet so commonplace that you only celebrate your birthday one day out of every 365 in the year? Do you ever just freeze for a moment and feel the air rushing into your lungs and the rhythm of your pulse and the plethora of stimuli that barrage your senses from all sides and yet somehow, your brain takes them all in and makes sense of them and then presents them all to you so that you, too, may understand your world?

I know I rarely think of these things. But it’s here, at the top of the mountain after I’ve pushed myself to my humanly limits - before realizing that actually, if I really wanted to, I could keep going - that I am struck with the miracle that is me. And suddenly I don’t care how far I’ve run to get here, because now I feel like dancing in celebration of the body, the mind, the soul, the single, miraculous, perfect life that is me.

Homecoming

It’s always different, coming back.

I’m starting to wonder if the reason I like traveling so much is not just that I go far away to see new places, but that in the end, I get to come home. I’ll never forget the first time I pulled into my neighborhood after moving away from home. It was dark and the windshield of the car had a bit of fog on it that blurred the lamps along the street into huge circles of gold. I hadn’t seen my family in two months. Now that time seems so short, but back then it felt like a lifetime. Finally we turned the corner onto my street, and as if on cue, the fog cleared from the windshield and I saw the pinpricks of light that lined the front walkway up to my house, my darling home. I caught sight of my family peering out the window, and could barely contain my excitement as I extricated myself and my backpack from the front seat, threw profuse thank-you’s to the friend who had driven me, and raced up the walk to the front door. As my hand reached for the handle, I paused. I savored that moment of silence and foreignity before the familiar smells and voices and bodies overwhelmed me. Now that I was here, I could stretch out that last bit of distance as long as I wanted to. So I took a deep breath, and then finally pushed the door open. “Steffie’s home!” called a voice - did it even matter whose it was? - and suddenly I felt familiar arms pull me into a hug, and the smell of home - the conglomeration of dust in the air conditioner and chili cooking on the stove and scented cat litter and that last untraceable smell that could be described only as “home” - washed over me.

I think of that moment once in awhile, sometimes when I’m missing home particularly badly and sometimes for no reason at all. Though now, I have an even stronger memory of homecoming that overpowers it every so often and stops me in my tracks. It’s a memory of a moment I had spent weeks and months imagining - the moment I finally pushed my baggage cart out of the international terminal and caught sight of my family for the first time in five months. I was almost blinded by the lights and the rays of sunlight coming in through the high windows at the top of the hall, and I squinted down the line of people waiting pressed up against the railings for that familiar trio that was my family. Almost before I could even recognize them, I saw a mane of curls fly under the railing as my mother climbed through and ran to meet me, pulling me into a hug. It was all I could do to hold back the last of the tears I would cry that long day - though at least these were happy tears.

It’s these moments that keep me going when I’m away from home, when I’m traveling with no intent to return home any time soon, and suddenly feel that pang of longing to walk back through the door of my familiar home and join my family at the dinner table. It’s certainly gotten easier to bear since the first time I moved away, but it never really goes away.

I guess it’s true that there’s no place like home.

Puddle Jumpers

The rain makes me timid.

I hurry from place to place with my hood pulled down low over my eyes to shield me from the sheets of cold water that try every way they can to get onto my warm skin. I hate the rain. It keeps me looking down at the ground, carefully putting down each shoe into what I have calculated to be the optimal spot for a step, in the spot that seems to be driest on a sidewalk filled with crevices I never noticed before, but am now forced to navigate around like the Millenium Falcon in an asteroid field. I don’t look anyone in the eyes. Dark shapes hurry past me, sometimes splashing me if their owners are not as careful as I am, and don’t care about where their ungainly feet land or about the havoc their carelessness might cause. I hate the rain. I hate how it can put me in my place, force me to reckon with nature and realize that though man has invented a metal box that will take me to Paris in an afternoon and has found a way to supply me with bananas in the winter, no one has yet devised a way to stop this god-awful water from falling from the sky. I hate the way I hide from the rain, my eyes downcast, not looking at anyone else around for fear that the tiny sign of weakness might allow the water to break through the defenses I have put up with my hood. Sometimes I walk under an umbrella, holding it tightly above my head like a shield not only from the fat drops of water and debris dripping from the buildings that tower over me, but to put one more layer between me and the rest of the world, the skyscrapers that tower so high if I look up I might forget I exist at all and fall into an abyss of insignificance. I gather my limbs into myself and hold onto the handle of the umbrella for dear life as the wind buffets me from all sides. I feel so powerless. I hate the rain.

That’s what my life was like before the puddle jumpers came into my life. I fought and fought against the fear-striking powers of nature until finally I came across a pair of high rubber boots in the window of a shop, and within a few minutes I was walking out again, my life forever altered. For with my puddle jumpers, I am no longer confined to the tiny bubble of myself that the storms have so often forced me into. I don’t have to look down to avoid the pools of disaster that were once the bane of my existence. I stand straighter. I walk quickly and carelessly, splashing anyone who gets too close. Some days I don’t even need the umbrella or the hood. What does it matter that these buildings tower above me? I am limitless in my power to cross the street wherever I want, to place my feet heavily without looking, because it doesn’t matter where the water is or where it goes when I displace it; I will not get wet. I look into the eyes of those hurrying by me, though most of them are too busy watching their own ways to return my gaze. It doesn’t matter. I am more powerful than ever before. I have conquered the rain. I have taken back my space.

Even now, though the rain has faded with the daylight and left me to walk home through a misty dusk, I feel the power of the puddle jumpers. All around me, the city breathes slowly, peacefully, enjoying the silence that has finally descended upon the damp streets in the wake of the roaring deluge that was the soundtrack of the afternoon. The puddles stand still, as smooth as mirrors. I see the stillness of the scene around them reflected on the surface like a photograph behind glass. The only thing that disrupts the bright reflection of the street lights and park benches is my own upside-down figure, growing larger and larger in the asymmetrical frame of the puddle. It is so quiet, so peaceful. It would be a shame if something were to shatter this stillness.

Splash! I leap into the puddle with a splattering of water that almost makes it to my damp jeans at the rim of my rubber boots. The surreal moment is broken, the picture torn apart into millions of twinkling ripples that scatter away from me as I step forward, dragging some of the water with me. And in that moment, I feel the power of the puddle jumpers settle upon me. I am ready to ride them into battle. Bring it on, Mother Nature, they seem to be saying. Nothing you can try will stop me.

I love the rain. The rain makes me bold.

The Room of a Stranger

It’s been a few years since I started referring to the house where I grew up as “my parents’ house” instead of as my own. When I moved to Europe six months ago, the most important things I had been moving from this home to my apartment in Canada have been condensed down to just two suitcases, while the things I could afford to leave behind from the start stay in the bedroom of the house I once called my only home.

I head up the stairs - fourteen steps - and push down the handle of the first door on the left, the door to my room. As the door swings open, I feel a breath of air carrying the scent of clean laundry from inside the room sweep past me, mingling with my own stale airplane smell. Backpack still slung haphazardly over one aching shoulder, I step into the room and set it down gingerly next to the dresser.Of course the room still looks the same. But it’s far too neat to actually be my own. The three bookshelves, though full to bursting, are neatly dusted and don’t look cluttered. The bed is neatly made, a quilt tucked so tightly into the corners that I briefly consider attempting to bounce coin off of it. The carpet is a bright white, and is covered by nothing but furniture.

No, this room cannot be mine. It is far too neat. It must belong to some stranger.

My jeans smell like the recirculated air of the airplane, and my sweatshirt sticks to me with the remnants of sweat from the eight-hour ride, so I pull them off and search the closet for something else to wear.

The shelves in the closet are made of multicolored metal cubes. I remember sitting down on a day off from school one year to put them together, and feel the ghost of the metal connectors that stabbed my hands as I tried to force them into submission. I wonder if I would ever have the time or the patience to build something like that now.

At first, the shelves seem well stocked with clothes, but on closer inspection, they are mostly cast-offs - old t-shirts, clothes that are too small but which I couldn’t bear to throw away, clothes that are too big but which I hang on to, convinced that I am still growing, though I have remained the exact same height for five years now. I rifle through the old clothes until I find a pair of paint-splattered but comfortable jeans and a soft t-shirt. The paint is from these very walls, I realize, looking around. The walls weren’t always the color of a half-cooked egg yolk. They had originally been pink, a disgusting shade of childish lack of foresight, as I had chosen the color at four and found a new favorite color by age five. The yellow walls suit me much better, and with the light from a lamp in the corner, they give everything - even my own skin - a tinge of gold.

Now dressed in clean clothes, I move around the room, looking at everything I left behind. On closer inspection, the room is not as tidy as it had first appeared. Picture frames cover one of the bookshelves, and I recognize people I have not thought about in a very long time. Our pictures stand side by side but only mine looks strange, and I stare, suddenly realizing that I have changed while these people, these forgotten pieces of my past, will be forever frozen as they are, behind the glass of the frames, left behind as I move on with my own life.

My eyes drift up the shelves, searching behind the front layer of pictures to find the collection of Harry Potter books, the tomes that I would carry around incessantly. My fingers brush the spine of the sixth book; I read this one so many times - looking for answers that just weren’t there - that it’s almost falling apart. These books carried me through my darkest days and buoyed me through my best ones. They reminded me that there was a world out there beyond myself, whether it was real or penned from the mind of another person, to me it existed as an alternate life, in which I learned what I would later discover to be some of life’s most valuable lessons.

Another shelf up, my eyes find the collection of scrapbooks I’ve been building since the first time I bid a friend goodbye. I hesitate, then pull down a small pink one labeled, “From My Friends.” I started it almost six years ago, when my naive teenage heart was discovering friendship and the very first strains of romance. I flip the pages carefully, making sure to keep the postcards and letters and notes on ripped pieces of notebook paper from falling out of the tightly-packed plastic sleeves. Each one of these is in itself a declaration of love, a reminder that I am not alone in the world. I see names of people whose faces my brain can’t conjure alternating with signatures so familiar I could draw them myself. And suddenly I am awash with the scent of heat-baked asphalt at the end of a long summer, two-day old snow sliding down my face from a well-aimed snowball, crisp November air and birch trees by the lake, dust and air conditioning in a school practice room, the old leather of a sofa just big enough for two. All these scenes flash by, giving me just enough time for a glimpse into a chapter of heaven.

Too soon, I reach the end of the scrapbook. I close the covers and put it back on the shelf between the photo albums and journals I am keeping so that every once in awhile, when I come home to this room, I can be reminded of those chapters in a life I once lived, though some days it feels as though that life must have belonged to someone else, because I have become so different now.

Someday, I realize as I slide the book into place, this room will be empty. Whether it is in two years or ten, eventually this room will no longer belong to me. Eventually, I’ll have to extract all the last important items, and throw away the remaining memories.

I look at the bookshelf again, seeing for the first time all of the notebooks on the top shelf. In a few years, they may be the only things that survive. Perhaps it’s for the better. Perhaps I would prefer to keep the memories tied to paper, trapped in the magic of the written words. As I begin to leave the room, my hand hovers over the light switch. I take one last look at this golden haven, and then switch the light off. All I see now is the room of a stranger.

In Conclusion

It’s been three weeks since I left Europe, and two since I finally arrived home in Westford and began American life again. I’ve been trying to write this since I got on the plane home, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wasn’t ready to write that conclusive ending, to close the book and start anew.

But now I’ve reached a point where it no longer matters if I’m “ready” for it; life goes on and I have to go with it. So This will be my last post about Zürich and Europe and everything that’s been happening since I left from Logan Airport in January.

I had an incredible experience. It feels somehow cliché to say it, though. As if I’m not doing the whole semester justice. But what else could I say? How else could I describe those short five months in which I feel like I aged five years?

I’ll start with school.

This was possibly the most challenging semester I’ve ever had, not because the work or the classes were hard, but because I had no idea what to expect. I’ve barely taken any German Literature courses in my life, much less these full courses in the German language. Add in that some of them were graduate courses, and almost all of my classmates spoke Swiss German, and it becomes a melting pot of challenges I might never have otherwise been prepared to face. But I did the best I could; I talked to my professors outside class, I made a few friends in my classes who were kind enough to speak Hochdeutsch with me, I practiced the new words I had learned at home and in my daily life. And suddenly, without even noticing, I went from looking up every other word my professor said to raising my hand in class and using some of the very same words in my essays. Finally, as I reviewed for my finals, I noticed that the lists of new vocabulary I had been collecting at the top of the page each day dwindled; it went from filling the entire margin to sitting in the top corner of the page, as there were only one or two words in each lesson that I didn’t understand.

Even more striking was my own integration into Swiss culture. Of course, five months isn’t enough to “become Swiss” but I certainly picked up quite a few habits. For example, I feel uncomfortable if I’m even a few minutes late; I stare unabashedly at strangers in public transportation (probably not the best habit to have, though…), and whether or not I can speak Swiss German, I can understand it almost as well as Hochdeutsch. I wouldn’t go so far as to label myself Swiss any more than I would label myself German or Canadian; but I do credit these past few months with giving me a heightened understanding of a part of Europe I had never even visited before.

And then, of course, there were the cultures I was exposed to in my non-academic life. Living in an international student dorm with 170 other non-Swiss exchange students certainly made life interesting, especially since we shared a single kitchen and surprisingly small living space. I never felt overwhelmed with the amount of people in the house, but sometimes I would step back and realize that I was having a bilingual conversation (English and German) while Spanish, French, Afrikaans, Mandarin, and Bosnian floated around my head. There were so many cultures thrown together that I’m sure we all influenced each other in more ways than we even know. I’ve already noticed changes in my vocabulary, mannerisms, and even interests that certainly weren’t present before. And even more than that, I feel a personal connection to tens of countries I had previously never even been particularly conscious of, let alone cheered for in football games.

Finally, there was the travel.

During my Easter break I visited twelve cities/towns and was exposed to Italian and Croatian culture for the first time. (See the video here!) Then, in June, Lucy came from Canada to meet me, and together we traveled to ten different countries in just a few weeks (Another video...See it here!). I saw things I could never have even imagined – did you know the old city of Dubrovnik is paved with marble? – and had so many new experiences that even now, a month later, I’m still processing all of them.

Along the way I made a few a lot of mistakes. And because of that, I learned quite a few lessons (like, “Check which train station/airport your train/plane leaves from BEFORE heading there”) and feel like I’ve gained a better understanding of myself. Which I think is the best piece I can take away from this whole experience.

Last, but not least, I think I gained a greater sense of adventure.

Just a year ago, it would never have been an option for me to decide on a whim to go on a road trip or to travel to another country without any real plans. And yet, this entire semester, that’s what I’ve been doing. My philosophy went from “I would like to do this” to “Let’s do it” in just a matter of weeks. Of course this is much easier in Europe, where international trains leave every hour, but I’ve already noticed this kind of attitude in my daily life at home.

And it’s about more than just traveling. It’s about every single decision I make in my daily life, whether it’s cooking, sports, school, or work. In the dorm in Zürich, we often couldn’t buy certain types of foods we wanted, like the one time we all wanted salmon burgers but couldn’t find them in the stores. Instead of complaining about it, on the ride home one day we looked up a recipe and before we knew it, had made our own versions of the burgers that were even better than store-bought versions. As far as I can tell, it’s a very North American thing to be constrained to what we make based on which prepared foods are readily available in the supermarket; but if we all just spent a little extra time working at it, we could all create incredible foods any time we wanted.

I spent years saying that someday I would run a marathon, but never really seriously figuring out what it would take and how to get there. But the moment I returned home, as soon as I realized I wanted to run a half-marathon, I put down my phone and began a training plan, complete with an end date and a location of the half-marathon I’m going to run (I’ll let you all know how that works out after October 11^th, when I run it!).

These all seem like small things, but they’re huge improvements on where I was before I left for Zürich. And I’m going to try my hardest to make this newfound sense of adventure and action an intrinsic part of my being.

***

I arrived in Zürich on February 1^st, not expecting to have any real friends. My first experience with dorm living was pretty shabby, to say the least, and I’m not usually the kind of person who can befriend just anyone. My list of phone contacts is long; my “recent messages” list is short. But in just the first few weeks of living in Switzerland, I had already found a niche, a group of friends whom I felt completely comfortable around, before whom I didn’t care if I was a sweaty mess from running or still in my pyjamas in the morning. They accepted me for what I was, and for that I am tremendously grateful. It may be a long time before we meet again, but I’ll always treasure each and every moment with the people I met so far away from home.

So with that, I’ll conclude my thoughts on Zürich. To everyone who has followed this blog since I began it – thank you. I’m sorry that I couldn’t keep up with everything I was doing and stopped writing after awhile… Once school and traveling kicked in, there was barely enough time in my life for anything else. And I found that it was much better to be out exploring than to be inside writing. Maybe someday when I’ve had my fill of adventuring, I’ll put it all into a book; but for now, I’ll be happy working on seeing as much of the world as I possibly can.

And if you’ve taken anything away from vicariously following my experiences, I hope it’s this – that the next big adventure is always waiting just around the corner; all you have to do is reach out and grab it.

In the words of Russell from UP,  “Adventure is out there!”

March Madness

Okay, so I haven't written in awhile... In fact, it's been over a month since my last post. Sorry about that :$

The truth is, I've been insanely busy. And it's not just from traveling - school has picked up a little (I gave a presentation two weeks ago, and have another one tomorrow) and the weather has been so great that every spare moment I've had has sent me outside running or exploring the city some more, or even just sitting by the lake and eating ice cream (kind of countering all the running I've been doing ^^).

A few weeks ago, I went for a hike with some friends, and the views were amazing:

We all picked flowers to put in our hair...which lasted for about 30 seconds
before they went flying

We went through a little town and passed the cutest Polizeiwagen
(police car) I have ever seen!

Along the way, we came across thousands of Bärlauch (a type of wild garlic)
plants, which we picked and added to our lunch!

Bärlauch

The town at the end of the long hike

Spring has sprung!

A few days later, the weather was still beautiful so we went out on the lake in a paddle boat...even though it was only March, it felt like summer!

Mandatory summer selfie

And of course we had to get ice cream afterwards ^^

Then, last week, Caley came to visit! She's studying abroad this semester too, so instead of a six hour plane ride, it was just a few hours by train for her to come to Zürich! We'd barely seen each other since high school, but as soon as she was here, it was like we were back on the exchange again (oops - a bit of backstory - we went on the Austausch to German four years ago, and Caley was my meal-sharing and pretty-much-everything-else buddy for the whole trip). Of course we had to have more adventures... so the first place we went when she arrived was the Salon du Chocolat, a chocolate fair! We got to sample pretty much every type of chocolate you can imagine... (Most of them were amazing, but in case you ever have the opportunity do NOT try chocolate margarita truffles, no matter how tempting they sound. Just trust me.) And we left in a chocolate coma.

The entrance seemed so harmless, so inviting, so innocent...

Free samples! We went through this line twice #noshame

cutest chocolate...chickens? I've ever seen!

Despite the creepy face in the background, this cake was
really neat!

Favorite cake ever

Definitely the coolest chocolate construction I've seen yet!

And of course that's not everything from the past month, but it pretty much covers it... at least, that's everything I have photos from.

Since our Easter holidays start at the end of this week, I'll be leaving on Wednesday for Italy and then Croatia! I'm so excited... So enjoy this two week dearth of photos before I bombard you all with the amazing pictures that are sure to come :)

Reisen nach Deutschland! (part 2)

(Wow, time flies here... Sorry again that this is coming so late)

Let's talk about my trip to Passau!

It's the first city I've visited on this trip that I've been to before, but it's been almost four years since my last/only time there. As I boarded the bus in the morning, I had mixed feelings of excitement and trepidation. I was going back to a place tinged with so many memories, and with the full knowledge that they were just that: memories...but I missed it so much! Could things really be that different?

A picture from my last trip to Passau. I wish
I could say I look older now...

Three and a half years ago, as we boarded the bus to Vienna, we promised ourselves and each other that we would never forget the Austausch. I spent the entire following year going through my pictures and painstakingly replaying every day in my head, until I was sure that I could never forget. But the funny thing about time is that it passes in waves, smoothing the rocks, and taking some away to leave new things in their place. The best, strongest memories remain, and the rest fade into the background so we can make new ones. I used to think that was a bad thing; now I just thing that's life.

Enough philosophy. Let's look at some gorgeous pictures!

My bus went first to Munich, where I took a train to Passau, arriving mid-afternoon. Julia and her mom, Doris, met me at the train station with huge hugs and exclamations about how I hadn't aged a day. We couldn't stay parked at the train station, so we drove to a parking lot outside Julia's Wohnung (apartment) and walked down through the Universität Passau campus. It was a perfect spring day, with a cool breeze and a warm sun in a cloudless sky.

As we walked down to the river, we happened to run into another former Austausch student named Klara! So ein Zufall! ("What a coincidence!"), as we would have said. We talked for awhile about school and what little we could say to cover the past four years we'd been apart, and then kept walking down the hill and through the campus.

We walked through Julia's faculty (Mathematik) and to a path right next to the Inn river, and they pointed out where the river had flooded last year, rising up to the tops of some trees and in some cases, filling entire buildings. Weirdly enough, there are still some pieces of seaweed hanging from the trees!

Then we walked along the Inn in the beautiful spring-like weather, towards the center of the city. Along the way, we stopped at a café to drink Cappuccino and eat Kuchen (cake) while watching runners and their dogs pass by, all enjoying warmth. 

The flowers were all in bloom!

After we finished, we kept following the river and then walked through the center of the city. Everything we passed looked so familiar, and I tried to recognize the places we had been before. Whenever Julia pointed out somewhere we had been together, I’d have a sudden flash of recognition, though sometimes I couldn’t be sure if I was actually remembering everything.

We decided to return to the car via a shortcut Doris remembered from her time studying at the university, so we trekked up a long hill into the setting sun.

For dinner, we went out for pizza, which was delicious but HUGE!

The next morning, we had to get up really early so we could get onto a train to Nürnberg. We traveled first to Munich, sitting next to a young-ish man who emitted a stench like decade-old cheese and blabbered loudly on his cell phone about nothing in particular. Finally, we transferred to the next train, where we were offered coffee by a  man with a lei prancing up and down the aisle offering coffee with the repeated chant of “Häppy häppy!”

Finally, after three hours on the train (which was actually quite nice – we saw the sun come up over the train hurtling through the Bavarian countryside…) we arrived in Nüremberg and began our tour of the city.

We tried to get into the Handwerkerhof, which usually hosts indoor markets, but unfortunately it was closed for the season. Instead, we walked through the Altstadt, enjoying the sunlight in the streets and visiting three huge churches…

Nürnberger Hauptbahnhof (main train station)

Das Handwerkerhof - too bad it was closed!

Church No. 1

Inside of Church No. 1 - I love the details!

a closeup on my favorite details of the first church

Church No. 2

Posing with the Nussknacker (your turn to guess what that is ^^)

One of the many very dramatic fountains scattered around
the city.

Because how to you go to Nürnberg without getting Lebkuchen?

At the Nürnbergermarkt - the famous outdoor market

This fountain is famous for a golden ring hidden in the fence
around it; it is said that if you look through the ring while
making a wish, it will come true!

Mmmm Nürnberger Bratwurst :)

After lunch, we went first to Albrecht Dürer's house, which is now a museum that offers a guided headphone tour narrated by his wife (of course an actress, not really his wife) and walked through the rooms that had been set up to mirror the way they had looked when he had lived there. There was also a woman in a room at the top who used Dürer's style of engraving to make similar pictures to his. The museum wasn't very big, but I still found it really interesting.

The Albrecht Dürer statue at Albrecht Dürer Platz

Then, when we were finished there, we climbed up to the top of the castle/fortress at the top of the hill, and toured the watchtower and the Brünnen (well):

I counted exactly 100 steps!

The view from the top

From this side of the fortress, you can see the wall as it extends
around the Altstadt

They lower this into the well to show just how insanely deep it is...

The weather was beautiful, so we sat at the café at the base of the fortress and drank coffee, watching the passersby and listening to a street band playing around the corner. Then we walked through the rest of the town...

As the sun began to disappear behind the buildings, we raced back to the train station and rode the three hours back to Passau.

Oh! and I ate a Berliner! (Made famous by the JFK speech ^^)

Sunday morning, Julia and I went for a walk in the unseasonably warm sunshine, underneath another crystal-clear blue sky. Then, in the afternoon, we went into the city and had Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake) at the café underneath the Dom, or the huge cathedral that dominates the city.

Then, they walked me to the train station, where we hugged goodbye and promised to see each other again soon, though who knows how much will have changed by the next time we meet...

I took the train to München again, and then a bus from there to Zürich, though this time it took a bit longer because we rode a ferry across Lake Constance - which I was completely not expecting, but it was really cool!