A little update on my travels.
I have now been back in Germany for ten days and am still reeling from the culture shock. Every time I arrive at Frankfurt Airport and am blasted by the smell of cigarette smoke, the neon lights and the mustachioed border guards I ask myself why I got myself talked into this 27 hour trip yet again. I immediately start longing for the solitude (and smokelessness) of my house on the beach in New Zealand and can’t imagine that I ever lived in a urban environment like London or Cologne as the masses of souls trying to wrestle themselves into position in front of the baggage carousel piss me off immensely.
I’m of course not back permanently. I am just here for a 2 week tour of duty to celebrate my s.o.’s 40’th birthday (for which she understandably wanted to be near her identical twin who still lives in this country) and my dad’s 66th birthday. While here, I also took the opportunity to see my beloved brother and hang out with him for 2 days (which is pretty much the maximum timeframe our calendars can come up with, with both of us living lives dominated by this fiendish little device). Seeing the family alive and kicking is great and reassuring, as - like it or not - it is one of the few stable anchors in our lives and even though it’s sometime quite a hassle I find it important to see them all well and happy. With the family all kicking and screaming and me reassured about their wellbeing, it was time to organise some other distractions:
I managed to meet most of my former classmates for a spontaneous twenty year high school reunion in a cool little greek restaurant in a nondescript town on the lower rhine. It was interesting to see the girls again (there were only 12 of us in the final year, 9 of them girls): all beautifully matured with only a hint of new lines, but without doubt even more attractive then with 18 or 19. It is interesting how much we’re afraid of ageing at 18, just to find out that twenty years later we’re having the time of our lives, the synapses in our frontal lobes still firing at exactly the same pattern, just with some extra experiences stored away in our insula and our limbic system a little better controlled by our parietal lobes.
Reassuringly, most of my female classmates were nevertheless still as annoying as ever. Which of course proves my little neurological excursion earlier.
Tomorrow I will relocate to Cologne to have an evening out with my best friend, followed by the second quadrennial Cologne Nodermeet, two events I am immensely looking forward to. Cologne has always been the only place in Germany I found enjoyable to live in: it has a genuine liberal and egalitarian feel to it, has some gorgeous cityscapes and the best bars and pubs in the world (yes, that includes New York, Sydney and Oamaru). I will reside in one of my favourite hotels and will enjoy every pampering facility available to me.
Next up is a little trip to North Wales: With the s.o. and myself planning to move back to the European Union next year, we’re checking out potential places to relocate to, and as the Llyn peninsula pretty much fits our profile (rural, plenty of sea and mountains, not England, a plethora of needy GP-practices and a DSL connection), we’ll have a look at the real estate and maybe even squeeze a day at the beach in. Then it’s back to New Zealand with a little stop over in Singapore to catch our breath.
And that’s it. Thank you for your attention.