And then what happened?

Skype makes me happy. I’m here laughing hysterically in Bridie’s kitchen and Dani in his bedroom in Bogota, and it feels less like 14,300 kilometres and more like we’re back messing around in Hannover again. Ich vermisse dich, Dani Boy!

I got up in front of a few hundred first year students today and tried to figure out how to put the last year into five minutes of talking to convince them that International Studies was worth sticking with and, more importantly, that they should go to Germany. 

Basically I spent a half hour’s worth of energy in those five minutes. I thought I was going to incinerate. They laughed at my jokes and clapped like a thunderstorm at the end and it was awesome. Afterwards I sat at the desk and they came up and asked me questions for an hour and a half, and got to enthuse some more. Now I’m exhausted. Totally worth it.

A Big Ol’ Mashup
 
I went through my computer yesterday and pulled out all the little bits and pieces of video I’d been gathering throughout second semester, and whacked ‘em together with a bit of a vlog. It’s rather a mishmash, but it was so lovely to see everyone’s faces again here like this. Unfortunately I had to cut down about 45 minutes to just 15, but I think I managed to get the essence of everything…! Anyway, VLOG TIMES, enjoy!

Here, we are
Upside down 
In the future
A stumble-skip ten hours of the day
And a leap of six months in seasons

The fabric of the day hits us first
Running through the fingers, hessian and silk
So it’s already worn and softened
As its ripples strike the borders of Europe
And wash up against the shores of the Americas;
The early sun here bright and fierce and burning
Calmed to warmth on later lands

We have scored the world along a jagged line
Sliced its citrus flesh from pole to pole
So that the days unpeel imperceptibly
Each circumference skin a hair’s breadth deep
Unravelling against our finite coil

The great clock ticks inside my head
And now the mechanism is faulty
The rust of all the oceans got inside
And began running background programs
Continuous calculations, threading the time zones together
Nine, ten, seven, eight, depending on the seasons

And there’s blood on my fingertips
Where the hours were torn away from them
Split into seconds that saw empires rise and fall
By the time-cogs’ teeth
The tools to repair this apparatus are not in my workshop
And they’ll cost a great deal to acquire

So for now we lead the cavalry into the day
Running the wrong way up, ahead of time
With a broken clock and blood rushing to our heads
Hurtling towards the sun
But someday I’ll tread backwards until the hours line up
And a steady beat keeps the machine turning smoothly
The red flashing light and sirens switch off
And evening comes at last. 

The sun here boils like August’s Tuscany
And burns the skin like September’s Greece
This summer rain falls in Edinburgh
And floods the paths of Göttingen
I crossed this street in Budapest and Amsterdam
I felt this wind in Uppsala and Bruges
The skyline’s lit like Berlin, Athens, Prague
The tides shift in the Thames, a Danish beach

Australian Customs stripped our luggage bare
To check no scraps of foreign lands had gone astray
I ticked the box marked Nothing To Declare
But they smuggled themselves here somehow anyway.

Remember this? I’m reblogging because I’m the kind of person who likes wrapping things up neatly, and while there’s nothing neat about how I feel right now I like to be able to draw a line from then to now and see how far I’ve come. 

Some things have turned full circle - the weather for one, and excessive amounts of walking for another (I haven’t crashed my bike in six months, but I’m not stupid enough to tempt Fate when there’s ice on the roads - even Dinant crashed his last night, and I didn’t even really have the heart to taunt him for it). 

But also, what a different person is stepping onto that same flight on Sunday as the one sitting there in that photo, peering out the window and wondering whether any of the towns she could see below might be her new home. I think I felt just as terrified then as I do now, just as unsure of what’s to come and how I’m going to cope. I seem to be writing a lot of these posts, don’t I? Hey, lighten up, lady! It’s not the end of the world. Yesterday Simon made me dinner, and we talked about my coming back to Germany once my Bachelors are complete. He said, “A lot of people talk about going back to the country they spent their exchange year on. ‘Oh yeah, I’ll definitely be back, you know, I want to live here,’ et cetera and whatever. And then they go home and find that they don’t really actually want to take that step. But you, I think actually you will be back - it’s different.”

That is amazing to me. I always find it amazing when people understand. And I think he’s right, and I think my family are right, and I think I can do this. As long as I have the people in my life who keep me going and shut up those little niggly voices in my head that say, “Who do you think you are anyway, you’re not clever or brave or resourceful enough to do this,” and who are constantly there for me (even when I completely fuck up or disappear for twelve months or more) - well, with people like that, who could fail to achieve even the loftiest of goals?

Now - off to do the million and fifty chores I have to complete before Sunday, including but not limited to finishing an essay, unregistering from the town hall, closing my bank account, packing, redistributing all the stuff I’m leaving behind, and so on and so on. 

cratey:

In Transit, March 2011

A quick post, because I’ve got a long and busy day ahead. So I’m here! In Göttingen! It’s still rather surreal, and the ground is frozen, and I have to wear at least three layers to go outside, and the buildings are amazing, and there are forests!!

Jetlag has been mostly (thankfully) absent, although I’m still prone to blame everything on it. I’ve been doing a LOT of walking, and my foot is not thanking me for it, but my mind is. I’m living in a tiny house with (as far as I can tell) about ten other people in it, although I’ve only really met two. I haven’t been doing much photography, more taking videos of the trip over (vlog to follow, eventually, once I get time to edit it all), so this picture is actually the only one I felt like posting. It’s on the flight from Heathrow to Frankfurt, which was actually quite lovely even though I’d decided at that point that I never wanted to see another plane again. 

I’ve found my sudden burst of organising frenzy at home has really paid off here - I’ve got my visa and registration all sorted, and brought everything I needed with me (although major props go to David for telling me to pack a powerboard, ethernet cable and coat hangers). My luggage may have been over the weight limit and cost my father $66 (thanks Dad!) but boy has it ever been useful. And setting my phone to international roaming for the next month has been invaluable, even though it may turn out to be expensive! Basically, thanks Past Caitlin. 

I’m starving and need to go eat breakfast now, but there’ll be more (much more) at a later date…

Seems I have conflicting superpowered alter-egos. To be fair Daphne gave me the nickname “Sober Girl” because I was the only remotely coherent person in the vicinity on the night we met, so it was more a relative term. I don’t know, is it possible for a superhero to also have a superhero secret identity as well as a normal person secret identity? I guess I’m just super versatile…

A Walk in the Woods I, November 2011

I can’t sleep. It’s 3am. I’m not sure why - I was exhausted all day, and missed my late class (probably inadvisably) because I knew I was going to fall asleep in it. Probably at least four times. When I got home I fell asleep for a couple of hours, and then woke and did a few things, and now here I am at 3am and I can’t sleep and I have a lot to do tomorrow. 

But this morning was lovely - I woke early, had breakfast and headed out into the woods above my house with my camera. I went for a walk yesterday, and was struck by the fact that I’d never been up there before, and cursed myself many times for not having my camera with me. Not so today! Everything’s covered in frost and the air swirls when you breathe. The woods are bright and clear and smothered in yellow leaves. I took a lot of photos, but I think this one is my favourite. I might post some others later, and I’ll definitely put them up on Facebook in the not-too-distant future, but here’s this one for now. Hopefully my reiteration of how I cannot sleep will have had enough reverse-psychology effect to let me get a decent night’s rest now. Bis später. 

And then Koala Skype Fun II, which added Colombia and Hungary to the conversation, though sadly all others bar the Göttingen Aussies had left by this stage. Dudes. I goshdarn just love all these people so much. 

Koala Skype Fun I, 11th November 2011. Group video calling is the shiz, you guys - I just bought a year’s worth of Premium and I’m pretty happy about it! Featured here - people in Germany, Greece, Czech Republic and the UK (and Sweden, although Becks had *just* left when I took this) just casually chatting together like it’s no big deal.

Good Morning Deutschland - Göttingen

Everybody’s favourite ERASMUS-based TV show is back! This time the GMD crew welcome you to the town that started it all - Göttingen, our hometown. Be prepared to be educated (cough) and entertained (woooo!), and settle yourself down for our most in-depth episode yet.

Fun Facts; Or, Introducing (more of) the Koala Mafia

Latest vlogalicious installment of my Youtube channel. These people are fantastic. 

Good Morning Deutschland - Berlin!

Yes, after many months we are finally back and bouncing with a new episode of the best (and only) Erasmus TV series. Seriously belated because I’ve only just collected footage from everyone’s cameras, and today I couldn’t manage doing anything except sitting at my computer. But now everyone benefits! Yay for that!

Josh Pyke - Forever Song

The two albums I’ve really fallen in love with since I got to Götti are The Suburbs by Arcade Fire and Memories and Dust by Josh Pyke. I knew both of them before I got here, but they’ve really set the soundtrack to my time in Germany so far. I guess because they both have some elements of nostalgia and comfort in them and associated with them, and probably the nervous energy I would normally put into being homesick has been dispelled by music. 

I really love some of the lines in this song, and the melody is wonderful. Sometimes I just listen to it on repeat a few times and jump around a bit.

Crossing the Wall, 6th June 2011.

Thought I might do a bit of a rundown of our trip to Berlin, which was pretty amazing and hectic and kind of marked a beginning-of-the-end feeling amongst our group. The whole trip was starting to stress me out a bit in the two or three days before we left; I was tired, I hadn’t got my B12 injection done (until the absolute eleventh hour), it was never quite absolutely certain who was coming with us and who was not, etc. I’ve kind of enjoyed doing train ticket booking and hostel searching and so on while I’ve been here (I do so enjoy making Plans now and then), but when it gets down to the wire after so many months, it becomes a little hectic. And then, because we had day tickets to travel, the time of departure kept changing, which was so confusing that on the actual day of travel we ended up splitting into two groups because nobody had told Michiel that we were leaving two hours earlier, and he didn’t check Facebook.

So Danny, Dinant, Adiba and I sat in the Bahnhof for an hour and waited for him, and set off on a different course to the others (Nordhausen, Sangerhausen, Magdeburg, Berlin Hbf!). Every stress and worry melted away as we got into the city, and I started scrambling over seats and trying to glimpse the Fernseherturm out of every carriage window. It was weird actually - I thought I remembered Berlin so well, and I had such vivid images in my head, but I was almost completely disoriented once I got there. I guess I hadn’t realised how long four and a half years really was. It was also the first really serious pang of homesickness I’d felt, because being there without my family felt really strange. Berlin was one of the places where all of us (except Jem, who was back home in Australia at the time) had a really good time together, a city that all of us really enjoyed. I’m sure there were probably minor arguments or annoyances while we were there, but overall my memories are overwhelmingly positive. 

Anyway I’m getting off track. Our hostel was in Kreuzberg, which is a suburb I was disappointed to miss visiting last time. The hostel itself was both gorgeous and frustrating - the building and decor are fantastic, but we had to wait an hour to book in, and everyone was getting pretty tired by that stage. Also we were cramming thirteen people into a room that was meant for ten, and there was no airconditioning and little ventilation, and the weather was UNBELIEVABLY hot, so by the end of our stay the room was a catastrophe zone and the air was pretty stale. Everyone was always stepping over poor Ben, who spent the majority of the nights sprawled on the floorboards.

I’d meant to spend some time with Lucie while I was in town, but the way things worked out we only got a little time together. However I had dinner one evening with her and Kate and their friend Kristen, and I really enjoyed myself. Zoe also ended up spending a bit of time with our group, which was lovely, and everyone took to her immediately (and then spent the rest of the trip asking Josh when Zoe was going to hang out with us again). 

We found a few real gems in Kreuzberg. The ornate Singapore/Asian-Fusion restaurant called Mirchi near our hostel proved to be both delicious and reasonably affordable (all the restaurants in the area serve €3.50 cocktails, which is a definite bonus). Across the road is a vacant-lot-turned-venue (complete with a double-decker bus which serves as the bar) called Kjosk, where Kosmas, Elise and the Dutch lads and I spent an excellent evening listening to a DJ and drinking beer on the grass under the open sky. It felt a lot like a festival venue, and had the same relaxed vibe. In the other direction, on Schlesische Str., we found a breathtaking little bar right down on the river called Freischwimmer. There were a lot of amazing spaces around there, and we found them all by accident thanks to Dana’s bloody-minded determination to see the Molecule Man sculpture up close (“You can all thank me now”).

My birthday was incredible. Breakfast at the cafe, a visit to the Ritter Sport centre (for those not in the know, that’s a brand of particularly delicious German chocolate) where I put together a sour cherry, gingerbread and lemon chocolate block, then to Checkpoint Charlie and Topographie des Terrors (although I wasn’t exactly in the right mood for the exhibition). Afterwards I went to scope out the boats at Friedrichstraße and spent an hour on my own in a park next to the river listening to music. Everyone met up again at six and we took a boat cruise down the river. I gave Ben my camera and he proceeded to take millions of pictures and then confess that he wasn’t very good at taking pictures. The cruise was beautiful, and everyone just sort of turned into basking lizards for an hour. The weather had been pretty sketchy up to that point, but cleared up wonderfully for that one hour. Of course that meant we were caught in a torrential downpour on the way to the Vietnamese restaurant Lucie and Kate had found for dinner. Sodden but triumphant, we ate an amazing meal (AMAZING. I had coriander in everything.) and I got my beautiful presents, and then we made a beeline for Monster Ronson’s Ichiban Karaoke bar back in Kreuzberg, stopping off at Warschauerstr. Bahnhof to play an incredibly explicit game of Questions, and a more innocent game of Cowboys.

The karaoke bar, when we got there, was full of a host of colourful characters. We managed, after a little skilful manoeuvreing, to get ourselves a booth to ourselves. The place desperately needed air conditioning but we powered on regardless, starting with a group rendition of Wonderwall and ending with Bittersweet Symphony (and a LOT of pretty hilarious/excellent/terrible duets and solos and group songs in between), so I really could not ask for anything better. 

It was an amazing trip, but once we got back we really started to realise how little time is left before almost everyone leaves. Ben went home to England for an internship a week later, and though we’ve now found out he’ll be back for all of July, it felt like the first farewell. And it’s pretty painful. I’m a bit scared of the massive goodbye at the end of July, and I think we all kind of are.