Mai skies and the sense of lost

It is strange the things we remember and the subtleties we catch in the grand scheme of things.  After nearly a week overseas in a foreign land, it still has yet to hit me we are elsewhere.  There have been far too many big and notsobig reminders we really are in Deutschland—of that fact I cannot be mistaken—but the surreal feeling as though walking on a cloud has not quite disappeared.  It may very well be the jet lag intermixed with absence of sleep, but I have had the sense of a dream upon waking.   A most beautiful dream it has been.

Sometimes I like to think I am watching our lives unfold on film and seeing the sitcoms of a German spring come to life; the days have been so full of everything.  The five days thus far have blended into one long one.  Looking back upon the experience I cannot tell where one day ends and the next begins; Thursday has lost all meaning and I have become lost in a storm of wonderful memories. To here and now select those I wish to recount is daunting but attempts, however fruitless or countless, I will make.

This is only the second time I have left the States, and nearly two years have passed since the last time I made my way any great distance around the world.  I do not know how long this alien feeling will stay with me; it seems as though the statement “I do not belong” is stamped upon my forehead.  Maybe it will never leave me entirely.  There are flashes of clarity in which I have no doubt I am meant to be here, that I am exactly where I should be.  These moments are the smiles lighting up a child’s face and illuminating the world around them, the tremendous laughter binding us closer together.  Walking the length of the planet and back again.  Soaking wet and waiting for the bus.  The events may be indistinguishable and the days blurs, but all these things I remember I hold as a source of great warmth.

My fancy for people-watching has been most satiated in wandering the streets with strangers and sharing buses with the Osnabrücken folk.  Every day I catch bits and pieces of language auf Deutsch.  I will not come at all near fluent, but I believe I am no longer the gaping, wide-eyed tourist I was when first I arrived.  Once you get used to the punctuality of public transportation and the paradigm shift in drinking philosophy, Germany can start to feel like a home away from home.  I now have a grasp of bus schedules, European clubs, and the taste of multi-colored beers.