Notes from my laptop on the day I left Germany

I’m writing this from the Köln/Bonn Airport at 3:30 in the morning on Saturday, June 27th. I’m sitting here in Terminal 1, waiting for the check-in on my flight to open up so I can see if my baggage is overweight or not. The place is surprisingly busy for it being so late/early: there is a sweet-looking old man sleeping in the seats to my left, a couple chatting amicably in German to my right, and a steady stream of travelers dragging luggage in every direction. It’s warm and muggy and the ice-cream vending machine is making a pleasant humming noise.

I woke up at noon today and finished what little business I had left to take care of, then went out and had a coffee with my friend. We sat outside a café and watched the weather go from sunny to pouring buckets of rain and then back to sunny in the span of an hour and a half. It was kind of sad to have that last little time together, but I’m positive I’ll see her again so it wasn’t as depressing as it would otherwise have been. Then I took a little tram back home and watched out the window as all of my usual sights went by for the last (at least, the last for now) time. Oh, goodbye, good Italian restaurant! Goodbye shopping mall that looked like a ducal palace! Goodbye crazy homeless man fishing for beer bottles in the trash can! Goodbye old woman talking to me on the tram about the weather!

Then it was home for one last coffee with my roomie and her daughter (who, I guess, is also my roomie. But I always refer to her as my roomie’s daughter ...). They said they weren’t letting me leave and were going to tie me to a chair and keep me there. I laughed. Then they actually tied me to a chair. But it was a rolling desk-chair, so I got rolled around the apartment for a fun while (video to follow). They helped me carry my copious amounts of baggage to the train station, said goodbye, and even ran after the train waving handkerchiefs as it left the station. Seriously. I love my little German family.

After that was a long string of trains: Braunschweig to Bielefeld (two hours and a cute, polite German guy helping me with my luggage), Bielefeld to Hamm (about an hour and a good-smelling Iraqi guy helping me with my luggage), and Hamm to Köln Hauptbahnhof (shoulda been an hour and a half, but the train was delayed an extra half hour. Also, no help with luggage and a drunken German ogled me for most of the trip, and then asked me if I was single.). After that I took yet another train to the airport. And now here I am. I have listened to all the music I care to listen to, played all the solitaire I care to play, and even grown bored of all the amusements my computer has to offer. I’m tired, but I don’t want to sleep for fear of 1) someone messing with my luggage and/or 2) missing my check-in. So I’m trying to keep myself awake by typing and thinking about my time in Germany. Am I excited to be leaving? Yes. But not 100% excited. By that I mean, I think it’s great that I’m going home but I also think it’s sad that I have to leave a place where I’ve spent such an important time in my life. There’s a little melancholy center to my delicious going-home-ness.

Also, my skin is oily as heck and my make-up has come off. That’s annoying.