It bugs me, looking at all those people and not knowing the story of any of them.
As I and my cousin were in Prague a nice old American woman puzzled by the way we looked asked where we were from. I paused.
A question like than you answer in a yoctosecond;
What's your name? Leen
How old are you? 21
What's your religion? Muslim
Where do you come from? Pause.
I looked over at my cousin as she answered: Jordan.
It's not new to me pausing after such a question, it has always happened, where I'm from has always been an answer that takes more than one word. But this incident is stuck in my head because the answer that was on the tip of my tongue was Germany.
We had come all the way from Germany, I have been living in Germany for a while, I have a life here... so much that my inner mind thinks it's home.
I have got to know Wiesbaden really deeply. I embraced it like a friend that needs to open up and I listened to all of its stories. It showed me everything and told me about everything, except for the people. Wiesbaden never told me the story of this relatively old lady in red hiking clothes who comes to Starbucks every single day sits for two hours and plays Farmville on her iPad with enjoyment, or this young lady with the beautiful smile who works at this small cafe she spreads good vibes around like she was born to do it, or this young boy who walks around the streets every day pushing an old lady enough to be his grandma on a wheelchair and buys her a treat from a different place every day, or that old Asian man going around town in rollerblades making the streets his stage and performing to all the people, or this lady with white hair and a hatchback who walks around the train station every day for hours without getting on any train, or that man who sits in the tunnel of the train station every day and plays his accordion creating the warmest welcome to everyone who enters the city.. Those people and more have become part of my life, part of my daily routine, I know what they look like but not where they come from. And I wish I knew.
There is nothing worse than having to leave a friend you got really close to, and Wiesbaden was like a friend to me, it was more than just a city.
I write this now with so much gratitude that I had the chance in this life to live in this city and get to know it as much as I did. Full of gratitude for the eternal friends it gave me, for all the beautiful memories.
I will miss its sky, I will miss its sun. I'll miss the streets and knowing exactly how long it takes the traffic light to open. I'll miss my dear friend and her laughing at my fond love of ice cream. I'll miss the Starbucks and the Dominos where I spent most of my time. I will miss the benches where I sat in the middle of the night hunting for the internet. I'll miss the parks. I'll miss the shop owners. I'll miss needing something and knowing exactly where to get it from. I'll even miss Vodafone's showroom one of the most hellish places for me. And most of all I will miss my home. The first place to ever be mine. I have loved that house more than I have ever loved a bunch of walls and a roof. I'll miss watching the stupid german shows on the small tv screen, I'll miss having to turn off all the electrical devices so I could turn on the oven without the electricity cutting off, I'll miss the long days and nights spent on the glass of the window watching people coming in and out of the supermarket, I'll miss unlocking 100 doors to get to my apartment, I'll miss the weird smell that my house had, I'll miss my plant and talking to it about my day, I'll miss my neighbours, the noisy one who woke me up every single day to the annoying sound of the drill and the lovely one who set me to sleep every night to the beautiful sound of the piano. I'll miss all of it, and I love all of it. Every sky high and every rock bottom, it was all beautiful.
No matter how much times passes, in Wiesbaden, I'll always find a home.
"You never really leave a place you love, part of it you take with you, leaving part of yourself behind"
Until next time..
