To do things “just like that” is a scary theme for the world. We are afraid of the consequences, because they are mostly more far-reaching than we suppose at the moment. But there are so many things you should do just like that. Just like that calling the parents to ask if they are fine, just like that helping the old lady crossing the street, just like that smiling at a person you don’t know. And then there is me. I change just like that my life.
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It was more than one year ago when I wrote something for the last time. More than one year when I travelled trough the Balkans which also said my last post. It’s strange to have a blog to assimilate such huge trips but in the end you do it in a different way because life changes basically. My life changed. I made decision which caused a headache in other heads and feelings of excessive demands in my one. The excessive demand is still there, but also something different. Gonna try to strip down this puzzle.
After the Balkan trip I made things I shouldn’t have done but I don’t have any regrets. I also made other travels, I went to Romania, to the Ucraine. Poland, Mallorca and Russia. Probably I will write something about Russia because this trip meant a lot to me but I should stop announcing something without doing it at the end.
But I did one thing. I did it for me, just for me. Nobody helped me to take this decision, nobody was there. Only a lot of people just listened. But it’s mine and I don’t give it back. Sometimes you have to be selfish. And I was selfish enough to do something for me, just for me.
I MOVED TO BARCELONA.
Just like that. It was my decision and my friends congratulated me while my mum got almost a heart attack. Meanwhile she calmed down and also accepted my plan of not coming back to my home country. Of course you never can talk for the future and who know where I will wake up tomorrow but I made plans. Plans for a new life. Although you cannot make plans in Spain.
But now I’m here. Just like that. I work, I have a place to live and a national insurance number. I want to finish my studies here. And I don’t want to go back. There are many things I gave up in Germany and I’m very aware of the consequences of this step in my life but until now I only observe positive results. And not only the fact that I speak better spanish.
Germany didn’t make me happy. Maybe it’s my fault as well. And maybe deep in my heart I belong to Spain like all my friends always were saying it. Romy – always late, doesn’t have any plan and walks barefoot above the asphalt. Romy appears with all the unimportant stuff and forgets the important one, Romy is like that, I remember of my first teacher in elementary school who already told me my character when I was 7 years old. Romy, our dreamer. And I like it.
But it’s not possible to manage a life in Germany with this attitude. How often I buggered appointments, how often I forget to return borrowed things, how often I lost my pens. Came late to the exam in university, forgot the appointment in physiotherapy and left my semester ticket at home without noticing that I went without ticket in the tram.
I assume that these things happen to everybody but not in this quantity like I do. My friends call me a hairstyler (I don’t know the reasons for this association in the german language but we use it for a really, really forgetful person) and I dance through my life, sometimes with the biggest mess, the biggest thoughtlessness and only the half of the stuff in my bag. It’s not always good but at least I got quite far with my 24 years and I handled it to cope in diverse places in the world.
There always was one place where I could cope better than at other ones. Where I could be myself and where it’s no problem to go barefoot through the streets and forget all the pens. And there I am now. I breathe again, I enjoy the spanish sun. I could cry of happiness waking up every morning in Barcelona and I smile to the people in the metro when I go to work. Sometimes we drive by motorbike through the streets of Barcelona in the middle of the night and I never feel so free and light like in this moment, this feeling I hadn’t anywhere and anytime in Germany. And I already passed a lot of hours at my favorite place.
My maltreated bones feel better to move again and leave everything behind. It doesn’t matter if they can’t keep up with everybody sometimes. They don’t have to give 100 % anymore all the time and it’s easier for me to allow myself some breaks, to stop regardfully, breathe and not try to do everything the fast as possible. Perfectionism is good, unperfectionism is better. My body likes this place, the german chains were blowed up. I don’t have to jail my broken feet into shoes anymore, I can stop to work against my heart. I’m happy here.
I AM HAPPY – ARE YOU HAPPY?
It’s really easy and at the same time kind of difficult to say that you’re happy. People do it all the time without meaning it. Before my moving I spent much time with thinking about it, writing lists, gathering pro’s and con’s, talking all friend’s ears off. Especially the lovely Lauri and the genious Lydie went with me through this phase of finding a decision from beginning until the end. It wasn’t a easy decision and no crazy “booze idea” like we call it in german which has been haunting in my head for one week before being decided. I was occupied for more than two years of thinking about my personal form of happiess and luck.
I think, I found it. I never would have thought that it will be a city one day any maybe it’s completely starry-eyed to fix your life and your heart affairs onto a special place but at the moment I think I did the right thing. I’m happy here and I don’t write that like all the others who tell you something about happiness tjust to tell you at least something. My heart and my body are happy in this city. And there is no other place, no other city, no other country which could establish the same feelings. I feel alive here because Barcelona doesn’t forbide you to dream and to forget all. I’m allowed to come late, I’m allowed to stop and to take a deep breath. I’m allowed to buzz a little song while standing at the pay desk in the supermarket without being looked strange of everyone.
Of course life in Spain is not “peace, joy, pancake” (I love german sayings, that’s a synonym for “everything is fine”) and there are things I had to get used to or I still have. Things I have to learn, things which are producing a mind change and things I can’t leave untouched. The fame of spanish organisation (if we can call it like that) is wide-spreaded and to be honest you need at least a little bit of order in your life without getting crazy. I have to learn here to put myself and my stuff bitter into an order, I have to do things completely alone which are working by system in Germany. I can’t get dependent or hooked of somebody, I have to keep together all my documents without losing one. I have to get used to the fact that in Spain nothing works “fast”, “really fast” or “really, really, really urgent fast”. Spanish people take their time for everything, always looking for reasons and festival days to not go to work. They are dated back immensely in things like efficiency and structure like it was my habit. If something doesn’t fit, we’ll make it fit. Sometimes it’s nerve-racking that you have to care about every single thing but the others don’t care if you don’t. When I apologized in the social security office for my delay of five minutes, they gazed at me really dumbfounded and a bit amused.
I have to admit that I like it. I like this easy-going attitude of the people, probably because I’m the same. I needed some chaos in my life. I want to find a structure for all by myself and I don’t need a country which wants to force me to take its structure. I don’t want that cold of the hearts anymore, only because the own structure collided with the german one and the country doesn’t agree. Spanish people are so friendly persons and finally I can build up a life with my own setted benchmarks.
“But then you are so far away!”
Of course I already coped with dark sides and problems, too and there are things passing here I struggle to get used to them but I was completely aware of the negative facts before and if my list of the pro arguments wasn’t be as twice or more as long (even after writing it many times), I never would have done it. By the way, the most important point was that I can be myself in Barcelona, best argument at the top of all. I can live with all negative points.
There are many lovely people here who help and support me. Many friends I found and met in all these years, love, feeling of security and a serious meant laugh. Nobodys lies into my face freezingly. And of course I gave up a lot in Germany for the life I want to have now. I will my family and my friends for sure, although there isn’t any price difference anymore between going by train or going by airplane, thus the sentence “but then you are so far away” (my mum while having her heart attack) is no argument for me. I will miss some specific ways to think and objects, I will learn to appreciate my country like you do automatically when you are not there. Otherwise you only curse it. Actually Germany is a safe, solid and also beautiful country to live in and I will lack in many things – from the system of the lawful health insurance passing pver green forests until sour cream to bake tartes and cakes. But I want it like that because the things I won don’t make a tragedy out of the lacks. You also can bake without sour cream.
I want to live in Spain and I will keep my country in wonderful memory and appreciation because it brought me up and made me to the person I am today. I always will be typical german, with all these german whims and tics (only we take away the white socks with the sandals), I won’t hand in my german passport either. I am German and maybe my country and I find each other again one day but for the moment the breakup was necessary and beautiful. Just like that.
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