Today wasn’t packed with much, apart from last-minute Christmas shopping, food preparation, and movie watching. I prepared a dessert (a Spekulatius Tiramisu!) and it reminded me of my times in Bonn when I didn’t understand the most basic of recipe words. Now as I read through the recipe, I realized that I understood all of it, without Regina pointing things out for me or demonstrating the steps. It made me a bit sad because it reminded me of how long ago that was. Bonn was almost three months ago. And in less than a month, I’ll be halfway done with my exchange year in Germany.

I have the unshakable feeling that I haven’t done quite enough. That I haven’t traveled enough, or that I haven’t learnt enough German, or that I haven’t explored my surroundings enough. Today I navigated the city center of Wuppertal (the Innenstadt) without Google Maps, and I was surprised and disappointed to realize how difficult it was. This is my city. I’ve been living here for three months. Yet I can hardly even navigate the area around the central station within half a mile. I pledged to myself to take more aimless walks to become more familiar with the area and to take advantage of the fact that, for the first and probably only time in my life, I have a city to explore without too many responsibilities. This year will be my year of having the greatest independence but the least responsibilities. I’m going to miss it.

I’d like to take a day to walk to the central station (roughly thirty minutes) as Melina loves to do, or to walk to my school even though I don’t go there anymore. I want to take the long way around to go places, both to improve my general sense of direction (Orientierung in German) and to learn to savor things. That’s something else I’ve realized—I don’t know how to savor anything, which is why I struggle to reflect on them and therefore struggle to write about them. That’s perhaps why I struggle to enjoy the process of anything I do because I never stay in the present. It reminds me of a passage in Fahrenheit 451 where Montag’s mentor, Faber, tells him that in order to truly process something when reading it, one must have leisure.

Today I watched Momo with Melina. It’s a sweet story about a young child who saves her friends and family from the Grey Men, people who steal time from people to survive. The Grey Men entered a peaceful little village and convinced everyone that there was no point in enjoying anything or taking one’s time because in that time, one could be doing something productive instead. All the signs of the stores flipped from “Open these days in the week” to “Open every day,” people began staring at their feet and walking as fast as possible to get from place to place, and children no longer played and adults no longer leisurely chatted. It was a clear critique on urbanization and capitalism (and perhaps a critique of America, because this story is from a German author, and many Germans believe that Americans are evil capitalists). It reminded me of my own life and how I haven’t had time to leisurely do many things, apart from my art or music. I don’t regret it at all. I don’t regret having less free time and I don’t regret spending the time I did working. But it makes me think that in college, I’d like to approach things a bit differently.

Last modified on 2024-12-23