My Year in Germany - First Semester

I'm sitting in front of my computer, trying to make a balance of the year that went by. It's 15 degrees below freezing, and my life has changed radically once again. I'm in my "beloved" Sweden, a place that would haunt me in my dreams. I would have these awful nightmares in Colombia where I had only a few minutes to say hi to everyone I left behind in Stockholm knowing that I would wake up at any moment. I'm here now, and it's great, but I miss some people..... and at the same time I know I belong here, somewhere, but not in Colombia, I just haven't found "home" yet.

Wormatia somehow feels like something that happened to someone else, or a 15 minute dream I just had. The people I met, the stuff that I experienced, and I'm trying to make sense out of it all. Did I change as a person? If I did, was it for the better? I don't know, I do feel like I have changed quite a bit, and some things have definetly changed for the worse, but all in all I think it's been for the better. It's funny though, I'm a very different person to people depending on the country, I can't explain it, it just happens.

"My Year in Germany" is quite an ambitious title for such an extensive subject, even if you split it into two semesters. I could write several blogs worth of rambling about my last year. But I must say, that although worms sucks cos it's a small depressing town, the people that I met there, locals or exchange students, really changed my life. It has been the best year of my life, and the most eventful. I don't think so much shit happened to me in my previous 5 college years as it did in 2006.

So where do I start? It's hard, to mention people and events, cos it's bound to make some people happy and piss others off, but what the hell, I like some drama in my life every now and then. So if I leave someone out, sorry, I'm definetly not your best friend, I might still think you're cool, so don't get hung up about it.

Anywho.... so, how did the year start?

It started something like that, hahaha, I know, totally gay. I hung out with Lina, Male and Jackie, most of the time.

Yeah, I know, what the hell is with the hats? Well, it was Rosenmontag so we had to dress up and shit. So anyways, these three girls were my support system when I first got to worms. Mis niñas divinas.

Soon after I started meeting other erasmus like Emir, Ugur, Maria, Agata, Sarah, Fernando, Diego, Gonzalo, Deniz, Sergio, Kata, Charles, Anneli. Kata was awesome, and it's really weird to find someone that is an fan of 3EB like I am. Charles is just Charles, nobody can hate that guy, he's really great, and great if you wanna have a conversation. Anneli, well, she's just a really good person and somehow I felt like I'd known her before, like I got her. All in all, good people.

I was still pretty much alone in my apartment. But then one day, a french girl from Paris came to my apartment, apparently she was my flatmate. I thought she was cute, and she was über nice to me. Emeline with time started to grow on me, cos there's nothing like a girl that you can have conversations with, and emeline is just perfect for that. Some weeks into the semester, I realised I had genuine feelings for her. But who wouldn't? I mean, she's a really cultured, amazingly cultured actually, and well, she was just über mega crazy nice to me. Em, I love you, and you'll always be in my heart in one way or another, but she knows that cos I say it to her like every day, even now.

Anywho, that was the posse. The four of us lived in the same apartment. From left to right Riikka, Emeline, me and Rodolfo. Riikka is a great girl, and rodolfo is still with her, and even though he's in mexico and she's in finland they're making it word. We're all rooting for you!

Also, I met a very unique german girl. Very different from the rest of the species. Her name is Suzie and she's a hippie chick, which in my book is always cool. Great to talk to. The kind of person you want to be friends with cos you think they're really cool, but you just don't seem to run into that person too often and it never materializes into friendship.

But of course, there's a lot of other stuff that happened that semester. We did showabend, the world cup was really cool, picnics, trip to Paris, Berlin, Rock am Ring with Deniz, all in all, really cool.

Lot of cool memories: talking to Deniz about life while on a train running parallel to the Rhine, having dinner with Emeline's family, discussing the french welfare system with Charles and how we should just take over the world (I know it would be terrible, and I have no egomaniacal intentions so don't worry), doing my shitty cooking with Emeline, going to a building full of ex squatter artists in Berlin with Em, Charles, Deniz, Vanessa and Sarah, seeing Emeline lying next to me on a spring morning. Those types of memories will stay until the end of my days.

I left in July for Sweden, ending my relationship with Emeline... and leaving many friends behind. It was hard, and I miss her the most, but others are also missed. I thank you guys. And it will never be the same, no matter how much we would like to freeze time, or capture a moment, it's gone forever, and it's now part of history.