Coming Back

So, two years have gone by since my last post. No apologies. No attempt to summarize what happened in between. But I’m back in Germany for one final month before my term as a mission intern officially ends. Here goes:

[From the first hand-written journal entry I’ve written in quite some time]

July 2, 2010 - 14:06 local time - Berlin Hauptbahnhof

I’m back I don’t know how to explain what I’m feeling, because I’m hardly feeling anything at all. Certainly not the usual jet lag mixed with excitement at returning. I feel completely normal, but certainly not as if I’d never left [Germany]. I feel distant from my own past. As I flipped through my passport this morning, looking through old visas and stamps, it was as if they belonged to another person. And I’m not just being poetic—it was another life.

Certainly that other part has shaped who I am today, but right now—alone in a place of former familiarity—the two seem divorced. Yet if I were asked to describe the current me—the one so estranged by all of this—I’d probably have no clue as to where to begin. What has happened in the ten months since I last visited? Or in the 18 since I last lived here? I used to get such a thrill; this was where I lived: a physical—if not emotional—home. I wasn’t at all ready to leave in December of 2008. Now—not even 2 years later: detachment. It may be due to the fact that I haven’t seen anyone yet. And people certainly make the journey what it is.

circa 18:00 local time - A Eurocity train, somewhere between Wittenberge and Ludwigslust

I’ve arrived. After spending the afternoon walking through a sweltering and abandoned Berlin (much thanks to the World Cup game between Brasil and the Netherlands) and still not arriving, and after taking my reserved seat in a stifling hot EC train, and after being physically unable to keep my eyes open due to exhaustion and heat, I was awakened by the man with the pusch cart selling cola. The scenery here is tree lined open fields and it stretches in every direction, broken up only by Windräder (turbines! I recently was reminded of the English word), Dorfstraßen, und ab und zu mal...

My journal entry drifts into German. It’s back. I’m back. It was as if during my intermittant sleep I was transported into another world. Something like Narnia, but instead of snow-lined coats and trees: scortching, wide open spaces. The trees at the edges of the fields wave to me. The abandoned stations along the tracks echo a familiar, „hello.“ The birch trees cry, „we’ve missed you! And we’ve missed you in Russia, too!“ As I stare at an empty field, turbines visible from the opposite train window are reflected into my picture. The movement of the train and the turbines’ spinning spokes makes it look like they’re dancing. Even though I know I’m headed in a different direction, I expect to pull into Genthin any minute—right after Wüsterwitz and before Güsen. The names of places, which were so fuzzy in my head this morning, begin to come back—slowly, but then vividly. I know this place. It knows me. I’m here.