written on Tuesday 29th of January
Today is my birthday and the date of my departure is slowly but surely approaching. I don’t know if I am going to stay here or not and my life is all up in the air at the moment. I don’t know if I want to stay, I don’t know if or where I want to go. In the numerous conversations that I have had with Ulli on the cosy couch in our apartment, we have tried to sum up our experiences, tried to make sense of the strange world surrounding us. We laugh about the silliest jokes that only we would understand, only to realize that these brief moments where our minds are connecting are about to end really soon. You may think I’ve only known these people for such a short period of time and how it’d be possible to share just a deep connection with them. And still, they are closer to me than anybody else at the moment. Because they are here with me, at this moment. I asked a dear friend of mine who has lived in lots of different countries what I should do when I go home, how I should go about to share the fantastic, shocking, eye-opening experiences that I have made. How to get the images and emotions across that I have experienced. And he just said – don’t even try it. Exist where you are. I suppose I will have to see if people back home are even interested in what I have to say.
Today is my birthday and the date of my departure is slowly but surely approaching. I don’t know if I am going to stay here or not and my life is all up in the air at the moment. I don’t know if I want to stay, I don’t know if or where I want to go. In the numerous conversations that I have had with Ulli on the cosy couch in our apartment, we have tried to sum up our experiences, tried to make sense of the strange world surrounding us. We laugh about the silliest jokes that only we would understand, only to realize that these brief moments where our minds are connecting are about to end really soon. You may think I’ve only known these people for such a short period of time and how it’d be possible to share just a deep connection with them. And still, they are closer to me than anybody else at the moment. Because they are here with me, at this moment. I asked a dear friend of mine who has lived in lots of different countries what I should do when I go home, how I should go about to share the fantastic, shocking, eye-opening experiences that I have made. How to get the images and emotions across that I have experienced. And he just said – don’t even try it. Exist where you are. I suppose I will have to see if people back home are even interested in what I have to say.
Ulli sent
me a lovely birthday card and even though this is somewhat private, it’s such a
beautiful text that sums up a lot of the conversations we’ve had here so that I
would like to share it with you.
Zeit ist relativ, sagte Einstein. Dass Zeit relativ ist,
erleben wir tagein tagaus nun schon fast ein halbes Jahr, denn im Vergleich zu
der kurzen Zeitspanne, die wir gemeinsam in diesem verrückten Land verbringen
durften, scheinen Welten zwischen dem “Davor” und dem “Danach” zu liegen. Und
es fühlt sich an, als würde die Zeit mit Höchstgeschwindigkeit an uns
vorüberziehen, bereits unzählige Jahre vergangen sein, aber doch so, als hätte
jemand im gleichen Moment die Zeit angehalten, so dass wir für einen kurzen
Augenblick innehalten und uns in einer Welt wiederfinden, die uns so fremd und
bekannt zu gleich ist. Gemeinsam erlebten wir Höhen und Tiefen, gingen an
unsere persönlichen Grenzen, und lernten so viel über ein Land, das keiner
kennt, aber einem vieles geben kann.
Ulli, I am going to fecking miss you. Uzbekistan without you is not the same...
