Note: Although this post was written a year and a half after my return to the United States from Italy and Germany, it was done so from detailed notes I kept in a small pocket journal those last few days. So, at long last, I give you the conclusion to L'Avventura I always meant to write:
I’m back on the other side.
My last day at the Goethe Institut (and in Germany)
began with one last class. That period was low on grammar instruction and high
on emotion, as many of the students were going to be leaving right after. Instead,
we drank coffee together and attempted some salsa dancing. I also said a
surprisingly emotional goodbye to Iyad, the Syrian painter to whom I had
started to get close in my final weeks at the Institut.
Then came the last-minute packing, the final look around
my spare tower bedroom, and a cab ride to the train station with all of my
bags.
The cab ride was in sharp contrast to the one to the
Goethe Institut my first day in Göttingen. That day, I had been barely able to
muster up enough German to direct the driver to my destination and
sat—shell-shocked and silent—in the back seat, watching the unfamiliar scenery
drift past. This time, I sat up in the front and carried on an easy
conversation (auf Deutsch) with the driver the whole way to the station.
Once there, I boarded the train to Frankfurt and said my
final Tschüss! to Göttingen.
My trip to Frankfurt was uneventful, and once I arrived
I made my way to my hostel, a mere 30-seconds walk from the station. The hostel
was incredibly nice, and my room came with enormous
pillows and friendly Canadian roommates. After dropping off my bags, I wandered
down Kaiserstraße, where I ate my first solitary restaurant meal. I was
enjoying traveling alone for a bit, and was glad that I had chosen to leave
Göttingen a little early so I could spend some time in Frankfurt and Bologna
before flying back to my family and friends in the United States.
However, I was also beginning to be very sad about
imminently losing my ability to constantly speak foreign languages in situ. I
heard a lot of English in Frankfurt,
and I knew that there would only be more where I was going.
The next morning I met up with Bryce and Joanna, two
fellow Wash U students from the Goethe Institut who also happened to be in
Frankfurt, and we took a short walk around the city before their travels took
them away again. I spent a few hours after they left sitting in the window of
the main room in the hostel, feeling melancholy. Eventually Joel, another Wash
U student from the Goethe Institut, arrived, and we headed out together for
another walk around the city.
This time, we ran into a surprise (to us, at least)
pride parade! Although nowhere near as epic as the Berlin pride parade, it was
still fabulous and we were still showered with stickers and free condoms. After
the parade passed, our wanderings took us through a gummi bear store (yes, you
read that correctly) and down to the river. Am Main, we settled into a little
waterside bar and enjoyed some Apfelwein (a Frankfurt specialty—literally “apple
wine,” it’s what we would call hard cider).
The day was grey and drizzly (which seemed somehow
fitting for our final day in Germany), so after our glasses of Apfelwein were
finished we headed back to the hostel for a nap and a free pasta dinner. After
we ate, we stuck around the hostel bar and enjoyed beer and conversation with
the two Canadians—Liz and Alexi—who were just starting on their tour of
Germany.
The next morning I spent at the hostel again, worn out
by the thought of further tourism. The highlight was breakfast, when I met and
spoke with yet another group of traveling Italians. Then came my final German
falafel, followed by a long bus ride
to the Hahn airport.
Back in Bologna, I dropped all my bags at the airport
hotel and took the bus into town to meet up with Dan Schiffrin, one of the
Brown students from my program who had stayed in Bologna through the summer. We
spent some time in his apartment drinking wine and chatting with his roommate
before going out to eat my last meal in Italy and drink my last bottiglia di
Sangiovese from Emilia-Romagna (it’s not exported to the United States).
After yet another very final goodbye, I went back to the
hotel and settled in to sleep before my very
early flight the next morning.
Fortunately the flight back was without incident. In
fact, we arrived at Logan significantly early. So early that my family had not
yet arrived from Maine to pick me up. Without an American phone or any way to
reach them, I sat on my bag in the middle of the airport floor and cried.
L’Avventura was over.