burbuja

It is Wednesday today, the 20th of May 2015. I find myself in the center of Santiago, Chile, in the apartment of a travel encounter. In a few hours I will leave this side of the planet after exactly 160 days. Until my arrival on the other side, 3883 hours will have passed there without me. Yesterday in the bus I remembered how I spent the weeks before my departure from Germany yearnfully, anticipating my time-out, the time I will have to finally think.

When I travel somewhere, time becomes place, stretches into all dimensions and builds a specific space within my past, becomes a bubble. I have grown these past months just as this bubble has grown, engrossed in time and my memories.

Often I have been asked in those past five months if I have a travel blog, and more than once I have asked myself why I do not have one. It is not that I don’t write. This journey I have kept three journals: one for my thoughts, one for my experiences and a brief diary to keep a chronicle of the events occurred and the people I met.  I have also asked myself more than once, why I travel by myself, why I enjoy being alone.

I have had all this time I had longed for to think and also to be. I have become much more aware and feel to understand. There sure still are at least five new questions coming up with every question solved. I have become blissful for every question for they sure are the only way to the answers. One of them will always be if the answer actually solves the question.

The sun is setting now, that is the answer I get today, it is soon time to go. My hand-luggage is still spread throughout the apartment, my stomach rumbles and the transition period that has started a month ago is reaching its climax. I cannot wait to get home, am eager to leave this here behind, I am curious. What there will be and who I have become.

Five months that I have not been with someone who has known me for longer than a few weeks, some a few days, mostly just a few hours. Five months of constantly affirming others and reaffirming myself of who I am and where I am going and coming from, so that I occasionally took where I was for who I am.

It is only upon my returns that I understand where I come from and maybe that is why I have to leave all the time.