Haven’t I been AWOL lately? The sixth month of 2022 is almost upon us and I feel compelled to pen down a big ol’ life update.
Five days ago, I moved a 6000-odd KMs away from home to Berlin. Full disclosure, this move was supposed to have happened on April 26th. But thanks to the unpredictability of the visa application process, I lost ten grand and landed here a little bit late.
Preparing yourself to move abroad is daunting. Especially to a country that is supposedly so different from your own. And how do you decide what to take from home? Which memories to carry and which ones to leave behind? Credit where credit is due – Vistara Airlines gave me 46 KGs (as opposed to the usual 23) to pack everything I could. I made lists and sub-lists, consulted friends and family members, panicked, threw things in and out, and in the end, commended myself on my packing skills.
I got on my first international flight and discovered Grey’s Anatomy on in-flight entertainment system and had three seats all to myself. So far, so good. Except I only had three episodes of GA available for watching and three seats or not, sleep refused to come to me. You know when you are too sleepy to engage in other activities, yet not sleepy enough to fall asleep? I kept checking the time, but I wasn’t sure which one to look at – the one I was inching towards, or the one I had left behind? I was suspended somewhere in between the two and I knew I had to exist in that time-zone dichotomy thereafter.
From Delhi’s 45 degrees, I’ve reached Germany’s 15. People rarely honk on the roads. There’s bike lanes, canals, the concept of jaywalking (I always assumed that was the default road-crossing method but apparently not), contracts (Germans seem to love these for some reason), waste segregation. The sun doesn’t set until 9 PM, which makes me mad when I lose track of time. The homesickness has not hit me yet. I don’t expect it to, this soon. One of these days, I will realize that the novelty has worn off and the lack of warmth in people’s hallo‘s and Dankeschön‘s bugs me a little bit. For now, I am happy taking the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn, complaining about the unpredictability of the weather, and nodding along when people say Berlin isn’t Germany and Germany isn’t Berlin. Wilkommen in Deutschland.