If anyone knows my mom (or me, really), then this post won’t be the least bit shocking. Actually, it’d be immensely more shocking if I didn’t have a post like this to write.
So, finally (“finally” isn’t the right word. It’s hard to explain. On one hand, I feel like it was just yesterday that I was packing up my life and saying goodbye to my dog, but on the other hand, I feel like I’ve been abroad forever.) the Day of Separation was upon us. I could tell that Mom was more than ready to head back home, but it was starting to sink in that she wasn’t just saying “I’ll see you soon” and planning a quick jog into the city to visit. This goodbye was different. This was “I’ll see you soon and email you a lot, but you’ll be across the Earth for the next 4 months in foreign countries full of excitement, but also full of dangers.” So it was a little different. Mom started tearing up before we even left the hotel, which shouldn’t surprise anyone at all. I, surprisingly, didn’t cry, knowing that the minute I cried, she’d break down completely. So, I joking yelled at her to pull herself together, the tears lasted only a few seconds, and then room 630 moved on from our pity party. So far only having ventured to the small town of Colmberg in an even smaller Smart car and visited Dachau, Mom & I hadn’t seen much of the beauty in Munich. After the Dachau tour, we were both hit with crippling sinus headaches, to the point where she could barely walk back from the tour. I have to idea what caused them, but we could hardly leave our hotel room. As awful as I felt, hiding away in some Americanized hotel room in the center of Munich, there was simply no possible way that I could venture out. And so, sadly, we lost a day in Munich and up until the Day of Separation, hadn’t seen any of the beauty.
It’s important for me to preface this part by saying that I don’t consider myself a people-stop-on-the-street-to-stare-because-she’s-beautiful girl. That’s not to say I have low self-esteem, yada yada yada, but in America, when men stare, they are (usually) quick to look away after you make eye contact. Here, however, was a different, and relatively uncomfortable, change. Walking anywhere near the train station, older (sometimes younger) men would stare at me in a way that only drunk old men would look at me in Chicago. I’d often make eye contact, the normal social cue that they should divert their eyes, but here they held my gaze and occasionally even smirked at me! I spoke to a few females in my hostel later that night and they reported the same thing-so it’s not just me. Now, this isn’t to say that I can’t handle myself, or that a few creepy old dudes ruined Munich for me. The point of this story is that I wasn’t walking around alone while these men stared at me like a piece of meat. My mom was there next to me. Imagine- you’re about to leave your kid in some foreign city, by herself, and all you see are grown men lingering around, staring at your daughter. We were in a little store, and the moment I walked in, I made eye contact with a middle aged man. We were in the store for maybe 15 minutes, and I was constantly noticing him staring. He even paid for his items and circled back to walk the aisles near me for ten minutes. This could be Chicago paranoia presenting itself, but either way, I could tell that Mom wasn’t thrilled about the city she was leaving me in. There were a few moments that I really thought she was going to lunge and strangle someone, which would’ve made for a much more interesting blog post. Better luck next time, I guess.
But, with a few hours to kill, we ventured into the city center, walking past beautiful buildings, spectacular fountains, and pristine gardens. Suddenly the city didn’t seem quite as dirty and pervy as it had a few minutes prior. I wasn’t uncomfortably glancing around, pulling at my shorts and pulling my sleeves down anymore. We walked into the most beautiful building, you’ll have to forgive me for forgetting the name, and took pictures and completely forgot what the day had in store for us yet.
Now, if any of you know my mom, this post is about to get even less surprising. Walking around, casually headed back in the direction of our hotel, we stumbled upon, dun dun dunnnn, street musicians. I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but street performers in Europe are immensely different than those in Chicago. This, for example, was two girls playing the violin! Classical music is a vice for my mother. She had sunglasses on, but they didn’t do much to disguise her pursed, quivering lips and her clenched jaw. I laughed, because I’m a brat sometimes, and made a joke about the music. She stuttered and strung together some sentence about not wanting to leave me. So far we had only been awake for a few hours, and she had cried twice, and even though I’m a brat sometimes, it was breaking my heart.
Fast forward to after we made our way to the hotel, picked up our bags, and arrived an hour early at the station. Her train was delayed, of course. So we sat on the ground, ignored that fact that she and I were an hour away from separating, and laughed at stupid jokes. Any points Munich gained back in the creepy-dude department were quickly lost as she watched an insane amount of socially inappropriate stares head my way. I could literally see her start to suck on the back of her teeth. If you even see Gwen Kille suck on the back of her teeth, run, because you’re in for a bad, bad time. With the delay, the platform was changed and of course, with everything being in German, we had no idea. Scrambling, even though we had plenty of time, we raced to the correct station and were later met by a wonder Bahn worker. Around Mom’s age, she engaged us in polite small talk. Asking us where we were heading, Mom started to explain that I would be staying here but she was headed to Paris. She made it about halfway in and glanced at the ceiling. Quickly catching on to the warning sign, I finished her sentence. The worker nervously glanced at my mom as it was clear that she had started to cry, while I worked my hardest to keep the small talk alive. The woman was awesome about it and never once bothered to ask the dreaded “are you okay”, which would have undoubtedly made things a hundred times worse. The train pulled in and we easily found my mom’s car. I hugged her goodbye and swallowed hard, forcing myself not to cry. To her credit, she did well! At no point was it a gasping-for-air type of cry. Just a quiet, sad, little cry. She told me to be safe, and all the other things a mother would tell their daughter. I told her to eat her banana and drink a lot of water on the train, trying to make a joke, but ultimately failing because nothing really seemed funny about saying goodbye to your mom and knowing you wouldn’t see her again until almost Christmas.
But, no matter how unprepared I felt to take on the world solo, there I was. Standing in Munich Central Station, unable to read anything or understand pretty much anyone. With no friends and no idea where was safe to go and where should be avoided, I forced myself to walk towards my hostel. Walking quickly, it felt good to have a mission to do. I was going to check in, post my blogs that had been piling up, and maybe read a book…? Trying not to focus on how incredibly lame it would be to check into a hostel at 3:30pm and stay there all night, I nervously asked if I could be put in an all girls dorm. Taking the last available all girls bed, I got lost 3 times just getting to room 205.
Awkwardly sitting down at the table in the middle of the room, it looked to me like all the beds were full. Just as I was sure that I was assigned the wrong room, 3 girls walking in. Politely saying “hi”, they told me which bed was mine and I quickly crawled up, eager to get out of their way. We sat quietly while two of the girls napped and I typetypetyped away. Sure that I was doomed to stay in 205 alone for the whole night, I was none so happy about the situation. But soon enough, one of the girls went to take a shower, and the other struck up a conversation with me. It was just small talk about our hometowns, our cultures, our travel plans, but I was ecstatic to not be sitting in silence. The other one came out of the bathroom and they discussed how hungry they were, just in time for my stomach to growl. To my surprise, they turned, in unison, towards me and invited me along! First we went downstairs to the hostel bar and each had a glass of wine. Two guys joined us, explaining that they were from Munich. Woah woah woah. Back up. From Munich? As in, from the city we were in right now? On of the girls I was with looked at them and said “So, you come to this hostel for the sole purpose of picking up foreigners?” About 3 minutes later we got up and left our strange, creepy German friends behind. We headed to a beer hall downtown and each got pork knuckle. Stoked to have a real German meal, we talked non-stop for several hours, until finally my exhaustion got the best of me and, reminding myself that I had an alarm set for 6:30am, told them that I’d be headed back to the hostel. And thus ended my night and proved to me that I can, in fact, do this all by myself.
But I’m still really excited for Sarah to get here.
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