A Little Bit of Guilt

Too much travel has made this semester seem disjointed, and my connection to Bonn less clear than it was with Pamplona. Sometimes I'm standing on a corner and suddenly things are familiar - its a corner I haven't stood on since the time of first arriving, say, when things were new and the air was colder and the Karneval Spirit was going around. It seems as distant as my months in Pamplona and as distant as Mizzou. I saw a lot of Bonn in those early days, and when Spring erupted I had more happy days here - wandering through Rheinaue and riding my bike down Poppelsdorfer Allee. But while Bonn has been nice enough and certainly convenient and comfortable, I don't have a love affair with it like I did with Pamplona.

Today I wandered around town for a long while, looking at all the different shops, taking an ice cream cone, sitting beneath the Star Gate. I do like Bonn, and it was a pleasant walk. But there was nothing that was tearing me up inside when I thought about leaving it. And here I was just thinking that I love Couchsurfing because it allows you to make a cool relationship that stops just short of getting weepy at the end of it. I open my heart up for too much separation with my style of living. Still, when I think that I'm leaving Bonn soon, I don't feel nostalgic especially. I feel nervous remembering that I have some food still to eat up, exams still ahead, packing to do, arrangements to make. I feel guilt that I don't know every corner of the city as I knew Pamplona, that I didn't try all that hard to make friends here... maybe because I already had German friends scattered around the world, maybe because it was simply so much easier here - I mean, I do have some friends, even new ones: Max, for example, Ansgar and the other Norwegian students, my roommates, etc.

But mostly it's silly. I HAVE spent some quality time in Bonn. I have loved the green spaces and long, summery-spring and the crepe stands and the gelato parlours. I've thought every day about how lucky I was to go to classes in an old palace. I walked down Poppelsdorfer Allee instead of taking the bus several times, so that I could take in the atmosphere. I've hiked to Kloster Heisterbach and Drachenfels and Bad Godesberg. I've given Nordrhein-Westfalen more time than almost anyone else on my program. And I /do/ like Bonn, I really do. And I've loved my semester in Germany every bit as much as my Semester in Spain, different as they have been. I guess my time here has just been too broken up, and I feel guilt that I haven't loved Bonn as much as Pamplona.

And a lot of this is probably simple stress at the end of a semester (and, possibly, my entire study abroad career). In a month and a half, back home again, I'll probably have nothing but rosy thoughts left. :)