The final days are upon us. Dun dun duuuunnn… 

I’m officially done with school for the semester and leave for the U.S. in two days. I’ve packed my bags and all that’s left to do is count down the hours until we’re shipped off across the ocean. Naturally, I feel weird. I want to spend these last days reflecting on my time here and all the great memories I made. I can’t seem to squeeze anything philosophical out, though – It just feels like any other day. 

All my finals felt just like any other paper, packing my entire room was just like any other deep clean, and my final dinner was just like all the other borderline-inedible dinners I’ve eaten here. Nothing feels special and I’m kind of pissed about it. I want to have some great revelation about this semester, one final event that changed the trajectory of my life; a lesson I’ll carry with me forever. 

Maybe I’m thinking about it too much –can’t force genius. 

A specific memory I can’t shake is a bus ride back from one of our weekend trips. My friends and I were coming home from Venice and it was kind of a disaster. We had a bus transfer and were in the middle of nowhere in Germany. It was dark, rainy, and cold. All the bathrooms were closed so I just peed in the parking lot and it went all over my legs. No one spoke English, and the next bus stop was nowhere to be found. We were starving. Tensions were high. 

We see a bus, is this it? No. It’s all too late though, one of us is sprinting across the street to get on. All we see when the bus drives away is his silhouette through the windows. Personally, I’m looking for Ubers. Every man for himself at this point, he got himself into that mess and I need to wash the piss off my legs. Long story short, the bus driver turns around, picks us up, and takes an entirely different route to drop us off where we need to go. Bless his heart. 

We’re still not on the “special bus ride” I’m talking about though. We got another transfer. So here comes more sitting on a cold, wet bench. Weirdly enough, the soggy bench didn’t bother us that much. We knew we were getting home; soon enough we’d be showered, in pajamas, and tucked into our unnecessarily high loft beds. This wet wait is what brought us onto the bus I can’t seem to forget. 

None of us said a word to each other. We’re all in a row in the back of the bus and I’m at the window seat. I spent a long time attempting to look through the dark window to see outside. I wanted to disassociate and listen to music, but lighting had some different plans. As I looked out the droplet-covered window, all I could see were our reflections, everyone wearing the same emotion slightly differently; one of them slumped against the window opposite of me, the other rubbing the knots out of her neck, and the third profusely blowing her nose (someone was always sick). Everyone was exhausted. The only thing I could feel when looking at my worn-out friends, after everything we’d gone through that night, was how I’d made some lifelong friends. If we could get through all the twists and turns we went through traveling this semester without having some crazy blow-up fight, then I think we can go the whole nine yards; it made me tear up a little. I realized how fast I developed a stronger bond with them than I had with most people I’ve known for years. We went through a lot of firsts together, a lot of great times – some treacherous ones too.  

On second thought, this memory is reflective enough for me. It feels pretty all-encompassing; there’s some deeper meaning there. Maybe once I get home more gems like this will come back to me, but I guess for now we’ll have to wait and see – you’ll be the first to hear!

Love, 

Isabella 

Photograph: Pinterest