Counting down the days

For a while I’ve this always-present sense of my time here counting down. It started maybe a week after returning from the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. I suddenly became aware of the imminence of leaving. It reminds me of the last-days-of-vacation feeling, when you realize something good is coming to an end.

I find it interesting to notice the change in perspective from when I first arrived. Take something simple like walking to the bakery. At first the sense was, “wow, this is where I’m going to be able to buy all this great stuff.” Over the weeks this transformed into simply a walk to the bakery to buy bread. And now it’s, “I’m going to miss walking here.”

It’s been this way with so many things: eating at the cafeteria at work, riding the train around town, walking through the neighborhood, riding on now-familiar roads, getting my hair cut. Everything is new, then things blend into the background, then suddenly it’s at the end and I notice all these things I’ll miss.

When I came here in July it seemed like there was so much time, and in a flash it has passed. Isn’t it always this way?

On Sunday I visited my friend and co-worker Viktor. He had invited me out to breakfast – something called a “Bergisches Kaffeetafel”. This is a custom local to the “Bergisches Land” – the hilly area that begins just to the east of our office. We ate waffles, milk rice, different kinds of sweet breads with preserves and sour cream, and drank coffee served in a special type of coffee pot.

Afterwards we visited the Schloss Burg -- the local castle -- then went back to Viktor’s for tea and more cake. It was very sad when it was time to leave. He and his wife have been very nice to me.

I walked through the neighborhood in Oberkassel, to mail a letter and buy coffee cream. Church bells rang off in the distance. I love how the streets are narrow and lined with houses, one attached to the next. The tram went by. At the bakery a line of people spilled out the door. I just had to stop and buy a another baguette and piece of poppy seed cake