Wow! Has it been a month in Germany already? I had meant to do a not-a-new-years post, but I think the window on that was passed. Resolutions aren’t a thing I really believe in. Years a cyclic, but where we place a start and end is arbitrary. I don’t give much weight to calendars, so I don’t see new years as enough of an anchor to use to force a change of direction. This whole trip as been rooted in decisions made last year. Although I didn’t move until the end of January in my mind things have been snowballing since October. And none of this would have happened without the lifetime of choices and actions before it.

A month is a long time. This is something I’d forgotten. Stuck in routine, with work and habits decided long before it’s easy to forget how many hours (days, weeks) we have at our disposal. But being between full time commitments it’s easy to lose track of time for other reasons.

Hitting reset and starting from scratch has been daunting. There were moments filled with vertigo, but these moments of overwhelm at the scale of the change I’m making quickly passed. Mostly, I’ve taken the move with a sense of zen calm. I met some friends for leaving drinks and one of them said that they didn’t think that they could just leave the way I have. I simply replied that a life time of small differences and choices had, 27 years later, put us at different places. Maybe it was perception or a situation of our own creating. Throwing half your things away and putting the rest into boxes does interesting things to your state of mind.

So does spending two weeks without furniture waiting at the other end. There’s nothing like living in an empty space with just a mattress and no outside commitments to make you feel like your life is on pause.

Even with few distractions it’s easy to let environment (the lack of furniture) mask the actual accomplishments. I have worked out how German backing works (shit by UK standards – they often make you pay for basic services and there seems to be a lack of trust), healthcare too and recycling (not too different from the UK, but the Gelber Sack/Green Dot rules seem convoluted and unenforceable). Plus staring from scratch with a foreign language and all the small things that make a house a home. Probably some small things I’ve forgotten too. There’s a familiarity that’s completely taken for granted as a native.

I’ve already had the chance to catch up with a German uni friend and been visited by and old housemate. This led me to Frankfurt to the north and Karlsruhe to the south. We did a lot of walking around Frankfurt and I think I can navigate the centre blind. I’ve also kept in touch with other friends and family remotely, and I know that others are just a few clicks away. The wonders of modern technology.

But with all this shit done I want to move on to a more focused use of my time. I’ve enrolled on the German as a Foreign Language course, so I will be able to go from giving one word to one sentence answers. I am definitely up for making mistakes talking to people, but I’m looking forward to having a working vocabulary and being able to understand sentences with more than one clause in them. That said, I’ll probably be relying on translation services for a while yet.

Now I know where some things are it’s time to go exploring. It looks like there are a few interesting things going on at the DAI, and Heidelberg in general looks like an interesting place. It seems that the university circuit isn’t quite like how it is in the UK and there aren’t as many societies to do with them. I’m told they exist, but it almost sounds like you need to be introduced. Regardless of how and where I’m going to find some things to get involved with.