At the end of April, I saw forget-me-nots blooming in Viertel. I remember walking there across Osterdeich a few days after seeing off Salome, who had picked me up at the airport in September when I first arrived in Bremen. I remember feeling time basically slipping through my fingers like sand and realising that suddenly, I had only four months of volunteering left. Soon, I would also be sitting on a plane, heading back to Georgia.
This sense of running out of time turned these last months of my life into a truly bittersweet symphony. Every project just felt more enjoyable, every new idea more appealing, every late-night conversation with my flatmates on our terrace more valuable. But all of this came with the awareness that it would soon end, and my life would change completely.
The last several months taught me a lot about accepting. Accepting that some relationships cannot be fixed, that sometimes you have to let people dear to you go, accepting the decisions of others, even when you don’t agree with them and eventually accepting the changes, even if you didn’t need them at all. These months also taught me a lot about fighting for what you want, no matter how unrealistic it seems and how everything feels to be against it. “It’s a sign only if you want it to be a sign”.
Ultimately, this combination of accepting and fighting led to the moment when, on the day of my flight, instead of going to the airport, I took a train to Erfurt and today, on my 1st anniversary of arriving in Germany, I am writing this text not from my room in Georgia but from a random hotel in Thuringia where I’m supporting a youth exchange held by an organisation I’ll be working with over the next year. If this doesn’t seem overwhelming enough, imagine that all this was preceded by three days of farewells and people just showing up at my doorstep to say goodbye, three days of receiving love and support in the form of words, letters, hugs, gifts, handpicked flowers or packing half of my stuff for me. Just like Mitski said it: 胸がはち切れそうで – My chest is about to burst.
Right now, I’m still too overwhelmed to sit down and fully reflect on everything that has happened in the past year. However, one thing is already clear to me: coming to volunteer in Bremen was the best decision I’ve made in my life so far: not only because of how incredible this actual year was, but also because I can already see how it is – and will continue to – shape both my professional and personal life for many following years.
Well, hope you will forget me not, Bremen, because I will surely remember everything that happened during the year I spent with you.
Ana was hosted by NaturKultur e.V. on our project co-funded by the European Union.
