november went by so fast!
we started the de-cluttering process, sold lots of our furniture (including my beloved postcard stand, snif!), spent as much time with friends as we could, wandered the streets shuffling the leaves, celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the wall, visited the computer games museum, and started slowly packing…
“But do you know this idea of the imaginary homeland? Once you set out from shore on your little boat, once you embark, you’ll never truly be at home again. What you’ve left behind exists only in your memory, and your ideal place becomes some strange imaginary concoction of all you’ve left behind at every stop.”
― Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs
i’ll take off the band-aid quickly: we’re moving again — and this time, back to portugal.
i’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea, and yet, i’m still not sure how i feel about it. it’s an easy move, back to a familiar territory — but it’s also the scariest of moves, the one in which instead of jumping to somewhere new and unknown, one turns around to go back to the place where we started from.
i’d like to try to put my feelings about the whole thing into words, there’s still so much to say… but there’s no time for it at the moment, as our days are filled with craigslist ads and minor reparations, while we scramble to hug all our friends and visit all our favorite places. rationally, i know this isn’t the last time we’re here, but still, i want to hold all these things fresh in my heart.
i guess it’s time to say tschüß berlin then… and we’ll see you all on the other side! :)
ps – our berlin address won’t stop working, but we don’t recommend that you use it for mail. we’ll have a new one sometime after christmas, just ask us for it! :)
when i was a kid, we had a plastic christmas tree. it was cheap and a bit unstable, but it did the job, year after year. and then one year, my father decided to buy a real tree, just this once!
it was a beautiful tiny fir, smelled really nice and was loved by everyone… so much so that after christmas, nobody wanted to get rid of it! so my father decided to replant it on the backyard instead. lo and behold, there it is, years later, a tall and proud tree! :D