In your mind, this should be a post about a perfect vacation, for that is what it was.

It was long enough that it left me with plenty of impressions; short enough that it left me longing for more; different enough that there’s no stereotyping it. It had all the inevitable periods drama and of silence; of idiosyncrasies and of joy; of impression and of reflection. As much as I would have loved for it to be longer, such change would have destroyed its nature.

While I only met Marein very briefly, I very much enjoyed his company (and thanks for the hat! →). It’s a rare moment for me to meet other Myst fans / like-minded thinkers, so I shall treasure it.

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I’m getting ahead of myself, however.

You see, going on this vacation hadn’t been an easy decision to make. It seems I have a very, very limited range of activities that I enjoy, and only under specific circumstances. I’m still in the very early stages of exploring that, but I do know I’ve had my share of experiences that, by society’s standards, I ought to have taken delight in but did not. I don’t blame anyone for that simple fact, nor for trying hard to force me to “have fun” (even when I don’t show it, I do appreciate the attempt), though I do hope for more understanding in the future that I’m mostly not ‘like that’.

I don’t want to say past vacations have left me scarred, but they ended up making me afraid to take some time off from work, and they made me wary and hesitant when vaaht offered — to the point where I hoped I had school that week so I’d have a proper excuse not to come. No such ‘luck’.

I have those sudden rushes of self-coercion, however, and one of them made me buy the train ticket there (the fact that it was surprisingly cheap helped!); then followed a week of two of random worries and mental explorations (my ID had expired; would I manage to kick my bottom and get a temporary one in time? would I manage to buy the ticket back? would I actually go, or decide last-minute that, despite the effort and payments, I’d just chicken out and stay right here?); then, an odd untimely breakdown the weekend before; finally, the decision to stop thinking and do this.

And I just love the stop thinking and do this moments, for they play a large role in pushing me forward.

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I find it fascinating, disturbing and disturbingly fascinating (or fascinatingly disturbing? Uh, never mind.) how the current state of mind can feel perfectly rational one moment and, as it changes, absurdly irrational the next. I can go from it making perfect sense not to “risk” going on a vacation for hours to it feeling incredibly foolish, childish and, as kids these days say, lame, man.

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So I took the train to Bremen, and I took the train to Osnabrück (which, despite being an ICE, and me sitting at a table, had me fail to find any power outlet), and the IC to Hilversum (much older technology, much less fancy, but… power outlet!). And, eventually, the weird-looking Dutch IC to Amsterdam.

Somewhere on the way to Hilversum, there was an odd announcement I failed to properly listen to, despite being in Dutch, English and German (as far as I recall). I immediately began to regret not listening, because some confusion and worrying followed. It turned out they must have merely said that we’re crossing the border, which explains electricity briefly going out, change of staff (I think?), et cetera.

That, I suppose, was the most worrying part of the trip. Until, that is, I arrived in Amsterdam. I seem to have a propensity to end up in Amsterdam

• looking to meet someone,
• failing to find them within the don’t-worry-about-it span of time.

Add to that my dumb decision the night before not to properly say good bye to mentioned involved parties and go absolutely sure we had agreed on where to meet, and there I was at a train station that, in my stress, seemed much more humongous and confusing than it did on my way back Thursday evening. An eery reminder of me in Schiphol, the summer of 2003, trying to meet someone I had never seen before and of whom I wasn’t entirely sure what he looked like.

Following the futile attempt to walk down what seemed like an entire mile length’s worth of platform 13/14 (13? You can’t make this up!) — I had arrived at 14b; Marein, I believe, was supposed to have arrived at 13a, I descended the stairs only to be overwhelmed, but eventually succeed to find the Starbucks. But not vaaht.

It didn’t help that Amsterdam Centraal has odd gates with little stop signs that make it look as though you need tickets to go through, but as Marein explained, this is apparently a system that they haven’t fully finished developing. Welcome to the world of software development?

After several attempts to partially walk in the Starbucks, not see her, walk back out, and keep walking back and forth, I sighed, resigned, and stood up with my back against a pole. That’s when Marein showed up in front of me. His train got canceled, so he was late. Having spent some time searching for vaaht together, we eventually found each other. Her flight had gotten delayed by an hour.

On Thursday night, though, my dad would tell me a story of how he ended up in a small French town waiting to find friends of his for something like 7 hours, so I suppose I should consider myself lucky — as terribly as the panicking I had felt, it must have taken 15 minutes, if even that, to be resolved.

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What followed was the true part of the vacation.

Monday night: going to Subway with the two of them, then to the hotel, unpacking and chatting for a while, Marein eventually having to catch his train back home, and so on. His journey was almost twice as long as the time he got to hang out with us, but it was a rare moment of quality time.

Tuesday: lots of walking; mostly along the street market. Also, food.

Wednesday: Van Gogh museum, and more and better food.

Thursday until the afternoon: Anne Frank house, but perhaps not enough food.

All of those days? Talking. Lots and lots of talking. It’s a rare, relish-worthy moment when two people who have so much to say to each other meet. This is literally invaluable; you cannot put the worth of this into materialistic measurements.

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Starting Wednesday night, I felt regret for it having been so brief. And yet, at the same time, I think the shortness forced us to make the most of it. The deadline didn’t feel liberating, but not stressful either.

I had said to someone that I cannot decide whether I should be elated that I’ve met someone who understands me, or concerned that this never seems to happen to me in Germany. That’s a bit of hyperbole, though: as much as I wish I’d have such fine moments in life more often, I’m truly happy this one did occur.

In other words: it’s been a great opportunity, and I used it. That counts for something.

Now, on to the quest of finding more.