Down time and musings.
Nov. 10th, 2007 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miekecGot to sleep in again. Sleep is good - I never seem to get enough of it other times. Although, for some yet undefined reason, Karin wakes up in the middle of the night here, much more so than at home. Which then keeps me awake more than I want. Doesn't seem to be jetlag, since the time she wakes up (around 4 am, consistently) is a time she would be soundly asleep at home too (10 pm). Strange.
The rest of today was leisurely getting self together and taking the bus to Leiden, my old hometown. I did manage to get a hold of a friend who's running off to Suriname next week, to a cousins wedding. We chatted and enjoyed good coffee for a while, then went daypack hunting, since she'll need something to haul around the second part of the trip, when they go hiking. Outdoors stores are always fun. Especially if it's not your money being spent :)
Afterwards, I meandered through town some, walking past places I used to live and work and go. At the same time, very familiar and strange. My feet knew where to go and a lot of the surroundings hadn't changed, but it was no longer "home". It's a place that I used to know well, that still feels very familiar yet keeps changing subtly. Store names changed, different types of buses, unfamiliar coins (I never lived here when the Euro was the currency, and still haven't gotten used to it), no "home" to swing by and drop off my stuff. My friends are all still around, even if most of them no longer live in this city. And a lot of them have acquired one or more kids. And a house. But they are still the same friends, and even though our conversations are interrupted by months of time and thousands of miles distance, we just pick up the thread wherever we left it and go on. Parents have died, jobs changed, kids born, homes moved. But we still chat and enjoy each others company. All week, I have noticed this happen again and again. It's been almost 10 years. Having friendships like this is good.
I feel thankful.
The rest of today was leisurely getting self together and taking the bus to Leiden, my old hometown. I did manage to get a hold of a friend who's running off to Suriname next week, to a cousins wedding. We chatted and enjoyed good coffee for a while, then went daypack hunting, since she'll need something to haul around the second part of the trip, when they go hiking. Outdoors stores are always fun. Especially if it's not your money being spent :)
Afterwards, I meandered through town some, walking past places I used to live and work and go. At the same time, very familiar and strange. My feet knew where to go and a lot of the surroundings hadn't changed, but it was no longer "home". It's a place that I used to know well, that still feels very familiar yet keeps changing subtly. Store names changed, different types of buses, unfamiliar coins (I never lived here when the Euro was the currency, and still haven't gotten used to it), no "home" to swing by and drop off my stuff. My friends are all still around, even if most of them no longer live in this city. And a lot of them have acquired one or more kids. And a house. But they are still the same friends, and even though our conversations are interrupted by months of time and thousands of miles distance, we just pick up the thread wherever we left it and go on. Parents have died, jobs changed, kids born, homes moved. But we still chat and enjoy each others company. All week, I have noticed this happen again and again. It's been almost 10 years. Having friendships like this is good.
I feel thankful.
