European Snowmageddon permitting (my flight’s already delayed by an hour), I’m down to my last couple of hours in Munich, writing this entry from an airport coffee shop.
It definitely feels like more than 15 months since I wrote this entry! Unfortunately, a year living in Europe did not bless me with natural elegance, dress sense, and obedient hair, as I hoped it would (my particular brand of dorkiness probably takes years to cure). But I did have some amazing travels, unclog two years of writer’s block, fall back in love with my job, make lifelong friends, train for my first marathon in a snow-covered city, and learn a whole new language, opening up a world that one year ago seemed impossibly foreign. I’d say that despite the bad hair, it was quite a fruitful year.
So where to now? As I write this I’m waiting to fly out to Mumbai, the city of my birth, where I will spend a month with my extended family. It’s my first time to India for five years, and I couldn’t be more excited about my first visit as a proper out-of-the-house adult. After that I’ll be making a lightning visit to Sydney for five days to get my visa stamped (and catch a day of live Ashes cricket – w00t w00t!), before I fly back out to Seattle to rejoin my boyfriend Sean, who is actually now my fiance (holy crap! I am a grown up). Talk about a whirlwind five weeks!
There are a few blog entries I still need to catch up on and backdate (Croatia and Bosnia are still burning an unpublished hole in my notebook), so you haven’t heard the last of me just yet. But as I leave Munich, I just wanted to record here that keeping this blog has made me remember how much I love to write, and that I can’t think of a better souvenir of my time in Europe. So thanks for reading!
