steven

This is Steven, our one-time flatmate in Wellington. This week we traveled to Magdeburg, Germany, to renew our friendship. In Magdeburg we sat up and talked while playing dice at his kitchen table, met his latest collection of wonderful flatmates, made a half-day side trip to Berlin, stayed up far too late generally, and definitely stayed up too late on Saturday, our final night. We accompanied Steven to his friend's birthday party. By the end of the night I was talking with someone who barely knew English (I, of course, know no German). He made statements in his language, I made statements in mine, and we had what I think was a rather lengthy and enjoyable discussion in which neither of us knew what the other was saying.

This German trip has been quite nice - it's always good to have someone to talk to when you are in an unfamiliar town, especially if that someone is also giving you a free place to sleep. We've been quite lucky, especially since two of our stops have been to visit people who we did not know two months ago and who we previously met only for a few days during our travels. Everyone has been very gracious (we're in Munich now, staying in the apartment of a guy we met in Thailand. We knew him for three days before we arrived, and here he handed us the key to his apartment so we could stay even though he isn't in Munich tonight). What goes unsaid, and mostly unthought about, is the fact we are unlikely to see these people again. I hope they take us up on our own offer to house them on any future trips to the States, but the odds are against it. Even an email correspondence might die out over the passage of time.
It's nice to think, however, people are willing to put us up even though this probably will be a momentary blip of acquaintance rather than a lasting friendship.

Hopefully we will be able to reciprocate for some of them. We will have a definite karma debt to repay.