the years pass

As I posted on Friday, the plans for the weekend were reasonably clear. They still looked good on Saturday morning. Before heading off for the Tate I chose to start it slow – printing some vacation pics to send to my mom and cleaning the apartment, this and that. Out of nowhere, I got a call from an Italian friend I've known for eleven years. She told me she was two hours outside of London, deep in the countryside, spending a lovely week there with her husband. Why don't I come out and join them for the weekend?

Why not? After ten minutes of last-minute preparations, I had a car waiting for me for that evening. I finished what I was doing at home and even managed to go to the post office to mail the letter to my mom before I took off. Of course there was no time for Tate.

The day in the Cotswolds today was lovely, despite the weather changing about a hundred times as if it were April. The area is one of the few dark spots on the English map, just rolling hills, farmland and small towns forgotten in history. Shriveled reed-covered houses with curved walls, drooping beams and bumpy windows line the village streets. Sheep rule the meadows. The narrow country roads lead through tunnels of vegetation, especially impressive at night. Churches, castles and ruins vie for tourists' attention, but in an eerily humble way, much like you would imagine an English gentleman to present his country estate. With its swathes of grass being immaculately mowed lawns, the Cotswolds is like one big country estate, but, with all stone enclosures being perfectly crooked walls and any signs of modernity being conspicuously absent, it seems to come from a parallel world of fairy tales.

Now I'm back in London, sitting on my sofa sipping a glass of Cognac because today's a day to celebrate. Today, inasmuch as the night is part of the preceding day, is the tenth anniversary of my departure from Germany. On August 10, 1998 at Frankfurt I boarded a 747 bound for Chicago. I went abroad for a year. It's been a decade now. But no matter how much longer I'm drifting around, as long as I pick up good friends on the way, I'm happy about it.