For a long time now, probably a couple of weeks, I've been in a pretty crummy mood. I don't think it was homesickness per se, but I think it was just my initial honeymoon period with the study abroad life coming to its natural end. Plus, aside from the culture change, this lifestyle is a huge adjustment for me. It's pretty much all fun all the time, which is great, except it's not the type of fun I'm used to. Instead of my usual relaxing type of fun, It's the "acting my age" type of fun, which no matter how old I was, I've never been very good at. So I'm used to acting like I'm about 65, but for the last 8 weeks, I've been trying really hard to act like I'm 20. Most of the time, I still don't think I'm fooling anyone, but I'm going to keep trying. Even though I'm starting to get used to that kind of fun a little more, I think my generally sour mood meant that I missed my own kind of fun. I needed to take a day to reconnect with myself and simply do the things I wanted to do.
But here's the thing: I never go anywhere alone, ever, at least not in America. Seriously, I don't even walk around my block by myself. Last week, my German teacher told us about an immigrant housewife she knew, who told her that she'd never gone into town by herself in all the time that she'd lived there. My teacher went on and on about how sad that was, and I realized that I hadn't ventured off on my own yet either. I decided to change that. So I planned to spend the day in Stuttgart, specifically to go to Desigual, my favorite store ever. However, at the last minute, (and by that I mean just as the train doors were about to close) something told me to stay put and really explore the city I'm living in. So I hopped off the train and spent the next 5 hours memorizing every corner of downtown Reutlingen.
The one vague plan I had for the afternoon was to do some clothes shopping, mainly because I think the other reason for my crummy mood was that I was tired of looking like a slob. Sure, it's freeing to not have that many material things to travel with, but I was really sick of wearing the same 6 t-shirts over and over. I thought I gave up on Desigual when I jumped off the train to Stuttgart, but I walked into a department store, and low and behold, there was a whole corner devoted to my favorite brand! So I grabbed pretty much one of everything and headed for the dressing rooms. I had all afternoon and no one to answer to, so I might as well. And then I found this dress….
It's beautiful, bright and flowing to the floor (okay about 6 inches past the floor, but that can be fixed.) It was so expensive, but it was the first thing that made me feel stylish in a long time, so I found myself saying my new favorite phrase once again: Man lebt nur einmal. So now I can't wait for it to be spring so I can wear this. Plus, now I'll look cute when I go to Spain or the south of France. Now that I have the dress, I have to go there!
Once I was all shopped out, I realized that there was still a lot of daylight left and more places left to explore. Since I can't wear the maxi dress yet, I needed something else for some immediate gratification. I was in luck, across the street was a nail salon. So I treated myself to my first gel manicure in almost a year. And I was quite proud that me and my asian nail tech managed to understand each other's broken German. After that, I was already feeling pretty good, but if I know one thing for sure, it's that no great day in Germany is complete without ice cream…and Döner…in that order. After my extra dark chocolate gelato and oh-so-nutritious pita pocket of goodness, I headed home. Truly, purely, overwhelmingly happy. Having found all I was looking for, both materially and non materially.
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