Many people say Love always finds a way; I’m still not sure because I’m still single (Not complaining, by the way), but yeah, why not? Love does not necessarily have to mean romance or relationships.
Time for me in Malta had another dimension; I experienced that time so intense that a day felt like a week, a week like a month, and a month like a year. So, I first booked a weekend in Munich to visit my dear friend E and see if there was a chance to build something there, but sometime after, I realized it would be a catch-up and farewell visit.
Farewells don’t have to be sad or dramatic; Life is an endless lesson in letting go of people. (Someday, I will write a post about my thoughts on that concept; watch me) And this time, I wanted to enjoy it, to close a short but beautiful chapter that strongly impacted my life.
The last time I went to Germany was with my sister in 2019. That euro trip with her was the oasis of the worst year of my entire life. That time, we went to Berlin but could only spend a little bit of time there because we missed a connecting flight. So I always wanted to go back, I liked Germany, and it seems I prefer German women (And Russians, Americans, and Colombians as well. In that order. I know, so specific, but I’m who I am, don’t judge me.)
When I arrived at the airport, I had no signal or data; I was concerned about getting lost; who doesn’t? I was walking, more worried about getting data than finding the exit of the terminal, when a spot of light shined for me. She smiled, holding a signal “Welcome to Germany” with a Seabass drawn below (She refused to call me Sebas because it sounded like the fish Seabass). It was such a sweet surprise; nobody picked me up at an airport before, and it was her. Unexpected, considering she doesn’t live in Munich. I’ll never forget one of the warmest hugs I’ve ever had.
Context: I mentioned her in other posts; long story short, Thanks to her, I could open my heart again after my last breakup, and this was the perfect story of what could be but didn’t happen. She will always have a special spot in my heart.
This post is not about her and me, but it made this trip memorable because it showed me how much I’ve learned what pure Love is. Thanks again, E. So, no matter if I had no data or signal, I was with her; she speaks German, and I could survive there.
We spent that night doing what we enjoyed most together in Malta, walking. We walked the historic part of the downtown and had dinner in a pure Bavarian restaurant. I trusted her choice because I didn’t understand the menu, and it was pretty good; I love pork meat and Bavarians too; maybe I meant to be Bavarian instead of Colombian, but nowadays, I still ask. Just a few hours there, and I already loved that place and that moment (that trip could easily be in the top 7 moments I enjoyed the most)
A date with destiny, maybe?
The next day, I wanted to go to a concentration camp. I always felt curious about WW2; it was a great chance to go, considering I couldn’t a few years before when I traveled with my sister.
I have a particular way of feeling; let’s call it sensitivity or a gift. I’ve always paid attention to my gut, I do not always follow its lead, but I trust it, and the older I become, the stronger this gut becomes. When we arrived there, the first stop was on the spot where train dropped people.
I felt my stomach empty and cold. This coldness “embraced” me many times during this tour. When we approached the main gate, I felt goosebumps on my legs and neck, and a tiny black hole rose between my stomach and chest. The whole experience was pretty much the same. For me, it is still uncompressible that humanity went through something like this; everybody knows, and we are still doing this kind of atrocities.
When we got into the camp’s prison, it was surreal because it was summer, at least 35ºC in the shadows, still warm inside the facilities. But the prison was colder than indifference; we were impressed. There was the kind of silence that drags any noise inside your mind. How much pain and low energy is still “alive” there. It’s insane.
My dad once told me he visited a concentration camp. I will go through it later. He told me about the gas chamber and how bad he felt when he saw it. We entered the Gas Chamber; I never experienced those feelings before, imagining how horrible, scary, and miserable it would be to die in that way.
After that, we went to the personal objects part of the museum; there was a mask of a guy that helped many people inside. They made that mask of him so his wife could see him one last time after he passed away. Seeing Love and kindness grow in such an atrocious place is beautiful but painful.
In the end, they played videos of the prisoners and how the Allies discovered these places. I couldn’t watch more than 30 seconds. My stomach was turning upside down, I felt dizzy. Yeah, it sounds quite exaggerated and dramatic, but it was a real sensation.
Following my dad’s steps?
So, my dad is the most incredible human being I’ve ever met, or I will. In some aspects, we are so similar. When he was young, he went to Germany because he wanted to see with his own eyes that this actually happened. He went on a ship from Cartagena (Colombia’s north coast) to Napoli. And there, he found his way to Germany.
What an adventurous guy; why there? I was there too, didn’t I? He spent some months living there, and he fell in love with a German girl, and she also fell in love with him. What happened then? For me, it is not still clear, but I understood that my dad couldn’t afford to be there anymore, or he didn’t push enough to make it go; probably, it was not his destiny. We’ll never know, some people chose comfort over happiness, but is difficult to know what the outcome will be.
Read: “Malta: A parenthesis in my life”
I texted him from Dachau, and he told me that was where he went and always talked about. When he said to me that, I looked at my friend and thought, “Damn, am I repeating the story?” Maybe baby. But I was there to say goodbye and make a closure. Still, it was difficult for me to let this go. What was so tough to accept, I had to go back to Colombia, feeling once again that Colombia was not my place in this world, but this time, having proof.
Honestly, I never understood why my dad agreed to go back to Colombia; the few times he spoke about this adventure, it sounded like he was looking for his place in this world, and it was not Colombia either. I always thought I would never go back to Colombia if I were him, but it’s so easy to make decisions from another perspective. Now that I’m in Portugal writing these memories, I’m starting to understand him better.
But yeah, Life is what it is. Probably in the vast universe of possibilities and probabilities, we would always make the same decision all over again, and I’m glad he went back to Colombia. Years after, he went to Honduras and met my mom there, and then went back to Colombia and made 1 beautiful child (my sister) ((I’m kidding; she is beautiful, but they made 3 wonderful children, but according to my brother I was adopted. Of course, oldest sibling joke.))
slema.co 