Read the beginning of this series here.
It was less than a month into my time in Bavaria when Matthias’ mother died. The funeral procession in the small village of 2,500 people was like a scene from a movie. At the sound of the church bell, all the townspeople emerged from their homes, dressed in black, trailing on foot through the streets toward the village cemetery from various directions. The priest and altar boys and girls in their overflowing robes, with orbs of incense swinging and smoking, led the way. I stood with Martin and Felder, Matthias’ housemates, a little distance away, in a striped black and white dress, the closest thing I had to funeral attire.
Back when we met each other in Myanmar, Matthias told me that his mother was imminently passing away from a terminal cancer diagnosis. He was there, on the other side of the world, seeing the sights of Asia, while his older brother was in the village, looking after his mother.
“People tell me I should stop running away,” he would recount. “I need to deal with my problems. But I’m here now, and I’d like to enjoy myself before I go back to it all.”
39-year-old me today would take one look at this situation and give it a blessing and a goodbye. The idea of getting involved with someone I’d just met while on vacation in a distant land, who was navigating this level of emotional complexity and unavailability would be completely out of the question for a sensible and self-respecting person.
29-year-old me at the time couldn’t see past the exciting new experience of a romance hatched on the road, no matter how difficult the situation. My mantra at the time was, “I’ll make it work. I’ll just try harder. Anything is possible if you push enough energy into it.” And bless me, I still could access that kind of boundless youthful energy. I didn’t want to notice that, by that point, it was already showing signs of waning. I wanted to have more fun, go on more adventures, and get into more trouble. And prove to myself that I could get myself out of it like I had always done.
There’s a qualitative barometer I used during my adventuring years to determine if I was living well as a vagabond. Any time I would find myself in a situation that was wondrous, extraordinary, breathtaking, incomprehensibly novel, or simply bizarre - a situation that would make me ask myself: “Just how did I get here?”, and I’d have to really think about the steps that led me to this particular strange newness, then that was a great vagabonding moment.
So as I stood there in the village cemetery, the lone Asian face in a village of Bavarians, attracting stares from the entire congregation, I asked myself exactly this: Just how did I get here?
Hey dear readers, there’s a lot in these ten years I’ve spent in Germany that I would love to tell you about, but I need your help to decide what to write next.
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