I’ve been wanting to write this post for ages – but I didn’t find time. But now here it is!
So basically, I have started Uni in September at University Zurich. Throughout my first semester I have made loads of experiences, which I really want to share with you.
Preparation for Uni Uni life doesn’t start the moment you enter the building. It starts when you have to enrole and book your courses. I would recommend you to take your time with this. Think through what you really want to study, check if certain combinations are allowed, and whether you have to have special knowledge to be allowed to study this subject (e.g. Latin certificate), and check what the courses will entail (content wise – but also in terms of: are they a seminar? or a lecture? or both? do you need to write papers or a test throughout the semester? how much credit do I get for the courses?)
Because what you will do next is coming up with a time table. The way I did this, turned out to be the wrong way, really. I though, “well great, I’m gonna put a time table together so that I only have Uni on three days a week and a super long weekend”. Trust me, it’s not a good idea. After half a day you will feel exhausted and unable to follow the lectures or seminars. Additionally, you won’t have time to finish homework straight that evening, or repeat and learn/internalize what you have just heard throughout the day, because you would actually be supposed to prepare for the lectures and seminars the next day. And on those free two days throughout the week, you won’t be as productive as you wish you were.
So my recommendation is for you to book as much as you can in the early mornings. Better you go all week, every morning to uni, than a whole day. Because firstly, you will have the afternoon off to quickly finish homework or write summaries straight away and you still will have something from the day. I would say, go to uni in the mornings, because you will have a fresh mind and brain, ready to fill with information. And honestly, what else would you do if uni started in the afternoon? Right, you would only sleep… if you want to do Uni and work part time, you won’t have the time to waste for sleep, trust me 🙂 #uglytruth Another option if you hate waking up early is booking around lunchtime.
With all of those issues and the course-booking I recommend you to also talk to a friend or someone who’s already studying at the specific Uni. They will know everything and explain things to you. Uni-organisatory-stuff is super complicated in the beginning. So get yourself help!
It took me two weeks to finally open my mind, and to let it all go.
To some extent at least.
I felt free, relaxed, no more worries about what I lost. I accepted what had happened – and finally I could breathe again. The distance soothed me and my mind. My thoughts.
Just imagine that at the beginning of the trip, I was still in the middle of it. Giving it another try to reach out to the one I lost. Then… time had suddenly finally healed the worst of my wounds. Because I felt happy there, in the nature, far away from everything, surrounded by so much beauty and calmness and peace.
For the first time since that day, I felt okay with being without him.
And
I just couldn’t be this sad for any longer.
It had become a weird kind of sadness – the kind which covers your heart and doesn’t let go. It wasn’t as heavy as it was in the beginning, it wasn’t as cruel or as painful. Just sadness and regret and a lingering wish that I was only dreaming and that I would finally wake up and he’d still be there.
No more. – or at least less.
I gave as much of my bitterness as I could to the sea.
At first, I remember, I couldn’t even bring my mind to think about it all.
To start processing things and reviving things in a proper and true way.
At some point I watched the waves for ages. And the water went away and then came back to me, over and over again.
And that was when I realised that I didn’t have anything left to say. Not to myself and not to him.
I had talked so much about how much he hurt me, how much I loved him, how much I wanted him back, how much it was all my fault, how much I couldn’t accept it, how angry and disappointed I was, how I couldn’t understand, how I wished I would have said different things, how I wished I was someone else – the one he wanted, how much I appreciated the time we had, and how badly I wanted to forget it, how grateful I was for everything, how much I learned…
So much talking from my side.
This had actually never happened to me before: with all the talking I had confused myself, I couldn’t remember the things he answered and the things I answered to myself. It was all just a sad blurr.
So I stood there, trying to reflect and to come to peace with what had happened
and the situation.
And nothing came to my mind except the fact that it was over between us. And it felt okay.
Because there was nothing to add.
Or nothing left to do.
I did it all. I said it all.
So I stood there all empty. And oh god, it was such a light feeling for once.
I was happy.
And free.
I didn’t even miss him at that moment, because for once, I was truly awake and inward-looking.
I used to do that a lot – self-reflecting and listening to my soul – I didn’t do it for too long.
I always thought he was the only one who could give me peace and who – ironically- could heal my pain.
or if not him, of course… distance and the ocean could.
But it wasn’t true.
It was me.
I am the solution to myself.
And it was right that I did it all – that I did everything, that I didn’t give up easily.
I would have never come to listen to myself and to feel comfortable, if I gave up and just stopped trying.
I had to prove things to myself. That it all was hopeless although I still somewhere deep in my heart had hope;
it was okay.
I accepted myself and life and i felt
so
quiet.
At the ocean, hearing and feeling the waves, staring at the far distance.
It was a good day.
I want to dedicate this post to my friend, who died on 14th of September. She died too young, she didn’t even turn 20. She couldn’t live. There is no fairness in life.
What her death taught me was to live every second you have to its fullest. Love. And be happy. And do things. You can never know when your time will be over – or someone else’s time for that matter. Life isn’t about what you dream, it’s about the dreams that come true. You have to do it yourself. No one else will fulfill your dreams for you.
As you might have read on my blog post “Bali Backpacking” – I was on holiday in Indonesia.
(In that blog entry you can also find loads of pretty pictures, if the read is too long for you)
In Bali there were two encounters I want to tell you about, because they have really stayed with me.
We talked with two men about love and relationships and it made me feel so upset and also even a bit sad to hear their stories.
Apart from that they also made me think about our culture and my personal past.
Let me share their stories with you:
As we watched the sunset at the Beach in Amed we met a local man. He, an owner of a little hostel, asked us – obviously after we’d already talked for some minutes – if it was normal that people from Europe have several partners. He said this because he met several men and also women who went with secret lovers to Bali, telling him they were actually married. I thought it was quite shocking what picture he had from our culture and it was even more shocking to realise that it was impossible for me to convince him that his idea of European relationships was wrong. However he told us, that traditionally in Bali the family decides who marries whom. The girl then has to move into the house oft he spouses family and is bound to make religious offerings every day and to look after the family. He seemed quite regrettable about the fact that he didn’t get the chance to choose his wife. He said, his wife is more like a friend to him, than anything else.
The second balinese guy who told us about love was our driver (about 34 years old). He fell in love with a Japanese tourist who he met during her stay in Bali. She got ill and he looked after her. This is how feelings developed and how he fell in love with her. They had a thing going on during her stay and she even came back once again. But then she vanished in Japan and he would hear later on that she’d eventually got married. Nevertheless his biggest wish is to go to Japan to meet her again, regardless of her being with someone else. He said he doesn’t feel complete without her, and just simply put: sad.
The Balinese people really seemed very gentle to me and I came to realise that love to them is much more valuable than it is to us. In our culture, love is a given, we can love several people, change partners, change our minds – we are a lot more free to act out our love and to explore every side of it. They however dream of a romantic ideal of love, because they don’t get to choose.
Although they still connect the idea of love with happiness, a happiness not all of them will ever experience.
What really made me think was the fact that our driver had fallen in love years ago, and how it still deeply affects him today.
I don’t want to be sad over someone all my life. That’s why we have to fight for what we love. Because we can.
I went away, far away. Destination Bali. In following post I want to tell you about the best experiences I made, I’ll show you how absolutely beautiful this country and its culture is and I will give you some recommendations if you ever consider traveling to Indonesia.
Here a little map of our trip. After a 14 hours flight we – my best friend and I – arrived in Denpasar. Before that we had to change planes in Singapore – here my first piece of advice for you. Always make sure you have more time than 1 hour to change planes, otherwise you’ll run (like really really run) and you won’t have time for dutyfree shopping!
However, we arrived and got to our Hostel in Ubud, the so called cultural centre of Bali. It is a very busy city with lots of traffic but many cute little shops and many things to see.
The place is quite touristic, however as I would find out during this trip, Bali itself has become a complete tourist-magnet and the people who live there rather open a little restaurant or a shop instead of making their money with traditional fishing or agriculture. Most Balinese people which are now 20 to 35 years old have studied tourism. However the culture and religion is still of big importance to the local people.
In Ubud there are great restaurants and places to go out, you can see celebrations in temples or visit the monkey forest.
Recommendation for Ubud:
Hostel: Pandok Permata (15 minutes walk from centre, best banana pancakes in the world, very friendly staff, warm water in the shower, pretty rooms/ cost: about 8 Euros each à night)
Restaurant: The Bali Yoga Restaurant (Jl. Kajeng No. 11) (very cheap but local and yummy food)
Culture: Ubud Palace (picture above) and rice fields in the western part of the city (if you find time, walk them all the way up and get a ride back down, cause most tourists only walk trough the fields for a little while, so if you wander further you’ll be all by yourself and you’ll find the cutest restaurants (make sure you go around sunset, you won’t have a better view of it anywhere else in Ubud)
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The go-to festivals near where I live are the Open Air St.Gallen and the Open Air Frauenfeld.
The Open Air St.Gallen is an alternative/rock festival with room for about 30’000 people. It is great because it’s small, cosy and if you camp at the right spot you have a direct view onto the main stage! There’s a river to go bathing and you always have shuttle busses to the centre of the city. The tickets cost about 300 Swiss Francs.
I have been to this festival several times before and saw bands like Paramore, 30 Seconds to Mars, Linkin Park, Philipp Poisel, Kings of Leon, Queens of the Stone Age, DeadMau5, Macklemore… Ed Sheeran has been there before, this year the headliners were Kodaline, Royal Blood, Rise Against, The Chemical Brothers, Mighty Oaks, Placebo and Paolo Nutini.
What you need to know is, that this festival is sold out super quickly. When the pre-sell starts (December/January) you have only a few hours to get one.
And the festival is known for shitty weather. I have experienced both – four days of sunshine and four days of rain. Rainy weather sucks, but how could you know half a year before the festival what the weather would be like?
The festival usually takes place at the end of June.
This is one of my most simple but still most beloved memories of the time I shared
with him.
I let it go.
–
I was about to get home. At 7 o’clock on a Sunday morning. I just finished a 10 hours night-shift at the pub.
Every single time when I was close to where I wanted so desperately to get, I’d turn around the corner, checking if I saw light spreading out into the dark night from inside the apartment on the very top of the building. Shortly before I reached that point where I could see the light, I sometimes felt like running, speeding up. It didn’t matter that I felt incredibly exhausted and worn out.
This was never the time for me to feel tired.
Usually it came over me sometime later on Sunday afternoon, or on Monday and then it would’ve stayed for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday… But coming home to him was what I waited for all week. It was my motivation. My sweet treat after six days of missing him, hard work, and …did I mention it? Missing him.
I have never been a very patient person and I will never be. So for those days without him, nothing mattered, I just wanted to get through the week, to turn around that corner
and to see light.
That night I did.
A mix between utter happiness (“he’s waiting for me to come home!”) and bliss (“god, I am so lucky”) and thankfulness (“he did it for me”) but also worry (“he really should be asleep. No one gets up at this time on Sunday mornings”) would run through my veins. To him, it was always one of his favorite things, if I waited for him to come home after work.
Yes, to me, it was the exact same thing.
He always told me, he woke up himself knowing I would come soon. I’m not sure he set an alarm clock. But no matter what it was that woke him up – I am so thankful now, for every single time.
On that very day, I hurried up the stairs. I opened the door. If my heart could’ve talked, it would’ve taken a deep breath and it would’ve sighed “finally”. He walked towards me, held me, whispered a soft “hello” as I let the contentment and simplicity of this moment wash over me.
I was sticky and smelly, from all the sweat and liquor on my skin – he didn’t care. He never did. Our tired looks on our faces would mirror in each others eyes.
But all I could feel at that moment was the pure feeling of infinite devotion.
I remember my urge to make the best out of our short time we would have together. We always had only the weekends. Although the nights of those weekends, I was working. Then I would sleep till noon. So actually we had half of the weekends. I wanted so much to just stay awake, not waisting any time. I didn’t need sleep as long as I had him. And he looked at me sweet and worried, shaking his head.
I went to put my bag in his bedroom and I laid down for a sneaky short minute, still convinced, that I didn’t want and didn’t need the sleep. I relaxed on my side completely across the whole bed, diagonally, as I felt him laying down behind me. He said: “You need the sleep.” And he put his arm around me, pulled me close. Some of his weight was on top of me. It was completely innocent, but perfect. He closed every single gap between us, his head on mine, his arm around me, I heard his breath, his heartbeat and although I really didn’t intend to sleep
i fell into the world of dreams immediately.
I cannot remember a single time, when I have ever slept just as well. I was literally muffled in his love and his warmth. Oh, I loved his warmth.
I felt cold too often, I feel cold too often now.
I had no dreams, I could just let myself fall. I knew I was at the most secure place I could’ve ever been.
And I knew I could wake up, and he’d still be around.
It was nice to know someone looked after me, giving me a break from making all the decisions.
At that moment he gave me the feeling, that I didn’t needed to be stressed, or scared, or worried.
Nothing in the world mattered.
Just him, by my side, close – physically and emotionally.
It was nice to know, he cared.
And that he had woken up just to hold me till I’d fallen asleep.
Picture: Printscreen Vlog The Michalaks (check them out!)
I never knew that I could feel constantly sad for so long…
it has already been 3 months – a quarter of a year. Still – no day has gone by without a thought about my lost love, my lost chances.
I’m sorry I let you wait for so long for a new blog post. But I honestly couldn’t bring myself to write one – until now.
I went to see him again. It was a mistake. There was the old connection between us, the brushed arms when we walked past each other, the closeness I yearned for, the stupid jokes about the same old things, his touch.
I collapsed after I left. A few days later I demanded to get answers.
Answers to questions I couldn’t even ask without wondering if I could handle to hear what he would say to them.
He told me – I should let him go.
That I should live my life.
That the timing wasn’t right.
That he would come back once he thinks, he can be the person I deserve.
That he knows it could be too late then.
He told me, I was important to him.
That he had the most wonderful time ever with me.
You know, I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but I am not the kind of person who believes much in timing.
I am convinced that ultimately you have to fight and work for what you want to keep in your life.
It’s about what you do. You cannot always look for excuses and you cannot make life itself to one of them.
Nevertheless – I felt defeated.
I tried to accept it, I tried and am still trying because I love him and because I have no other choice.
I cannot force him to love me.
I cannot make him want me.
It all becomes less painful after a while – you become numb, resigned.
I deleted the pictures, stopped myself from thinking about the time we shared, his eyes, his touch or the future I always hoped we would have together.
It’s all gone and it’s all out of my hands.
Nothing I could ever imagine myself doing, is ever going to change anything, or make it work again.
It needs two to love.
Sometimes I even wonder, if what we had was ever true. Now that it is all deleted it becomes so surreal.
Has it ever been there? Has it ever existed? Have weexisted?
I am concentrating on myself now. That’s my biggest advice. Focus on yourself, change things, live. Even though you will go through tough days… don’t call him, don’t text him. Delete the number.
I am waiting for the time, when he’s ready to talk to me again – when he misses me so much, that he reaches out to me and not the other way around. He could be missing me then as a friend, or as a human being or as the one who once loved him. Maybe until then, I am different. Maybe then i can stand in front of him without tears in my eyes – strong.
If he’s moving on, I have to do the same thing. I cannot be left behind.
He says he knows it could be too late. This is what I don’t understand. I don’t understand why he promises me to come back one day, although he has never kept a promise he’s ever made. And why would you let someone go, if you knew it could be too late? I would never push anyone out of my life, if I would intend to let this person back in sometime, knowing it could never happen… because it could be too late. No one would do that, that’s too much of a risk. You keep the ones you love as close to you as you can and never let them go. Right?
I would have never let him go. But he asks for it. He turns around and walks away from me. Leaving me all alone. If I ever want to feel happy again, I have to do what I hate most, what I’ve always been to scared to even think about.
And to be fair, slowly frustration and some sort of anger starts to build inside of me.
It helps me to leave him alone
but I don’t like it, because it isn’t me.
I’m kind.
But I hate not being able to do anything about it. That fighting doesn’t help. That I have to accept the defeat.
I would’ve fought for him forever, if I only saw a glimpse of a chance.
Now I dunno what to tell you anymore. I am literally planning my life. Soon I start Uni, I wanna move out, work more… A fresh start.
Before I end this post I’d like to share with you something which has made me think.
I heard following poem recently. It’s called If by Ruyard Kipling – read out by Hanna Maggs and her husband on their Vlog-channel The Michalaks:
I know this has nothing to do with romantic relationships whatsoever.
Some sentences still stayed with me and I really cannot let them go:
“If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, … If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; … Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
… And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;”
I wondered, if I could ever forgive him what he did to me. If I could ever trust him again.
If I could even let him come back into my life.
I don’t know the answers yet. For the moment I let him figure out, when the time for us is right
– whatever us we are.
I give him the time he needs.
It would be incredibly sad, if this was it.
If this was the end. No contact. Out of each others lives.
Gone.
But on the other hand I am not too sure a broken heart can ever heal, or forget.
