Dance with me

It has been a long time since I last wrote. I have been feeling awfully nostalgic sometime now and I thought it would be good if I wrote my feelings down like I did two years ago. Since I was fourteen I kept a blog, describing my life and movements in Helsinki, needing more and more comments, the more I would get the more I would write about my life and I have everything kept safe. From the point when I first thought I had fallen in love in Durban to my suspension for hosting a member of the opposite sex overnight at the boarding school. But there is only a little written about what happened this year. The older I grew, the less I began to write. Things got more complicated, more real and somehow someway the writing ceased. Now, this night, I had decided to write somethings for myself to remember when I read this ten years after:

I have met some amazing people at my new school in the Hague; I thought I could never find friends that I had had before and it seemed very likely the first week I spent in my new hometown. And everything changed a bit by bit, things happened and I found myself laughing with so many different people. Things seemed to work out when coming to the social life - I had good friends to whom I could talk whenever wherever. I think some have unconsciously already became such friends.

Even though I'm overwhelmingly sad about the fact that I don't see S, I seem to cope. I had a devastating week and I felt giving in and drinking alcohol excessively, which last year resulted in dropping out from university in the United States and moving in with a man that I had known for two weeks physically and seven months virtually. This week was terrible. I had presentations after presentations and I freeze and fail. It is a common feeling, isn't it?

However, I am still sad. I miss the touch, I miss the feeling of being next to your loved one, waking up next to him, feeling happy and living your life. I am sad, but I am happy, because when you know this feeling, you know that you are in love and this will never let you down - even when you are sad, it does not let you down. I miss S, but things will work out. Everything will be alright.

New York in Europe

Socialism screaming in the streets; Cyrillic alphabets making love with the letters from the Latin world and no one knows their place anymore. A café called Supermarket that used to a supermarket in its earlier versions is booming with beautiful people. Bohemian crowd mingles and eats proportions of ice cream and chocolate brownies (both served with strawberries, pistachio, marzipan, chocolate pieces, rum, white chocolate and raspberries) that could compete with its American counterparts. The city is dreamy and it is most definitely nothing like Paris, it is more like a New York but socialist, more demanding and outstanding, tolerating to the point that it becomes intolerant. Gay (and straight and bisexual and things that I am unable to put in a box) people lining for parties hours and hours, a beer for less than a euro and girls making out as if there is no tomorrow. An apartment transformed into a hostel; one room is modified into a double, another into a dormitory with four beds; and there is no one else than you & the person who you love, the whole apartment (including kitchen, bathroom, dormitory) is yours because reception (that is in the kitchen) works only for twelve hours, starting at eight am. Famous Belgrade winds freezing your ankles, elbows and toes, they wish you Merry February and you decide at that very moment, that when spring comes you will come again to the socialist New York where Cyrillic alphabets make love with the Latin letters.

In Belgrade I met Marija & Zeljko; people that I had seen last February in Strasbourg and that was the first and only time I saw them. We had known each other only for one week, but it felt like we had never been apart from each other; gossiping and exchanging stories and remembering times that happened so long time ago. I met Jelena, Hristina and Maya and these people I met two weeks ago in Osijek when they took part in a training and we connected so well that I had to come and see them in Belgrade and it was wonderful to realize that in a week you can establish friendships that will last longer than the ones that you have been building for years. I met more and more people and suddenly I came to realize I knew more people in Belgrade than I do in my current home town; Belgrade offers you friends on a silver platter; she has people from all backgrounds and worlds, it merges a mixture of things together as Cape Town and Amsterdam does and suddenly you have a cosmopolitan where gay-bashing happens in one corner and in the another you see a young black man kissing a white girl. You are safe; and you are unsafe; and things are certainly more exciting.

Belgrade along with Amsterdam, Cape Town, New Delhi and Montreal is one of those cities that I have already visited, but will visit many times more in the future again.