Perfect Moments

I went to Mexico last Friday, just for the weekend. It was an impulsive decision. A guy I met in Munich was getting married and he invited me to his wedding. It meant a lot to me that he asked so I decided to go, I decided I had to go.

I've been doing a lot of traveling lately, as you may have noticed, and, of course, it has been an incredible experience as a whole but what really sticks with me are isolated moments.

In Mexico, at my friend's wedding reception, things were beginning to wind down and I went outside to call a cab. It started raining really hard and I stepped just inside the doorway to get out of the rain. There was lightning and for the longest time I've been terrified of lightning but this time I wasn't. I sort of felt like stepping out and standing in the rain for a while, but I stayed in the doorway. I watched the rain and lightning for a few minutes.

Then I went back inside and back on the dance floor which by that time had thinned out a little and the rock band had been replaced by a mariachi band and everyone formed a circle and linked arms and sang (except I didn't because I didn't know any of the songs). It was a kind of a perfect moment.

I had a few perfect moments like that on my trip(s).

Watching the sunrise in Switzerland was pretty perfect.

In Munich I had a whole day that was sort of perfect. It was the day we went to Schloss Neuschwanstein. I woke up early that morning and walked to the Hauptbahnhof. I was early for the bus so I went into the train station and bought Nussschnecken for my classmates, had a super cute German boy chat me up, and then went to get on my bus. That was the day that I realized I had really found a brother there. After the Schloss we went to the Schrannenhalle and had a few beers and then to an Itallian restaurant in my building and had a few more. Someone grabbed my camera and took a picture of me and my new brother near the end of that night, right at the moment I was realizing that the day had been perfect and that the moment was perfect.


I had a lot of perfect moments in Granada.

The day I got back from Barcelona I walked around Granada, went shopping, saw the Cathedral and then met up with a friend and went in search of a bowl of gazpacho. When we found it I couldn't believe how perfect that moment was. I actually stopped with the spoon halfway to my mouth just to enjoy the moment. Which kind of freaked out the guy I was with, but I couldn't help it. It had turned into a really great day despite having started out as one of the worst of my trip (that morning in Barcelona my suitcase had broken). The Gazpacho turned out to be excellent, but it was the company that made that moment so perfect.

I had a few perfect moments alone (like the sunrise in Switzerland for example), but it was actually often the company that made the moments perfect.

In London I sat at a sushi bar in Paddington station and ate sushi and drank ten glasses of fizzy water and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, with the friend I'd been staying with there. That was another perfect moment that was certainly a result of the company more than anything.

Occasionally I have random impulses to become like a hermit. Lately I've also thought about divesting myself of possessions and moving to Europe (I've even looked at jobs in Dublin, London and Hamburg). The trip made me appreciate solitude a lot more, it increased these impulses to withdraw from human contact, but there are all these perfect moments and most of them are perfect because of the people. I guess it turns out I'm a people person.