Updates: Three More Months, University, Nostalgia

So an acoustic version of Trojans by Atlas Genius just came on my 8tracks, which naturally spurred a bout of nostalgia. Which of coursed progressed to me opening up blogger and deciding to spew my feels at you. Deal.

(Sips Glitter and Gold DavidsTea. Excellent.)

So there are 107 days left of my Paris adventure. Which is all at once terrifying and comforting and depressing and just weird. Because I remember coming here in August and being like ten months. Ten months seems like an awful long time. Especially with no friends or family or anything familiar at all. But I soon met some of my dearest friends and went on some grand adventures and began to travel the world and all of a sudden the new year was upon us, then February was over, and then yesterday I go on google and it's like happy first day of spring. And I have to pause and register how fast time goes by. Which is sometimes a comforting feeling, in all honesty. Because I love Paris, I really do, and I know as soon as I leave I will miss it. When I'm stuck in a boring part-time job working my ass off in school I will miss it, and my freedom, and walking by Madeleine every day. But for the time being, it's comforting to know, in the back of my mind, that there is a finish line. And at that finish line will be all the people I miss so very dearly. And even temporarily, I will be able to spend days upon days wrapped up in their warmth, never once feeling lonely or scared. Because it gets lonely and scary living on your own four thousand miles away sometimes.

I feel so very far from that girl working at the pet store saving her pennies and having panic attacks about pre-calc and history SOPs and dreaming of a faraway land called Paris, while Trojans was slowly killed on 102.7 The Peak every single day. I must have stacked 6000 bags of dog food to that song.

So the next chapter of my life is called University, and it's exciting and scary and yet it can't be scarier than moving to a different continent by yourself.

It was a very hard decision to decide to go home for school. There will be a part of me that will always lust for the unknown, that is never satisfied, no matter how many planes I set foot on. But what I need right now is not more risk taking, more stretching. What I need right now is not to move to Montreal two weeks after getting home. I need home, I need oceans and mountains. And I need my people. And that's okay. There is always time for more adventures. Heck, I think I've had my fair share of adventures this year, and they're not over yet.

So UBC is where I'll be next year, with my best friend by my side. And I couldn't be happier.

As for the tail end of my year of freedom, I am planning to soak up all of the sunny Paris that I can. And then there's Italy, where I'm planning to explore Rome and Cinque Terre.

Thanks for always being there. Love you always.
Coral

perks of studio living

I thought I would be wildly claustrophobic living in a fifteen square meter apartment.
I sometimes am.
But, the optimist that I am (sometimes), I have decided to compile a list of the perks of living in a closet.

1. A cup of tea is never more than ten steps away. No more running upstairs to fill the kettle, then awkwardly hovering while it boils, or leaving the room and missing it pop, and we all know how irritating it is to have to re-boil a kettle.

2. On that note, cooking is made much easier when you can practically cook pasta from your bed. Well, not quite that cozy, but not having to run up and down stairs or jaunt from room to room while your pasta boils over is quite nice.

3. The temperature is easily regulated. One space heater makes the whole place nice and toasty and opening the two windows freshens out the whole apartment.

4. I am constantly surrounded by things I love. Because of the tiny space, I am forced to prioritize the knick-knacks I have on display. And because I can see the majority of my home from my bed, I need only glance to this wall or that to see the letter my best friend wrote me when I left, the maps I've accumulated from my travels, the LPs I brought with me, or the countless cards and photos I have hung from a string with clothespins.

5. Cleaning is a breeze. Half an hour flat. A dustpan and brush here, a swipe of a cloth there, a tidy over here... and presto. From landfill to pristine with minimal energy expenditure.

I love my home, I really do.

It will be sorely missed.

Love always,
Coral

BASTILLE

I must write this right now.
Because my ears are ringing and my heart is still pounding and my skin feels alive. My veins are crawling with the sweat and pounding beat and throbbing melodies of the concert I have just witnessed.
I didn't expect this much.
To be honest, I had become slightly out of touch with these music makers I had cherished a year ago.
To give some backstory, Bastille were the ones blasting on my iPod last spring when I pounded the pavement on the way to work as the sun beat down on my face and I dreamed of a foreign land I would soon be living in, of a mystical place I had only dreamed of. I remember every inch of my body throbbing to leave the place I was in, and for the time being, they were the ones who reminded me there was more out there.

{under the weight of living//you're under the weight of living}

So I got here. I made it. I'm living in this city that swells with its presence, and as Lexi and I walked to the metro after the concert, the air was thick and full of the honey of summer. And I felt very much alive. I hadn't been feeling so alive in previous weeks. I think I had gotten out of touch with myself a little bit, and had been taking mostly everything for granted. Tonight reminded me of community, everyone pulsating in time, drawn together by a communal need for music.

{this is your heart//can you feel it, can you feel it//pumps through your veins//can you feel it, can you feel it}

Towards the end of the night, Dan played Flaws, my favourite song. And not only that, but I turned to my right to see that he had descended into the pit, and was making his way towards the centre, where I stood. Caught up in the tidal wave of people, and Dan in there with us as he sang, I felt the warmth of his hoodie beneath my fingertips and I realized that he is human, just like the rest of us. We are all in this psychotic dance to the finish line together and we are all fumbling for love, for togetherness, for life, for music.

{you have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve//and I have always buried them deep beneath the ground}

All in all, thank you Bastille. Thank you for reminding me what a thrill it is to shoot down the albatross.

Love forever and always,
Coral

Berlin Day 2

Sorry for the delay folks. My computer was in a coma.

Alright, so my second day in Berlin began (as is tradition for my over-excited first mornings in new places) with an early morning stroll to the Berlin Wall Memorial at Gartenstrasse. I won't try to convey the feels because there are too many and you can probably tell just from looking at the photos what an intense place it was to be. The metro station there, Nordbahnhof, was out of service during the time of the wall and used as an escape route for East Berliners. The wall of memorial photos for fatalities at this stretch of wall was so very impactful. One of the boys was just thirteen, and so many died just before the wall was destroyed.

I then took a casual and sun-filled walk to the Reichstag, you know, as you do. It was huge. And very surreal.

To calm my feels, the next stop was a stroll through my favourite place, the Tiergarten, and it was amazing. Daughter's "Woods" was playing through my mind the whole time.

look who I found!

The Victory Column in Tiergarten

Okay, so, the one time I took the metro in Berlin was to get to the East Side Gallery, arguably the most anticipated spot on my itinerary. Again, there are no words, and for that I am sorry, since as a writer I am supposed to dispute the "a picture is worth a thousand words" cliche. But in this case, it really is. The East Side Gallery is a mile long stretch of preserved wall that has been covered in politically-centered graffiti. The result is something beautiful made from something horrible.

Of course, there were so many more, but that would clog like my whole blogger platform. So. 

And then I had a 2.50 noodle box back in the Tiergarten as the sun set.

The last stop on my two-day trip was to Checkpoint Charlie, which wasn't much more than a few mock signs and a mock U.S. army checkpoint, but it was still cool to stand there, and very symbolic, I might add, as I crossed the checkpoint from east to west to get a McDonald's hot fudge sundae.

Berlin, tu me manques.

I hope to see you again.

Love always,

Coral

Dear Paris: 6 Months

Dear Paris:

I fell into your arms six months ago tomorrow.

Bleary eyed, wildly dazed and confused from an early morning train I was brought to tears by you.
You were stunning in your grandeur, your lips stained multicoloured with flowers and your skin spread with wide rivers and ornate bridges covered in locks declaring love and it made me believe in the elusive thing, and maybe I was falling in love with you.

You see, Paris, we'd been having a long distance relationship for months before then, and your picture was the one I turned to in times of frustration and desparation, in times of needing to know there was something more out there. And there was.

During our summer of wine drenched picnics in front of the Eiffel Tower and cheese and bread in Luxembourg Gardens, of bursting sunshine and throngs of visitors to our home, in early September nights I needed only you to keep me warm, I was enthralled by you. I still am, Paris.

The autumn of our love affair found me in turbulence, and I doubted you and myself and why I chose to come all this way to chase you down in the first place. I doubted you, Paris, and for that I am sorry. But stripped of everything I once knew, standing barren with only you, I fell for your flaws. It was in November and early December that your underbelly was exposed, during the days fogged with misty rain and the nights barely discernible from their counterparts. It was when you failed to be my source of heat that I found beauty in your grey. I found myself staring up at your sky today and wondering how such an inherently monotonous colour could be made so arresting, so stunning. You wear grey over slate blue and cream so well, Paris.

We took a break over Christmas. I think it was necessary.

With the new year I returned to you confident in myself, no longer requiring your approval, no longer placing unattainable expectations on you to uphold my childhood misconceptions. I also discussed a more open relationship with you, and although you will always be my first love, I discovered Amsterdam; breathtaking in its prettiness, Berlin; profound in a way that juxtaposed your superficiality (no offence), and Budapest; who some call your eastern sister, but I would argue she was an entirely different being, different from anything I had ever explored, almost fictional in her beauty. But I came back to you renewed, rejeuvenated. I promised myself I would appreciate you and discover you anew as I had the other three. And it's hard, because over the past six months our relationship has grown comfortable, routine. I need to feel scared sometimes.

Paris, I know our relationship has an expiration date, and that date is a mere four months away. But I look forward to our spring and our second summer, I look forward to discovering your hidden places left covered.

All in all, yours has been the most dynamic and terrifying, the most rewarding relationship I have ever had. People ask me how I'm liking you. There is no easy answer to that, but I do hope this helps to explain.

I love you, Paris.
And I hope you like me too.

Yours,
Coral
Xx

Berlin Day 1: History, Injustices, and General Overwhelming Emotions

This past Saturday I flew out to Berlin Shoenefeld Flughafen (that's german for airport if you didn't know, fun fact) and I must say that it has to be one of the most surreal and emotional experiences of my life thus far. Which isn't very long compared to the wrinkled, charactered German seniors I passed on the street who had lived through two earth-shattering wars and a complete and devastating divide of their nation, but still. It was a time.

The trip was a smooth one, my hostel (Heart of Gold) was very easy to find, near the well-served train station Friedrichstrasse (I hope you appreciate the fact that I have to look up all these outlandish spellings), which I later found out was the last stop on the major east-west train that was shut off here during the cold war, which made it a final goodbye spot and a very emotional landmark.

The hostel was Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy themed which was tres cool. Although they could have gone more all-out. I shared my dorm with three friendly Spanish travelers for the first night and the second night I **praise the lord** had the room to myself. For the great price of nine euro fifty.

After dropping my bags at the hostel, I hit the town running. Quite literally. For a couple of reasons: A) I couldn't afford metro tickets because I had a total budget of under 150 euros, and B) I have an incessant and insatiable need to see. everything. possible. So walking it was. Which quickly translated to me abandoning my fashionable Parisian vintage leather boots in favour of my wonderful, dirt-covered New Balance runners. Because blisters.

So on that first day, after briefly stopping at an awesome flea market, I found Unter Den Linden, which is the main glitzy avenue of Berlin, translating to "under the linden trees". The avenue stretches roughly from the Brandenburg Gate to Alexanderplatz, to which I walked.

On the way to Alexanderplatz (a huge east-side metropolitan shopping center-esque area), I passed the Neue Wache, a very emotional sculpture of a mother holding her dead son, a tribute to the first, and later the second and cold wars that devastated Germany.

Following this memorial I passed the Berliner Dom, a huge cathedral in the museum square off the avenue. It was stunning. I then saw the TV Tower and Alexanderplatz itself, stopping for a dunkin' doughnut and an apple turnover. And water.

On the way back I found the Spree Side Gallery, which is a spin-off of the East Side Gallery I would find the next day. The Spree Side Gallery is an exhibition of 20th century photographs along the side of the Spree river that runs through Berlin. The photos were breathtaking, and conveyed people's lives around the world during different crucial, historical points in the hundred years. It was interesting to see how the conflicts and resolutions affected the lives of people from different countries and different cultures.

Following my excursion to Alexanderplatz, I headed west towards the Brandenburg Gate, which I had been longing to see. This gate marked the old entrance into the German capital and was the site of so many turning points in the country's history, including when President Ronald Reagan pleaded with the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to "tear down this wall". I had basically plunged headfirst into my History 12 textbook (thanks for the inspiration, Mr. Torres).

After passing through the gate, I dabbled in the most beautiful park (or should I say small and well-organized forest) I have ever laid eyes on. Yes, it beats Luxembourg Gardens out of the park (heh pun not intended). This beautiful and unearthly creation goes by the name of Tiergarten and stretches from the gate to just past the towering, golden victory column to the west. Just to my left after exiting the gate was the Holocaust Memorial, a very simple and extremely powerful representation of the murdered jews during the holocaust. The memorial consisted of stone slabs of varying heights over rolling terrain, which sometimes dipped so far below the rising towers of concrete that one couldn't see their surroundings and felt utterly trapped in a labyrinth of black.

After returning to the hostel to check in and rest my aching limbs and bruised feet, I ventured towards Potsdamerplatz, a more western version of its Alexander counterpart. I was just casually strolling towards the vibrant square when I happened upon another memorial, this one outside the Federal Ministry of Finance's building, and dedicated to the East Berlin Uprisings of 17 June 1953. I will not go into detail about these uprisings as you, dear reader, are in the possession of Google and there is already far too much writing in this post, but it was around this time, as I read of the violence and slaughter, the desperate and seemingly futile attempts at achieving freedom, as I looked around me at the Berlin night, that I realized the realness of it all. The recency of it all. It is all well and good to study dates and statistics in a textbook, to write emotional essays and correctly bubble test sheets, but it is an entirely different experience to be there. There, in that small and tangible square outside a very real building, on the surface of which is painted a remembrance mural. It is an entirely different experience to feel so close to something which feels so far away, a trick of the mind, a bend of time courtesy of oceans and borders and governments distancing us from them. I looked at the senior citizens of Berlin differently after this, wondering what their eyes had seen and what their weathered skin had felt.

Having reached Potsdamerplatz, I stumbled upon a thing that would later influence how I viewed Berlin and its many tributes to its array of injustices and inequalities. The "Rainbow Flame Berlin" was a white booth sheltering a blazing flame surrounded by pride flags blowing gently in the early evening wind, around which volunteers were handing out flyers. The side of the tent read: "When did you decide to become heterosexual?" It was such a blatant question, staring out at the citizens and tourists who passed by, either glancing up and brushing it off or stopping, as I did, to read about its mission: to battle homophobia and anti-gay legislation in Russia during the Sochi Winter Olympics. It was then that I realized that there will always be an injustice to battle, an oppression to fight, whether it be misogyny or abortion-banning or laws that ban love. And I was sad, sad that it was obvious how little we had learned from the past, and yet hopeful. Because here was this fire, and here were these people in the freezing night pleading with others to join us in our fight for equality, as so many victims of oppression had fought on these same streets. And there was a great hope in that. A hope that one day this might fade to the removed, almost unbelievable veil that had shrouded the civil rights movement and the persons case and the holocaust and the wall and all the protests and uprisings and the dictators and tyrants. I hope that one day we will look back on ourselves, shaking our heads at our blindness to the obvious answer that love isn't propaganda or a thing that can be banned. As Mr. Torres would say, hindsight is 20/20. I just hope that day comes soon.

After sipping a beer and finding some salvaged pieces of wall on the way back to the hostel, I slept soundly and woke at 7:30 for Day Two.

(and this is where you read the next post.)

Love always,
Coral