Saying Goodbye

Last Friday certainly was one of the most emotional days of my entire life... In the morning, when I wrote my last post in Cambridge, I wasn’t really aware that this was goodbye, but afterwards, it dawned on me, slowly but steadily! Olga and I first went punting (finally!!!) and it was simply beautiful, we didn’t punt ourselves (too afraid to fall into the river and have to pack wet jeans…:P) but joined a 45min tour with a guide – it was the perfect thing to do on our last day, take a last look at all the colleges from the water, enjoy the sun, take pictures, you get the idea…
Afterwards, we met Pascal in the city centre to take our bikes back to the store where we’d rented them. It was such a strange feeling to leave our bikes (which we had really learned to appreciate, I must confess…) and walk out the door on foot – suddenly walking seemed so slow! ;) But we had no choice and on the way back to the city centre (the bike shop is a little outside, further down in the south but we all lived in the north) we walked past many places that had a meaning for us, like the Rat&Parrot pub – it almost made my stomach turn when I realised that we would never (or at least not too soon) go back there again!
Our last “activity” together was a last coffee in the Office. There, it was even worse – how often had Olga and me visited Pascal there when he was working and how many “desserts” did we have there after dinner before moving on to a bar… Needless to say that I already felt quite weird even though we were still joking and teasing each other! Olga’s parents then joined us and we walked towards our homes all together. At our usual meeting point which was no the point of goodbye, it got unbearable – Pascal stayed quite cool (he can be terribly rational and realistic sometimes!!!) and started saying goodbye to Olga and while he thanked her for this great time etc I felt the tears coming up in my eyes and at the latest when Olga turned to me to say goodbye, we both couldn’t hold back the tears anymore… can you imagine what it is like to say goodbye to a person you’ve spent three months, literally every day and also most evenings with?!? It’s as if you abandon a part of yourself… But we knew there was no way around it and I guess, we were both glad that we didn’t have to walk away from each other alone: she was with her parents and I still had Pascal, that really helped me – although not for long as I had to say goodbye to him only about 5 minutes later! At least, he finally admitted that Bern and Zurich are not THAT far apart and that he thinks it is possible that we can stay in touch… ;)
The moment he turned into his street and I walked on, it really hit me that this was it. The whole adventure was over. Everything I had experienced over there was part of the past, there would be no one around me who shares all the memories, who laughs about the same inside jokes and, after all, who knows me the way I was in Cambridge…
In a way I was almost relieved to hear that Lissette couldn’t make it to the city to watch the Mexico match as it gave me time to finally get packing…so I stayed at home and did my packing which was horror! I was so frustrated, I had way too much luggage, almost couldn’t close my suitcase, was tired, already missed the others but at the same time just wanted to be home, was annoyed with the prospect of another endless journey home the next day – I really was in a bad mood…