The Tower at the End of Eleven Hours

Stepping off the train at Buchloe, Berlin simply evaporated. Charlottenburg, the parties, work, school—none of it had ever existed. I’d braced myself for exactly this, because it happened the same way last time. The town absorbs you back. It had been since Christmas since I’d last set foot here, and standing on that empty Bahnhofstraße in the late evening, I could feel how time had moved and stood still at once—the precise texture of a place where you grew up.

André threw a party. I went to see The Dark Knight, which was still in cinemas and still leaving people slightly dazed on the way out. Ana and I drove to Munich and spent an afternoon shopping—mostly walking and talking, occasionally buying something. My grandmother fed me Bavarian Schweinsbraten, slow-roasted pork with a gravy that smelled like every Sunday I’d ever spent in that house, and I accepted every second helping without hesitation. The extended weekend stretched out, unhurried, and somewhere in the middle of it I stopped wanting to leave.

And then I remembered, with the particular certainty only your hometown can produce, exactly why I’d left in the first place. Both feelings sat there together without resolving. Maybe I’d come back one day. Not yet. The journey wasn’t finished.

The return was eleven hours. I had magazines, my iPod, and Richard Milward’s Apples—the kind of novel that makes you look up at the window every few pages just to anchor yourself back in the physical world. I read it alongside a card my aunt had slipped into my bag: congratulations on completing my first year of training, everyone was proud, keep going even when it gets hard. I read the card more than once.

When the TV Tower came into view on the outskirts of the city, I felt something close to relief, which surprised me a little. I shouldered my bag and walked down toward the student dormitory. Not much longer there, either. My phone buzzed—Ana had texted. I smiled and kept walking.