Time and Distance?

The girls left this morning and I slowly repacked my bag (hell) and made my way on the metro to Montmartre and my new hostel.   

I still have my scallop shell on my bag from the Camino and a woman wished me a ‘buen camino’.  It was too early in the morning to search my brain for the right words in Spanish or French to explain that this time I was only going to Montmartre, so I just thanked her instead.  It did make me miss the Camino a little bit though.

I spent the day reading my book so I could get rid of it, as it was becoming inconveniently heavy.  I also just felt like mooching around.  So after a quick trip to the supermarket for fruit and bread I sat out in the sun for the day.  

The hostel receptionist asked me out for a drink that night and as I had nothing else to do, I accepted. Reggie was a forty something year old American who had been living in France for eight years.  I spent the evening listening to his life story (half of which I think he invented) but it was an interesting evening and better than hanging around by myself.  A couple of beers later, I think he’d convinced himself we were on a date and so I made my getaway back to the hostel.  It was awkward in an amusing way, especially when I saw him the next day at the hostel, he was a little sheepish.

After researching the next part of my trip and the cheapest possible ways of getting from Amsterdam to Norway (all very long bus rides) it was time to grab my things and head to the bus for my trip to Berlin.

Leaving at 7.30pm, I fell asleep and 2 hours later was passing through Brussels, then Antwerp, then somewhere else, I still find it strange that everything in Europe is so close together.

It was a full bus and I hardly slept.

Night time, alone on a bus to Berlin with too much time to think...Not great. 

Distance can't change how you feel or who you are and I don't think time does either, unless you want it to. Does time make things go away or is it just the fact that eventually you build up enough distractions and other memories that it covers up your feelings until you think you’ve forgotten what it felt like in the first place? 

Does everyone put on a brave face in front of other people when they are in pain, and then wait for the night to come to cry tears that no one else will see? How do you move on from something when you don’t want to? You can’t run away from yourself.