Júlia in Bremen // 2nd Report

My sister took a photo of me at the airport when I left Hungary six months ago. It was early in the morning, I’m standing on the edge of the driveway in an oversized purple pullover, black jeans and with a big suitcase.

I’m standing there all by myself, and now I just feel like it’s so crazy. I am crazy. That girl was crazy! She really thought: you know what? I’ll put you on a plane to move to another country, let’s see how will you manage. And she wasn’t even afraid. Not a bit. She was one of the bravest version of me.

So!

Three months have passed by since my last report. What happened since then?

The never-ending German winter is over, summer is coming, the sun sets at 10pm and I can’t wait to have a tan on my cheeks.

Life is good. I genuinely love my work. We make 2-meter tall giraffes from pipes and papermache, bunnies from clay, birds from watering cans, I’m preparing things for an interactive gallery and I am filming in museums and schools. I am learning a lot, I started my own stop motion animation workshop and I’m eating breakfast from the bowls that I made. I made a chicken from clay and linoleum cuts from my drawings.

I started journaling. I moved to another room and now I see a huge cherry tree when I wake up. I go on more dates with myself. I went swimming. I discovered new places. My boss invited me to the most gemütlich village nearby. We caught an escaped bunny and we were ringing to random houses, biking trough the village, trying to find his owner. We made a campfire and ate breakfast in the garden. I went to Berlin. It was so rainy that I couldn’t even see the TV tower, it was cold, I had a fever but I was constantly laughing out lot at myself. I impulsively booked a cheap plane ticket to Rome for a solo travel. I was sunbathing in Würzburg on a Weinberg. My phone accidentally rolled down the hill, so I had to save it. I went to the church, and we were singing about how amazing people are and we should enjoy life.

I cut boy’s hair for the first time. Everyone survived but next time I won’t offer haircuts so confidently, knowing that I have no idea what I am doing. I taught youngsters how to peel and cut onions in a taco workshop. I repaired my bike by myself because someone wanted to steal the seat. I cook more often. I am reading a proper German book and I understand it!

Life is fun. We made a gardening-day. We dug and scooped and destroyed dead bushes. Then we ate pizza in the sunshine and danced Hungarian folkdance. The neighbours handed us some Kurdish sweets trough the fence. We put posters on the walls in the city center. We had picnics by the lake and the riverside. I was swinging in a hammock while watching my friends playing boardgames in the grass.

We were listening to a choir singing on the street at midnight. We found a fountain on a square with a lot of bubbles – someone put a bubble bath in it. We had a fountain-bubble fight in the middle of the night. We were dancing on the streets, several times. We were teaching folkdance to random people who passed by. For example, in front of the Kiosk, including singing ABBA until 2am.

What else?

I had around 1,25 heartbreak. I lost friendships, and I also lost my keys from my pocket, while dancing out the pain alone on a nice night walk. I am learning to use my words through poems. Buh, how much I started to love writing poems! Once I was almost late for work because I woke up with so many ideas. I restarted therapy to keep up with the amount of changes that are happening. I visited home because I wasn’t feeling well. Finally I could stop adulting for a few days, my mum cooked for me, I annoyed my sister, and accidentally almost killed my cat but luckily I didn’t.

Then I came home and everything continued: any random Wednesday night could become randomly a pasta or sushi night, or we could just dance crazily to Spanish wedding music in our small kitchen.

My life here is a crazy rollercoaster but in the most amazing and teaching way. Sometimes I am just asking myself: is it normal to have this much joy in everything I do? And sometimes I don’t ask myself, I just enjoy it. Is life this fun because it IS fun, is it fun because I chose to make it fun, is it fun because I perceive it fun, or I am just lucky? I don’t really know, but for sure I’m grateful for that girl from October who was brave enough to push me and say: los geht’s.

I know that the last 4 months of my Bremen-life will pass really fast, and I also know how nostalgic and happily I will think back of this part of my life. So the only thing I can do is knowing, hogy az élet szeret, úgyhogy én meg jól visszaszeretem.

Ölelés,

Júlia

 Júlia is hosted by Kultur vor Ort e.V. on our project financed by the European Solidarity Corps and Jugend für Europa.