As I was standing in line for the Bus 50 to Aachen this morning, with a big suitcase, a small suitcase and a backpack, I found a paperclip.
After not having seen any for quite a while, these past few days have been more successful, so to speak. This one made me smile, so I actually picked it up and put it in my pocket – something I usually just don’t do. This clip and the other recent ones were all memorable in a way, because they signify the end of my time in Maastricht.
For instance, I found one at the Kommelquartier when I was on my way to hand in my Bachelor’s Thesis at the faculty. That day, I had begun packing up things in my room. Because of this, my room was a complete mess (I’m quite bad in throwing things away…) and I preferred spending my time outside. Handing in a thesis is not at all as rewarding as we all expected it to be – not half as rewarding as the moment we finished it and held the bound copies in our hands. This, we did the day before, and ended that day dancing to whatever in a friend’s living room.
Two days after the hand-in, my sister and brother-in-law came to Maastricht to pick up my materialized life: boxes of books, boxes of photographs, documents, bric-a-brac, CDs, simply everything. When I disassembled one of the cupboards, a paperclip was laying in the corner behind it. My room was still a complete mess, and the door rang, my sister arrived. It felt so good to have her here, to show her a few of the things I love about Maastricht, have Asian food and ice cream, show her where I studied, where I went to the gym, where we sat to drink beer the other night and – well, yes, we emptied my room of its annoying full-ness.
So then my room was almost empty, my sister and brother-in-law left, and I had one week to wrap things up in Maastricht. The paperclip in the corner I left where I found it. Yesterday, when all the furniture was picked up by their new owners, when the leftovers where brought to the Kringloop shop, and when I had finally finished packing my enormous suitcase, there it was again. I was feeling a little melodramatic so I still did not pick it up but just vacuumed it away, together with a felt bazillion silverfish, spiders, cobwebs, and the dust of three fantastic years spent in this truly icky room (I never really admitted to it because I had too much of a good time in this room and house, but objectively: icky).
This morning, then, I stood at Maastricht Station with my three-piece luggage and an odd feeling in my stomach, and then I saw this paperclip. It reminded me of so many things that had happened here over the past months, as if all these memories were wrapped up in this small piece of metal.
So now, here I sit, in my weird new all-equipped apartment in Baden-Baden, with this paperclip in front of me, between thinking back and waiting for the next big thing to happen.
After not having seen any for quite a while, these past few days have been more successful, so to speak. This one made me smile, so I actually picked it up and put it in my pocket – something I usually just don’t do. This clip and the other recent ones were all memorable in a way, because they signify the end of my time in Maastricht.
For instance, I found one at the Kommelquartier when I was on my way to hand in my Bachelor’s Thesis at the faculty. That day, I had begun packing up things in my room. Because of this, my room was a complete mess (I’m quite bad in throwing things away…) and I preferred spending my time outside. Handing in a thesis is not at all as rewarding as we all expected it to be – not half as rewarding as the moment we finished it and held the bound copies in our hands. This, we did the day before, and ended that day dancing to whatever in a friend’s living room.
Two days after the hand-in, my sister and brother-in-law came to Maastricht to pick up my materialized life: boxes of books, boxes of photographs, documents, bric-a-brac, CDs, simply everything. When I disassembled one of the cupboards, a paperclip was laying in the corner behind it. My room was still a complete mess, and the door rang, my sister arrived. It felt so good to have her here, to show her a few of the things I love about Maastricht, have Asian food and ice cream, show her where I studied, where I went to the gym, where we sat to drink beer the other night and – well, yes, we emptied my room of its annoying full-ness.
So then my room was almost empty, my sister and brother-in-law left, and I had one week to wrap things up in Maastricht. The paperclip in the corner I left where I found it. Yesterday, when all the furniture was picked up by their new owners, when the leftovers where brought to the Kringloop shop, and when I had finally finished packing my enormous suitcase, there it was again. I was feeling a little melodramatic so I still did not pick it up but just vacuumed it away, together with a felt bazillion silverfish, spiders, cobwebs, and the dust of three fantastic years spent in this truly icky room (I never really admitted to it because I had too much of a good time in this room and house, but objectively: icky).
This morning, then, I stood at Maastricht Station with my three-piece luggage and an odd feeling in my stomach, and then I saw this paperclip. It reminded me of so many things that had happened here over the past months, as if all these memories were wrapped up in this small piece of metal.
So now, here I sit, in my weird new all-equipped apartment in Baden-Baden, with this paperclip in front of me, between thinking back and waiting for the next big thing to happen.
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