Home is wherever I'm with you

The last couple of days in Passau have been swell. Mareike and I have much to catch up on, and although all her university exams wait her next week and she is studying A LOT, our evenings are spent sharing meals, watching TV together, drinking tea…On Friday her best girlfriends were over, and we all had pizza and a couple of drinks, gossiped about the things that girls do, and laughed a fair bit. Her friends are so lovely and I’ve noticed an improvement in my ability to kind of ‘keep up’ with the chit chat and the ability to follow the conversation without Mareike having to stop and repeat it slower for me. It was fantastic, and hell, a lot of fun.

Mareike's house

In the days Mareike has to study, and so I amused myself with heading into town, walking along the river, climbing mountains and hanging out at the cemetery as the sun set. I spend a lot of time at cemeteries actually, #pauseforthought. I’m usually back before dark, and then we’ll eat, catch up about our day and watch a movie or something. She’s got a great little place in Passau, which is predominantly a small town in Bavaria, that has a good but small university, so there are heaps of students that migrate there for a couple of years on end, to study. Mareike and her friends don’t think too much of the city, but I think it’s beautiful. Passau is known as the city on three rivers, where they all conjoin and people frolic around. Most iconic is the river houses, that line any of the three rivers, take your pick. There’s some pretty sweet churches, what I like to call ‘mini mountains’ and routes around the old town, and I had the most fun.

The snow melts away~

 The weather was fantastic, and whilst chatting to some locals they exclaimed that spring is fast coming. The snow here is melting, the sun came out and no kidding I reckon it was around 10/11 degrees. I had to de-layer. There were kids on uni campus running around in only t-shirts.

IT’S MEANT TO BE THE MIDDLE OF A BAVARIAN WINTER AND THEY’RE WEARING T-SHIRTS.

The sun shone, I wore only jeans and a top. Rather ironic, given that I’ve just gotten my backpack back, and now have an abundance of winter clothes. And actually, the 20 something hours I spent on the trains through Germany, Austria, Slovenia and then through Croatia (YES, THAT’S RIGHT, I’VE SEEN THE INSIDE OF 20-SOMETHING MAIN TRAIN STATIONS THIS TRIP) I saw an abundance of snow. On the top of the train, there was around about 40cms of snow…just layered up. The tracks…you couldn’t even see the tracks, it were as if the train was winding into a sea of white nothingness. The snow storms hit so hard in Austria that trains were delayed for up to half an hour, and when we were whizzing past and 200km/h, snow heaps would sort of fall randomly from above. And now here in Passau, I find myself in the Australian summer.

Digital Postcard 

Obviously there was the classic case of me having no idea as to where Mareike lived, and I sort of half-guessed-half-remembered the bus route, which turned out to be wrong. Then I departed on an hour and a half ‘tour’ shall we say, out of the city…very much so. We left Passau over one of the billion bridges and headed up into the country…and I saw the city and all the lights from above. There’s always that moment when you know you’re not going the right way, but I just sort of nodded slowly to myself, and then sat back and enjoyed the heating and the views. Due to my common lack of a) sense and b) direction – I’ve spent quite a lot of hours on unnecessary public transportation, but it’s never ended badly. When I come back, I’ll think I’ll make it a favourite pastime to ride around.

Passau was another one of those places that I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Every day is a good day – every day is an adventure, and every day there are at least 27 things to smile about. Travelling for so long hasn’t made me immune to the lifestyle and the sights I witness, well - not yet anyway, and for that I am grateful. Do I want to come home? Nope. Mareike is a sense of home, and right now I could keep doing this a while yet.