New travel feelings

She’s left for her lectures and I sit alone in my room. Not knowing what to do, and staring at my useless hands, I decide to start cleaning. Creating order in my room, in hopes of ordering my mind simultaneously. Not very effective, and somewhat later I reluctantly walk towards the train station, distance between her and myself growing with every step, and I’m feeling homesick already. For the first time ever; not fully enthusiastic on the train towards the airport.

It’s good to land and connect again, across hundreds of kilometres, just to ascertain that my life back home is doing well. She’s reading a book about love, that complicated matter, hoping to learn, and when I get on the Sintra train she sends a long text about nurturing our love with care and affection. I feel at peace for a while, and before falling asleep we chat in the darkness of our own, distant rooms.

Torn between fears of bothering her, and really longing to hear her voice, I distract myself with the palaces and castles of Sintra. Meet new people to tell them about my homesick feelings. The experience is new to me, never before did I spend my travelling days thinking about home, or anyone left behind. Now it’s difficult to do anything but. So I choose my pictures carefully, in hopes she’ll like them, and when hiking the cliffs of Cabo da Roca, I listen to the wind and let it blow my churning mind away.

Walking between the tall fern trees and verdant moss of the last palace I’ll visit in Sintra, we call. It’s healing to hear her voice, even though we talk about nothing much. She tells about her upcoming plans, because soon enough her Swedish friend will arrive and they’ll spend some warm days together. I describe the park as I walk through it, tell her about the Japanese travellers I met yesterday, and I’m happy she is doing well.

I had expected my feelings to subside with time, and in some sense they do. The anxiousness diminishes with every day; I wonder less about what she might be doing, and if all is right, as my confidence in the correct order of things returns. Of course I can’t leave out the great people I meet along the way, who tell their stories, share their delicious Portuguese dishes as we listen to Fado in a hidden alleyway and draw my thoughts to the here and now.

But in other ways, it becomes more difficult, as time passes. Because with every new morning, and I send pictures of the lovely sunshine, spilled across Lisbon, she gets closer to me, although staying hundreds of kilometres across the continent. And with the ticking clock, my impatience grows, and the wait becomes more difficult. Waiting at the airport, and even more while on the plane, the hours acquire a torturous character, as I feeled wronged at having to wait just a little bit longer. She feels within reach, although hidden behind the horizon, and I should be able to make a deal with the universe, to spare me this last time of waiting.

So I run from the plane to catch the fastest bus, my lungs burn for oxygen when I rush across Brussels-South station to get on the quickest connecting train, and jump up the stairs two or three steps at a time to appear on the square where I know she is waiting. I fall into her arms, with hers around my neck, and lift her off the ground. A storm of emotion bubbles up and leaves my body in a mixture of giggles and laughter.