Tags

, , , ,

This week was  filled with meeting friends, both old and new and those in-between. After meeting someone new on Monday, catching up with in-betweeners on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this weekend was spent with a friend I have know since I was eighteen.

Over the years we have been in and out of touch, never because we argued or stopped liking each other, but because we moved around (mostly me) and our lives ran on different tracks. But whenever our paths did cross or we had a long chat on the phone, we just picked up where we had left off, no issues, no shyness or awkwardness, just two old friends catching up.

After a five year gab, we met up yesterday in the Tiergarten (big park in the middle of Berlin) and sat by the lake filling each other in on our lives. Later we strolled down to the Hackischer Markt for food and wine and today we wandered around the stalls of a flea-market and had some coffee until it was time for her to leave.

After a hug and promise to stay in touch I waved her goodbye, a sense of bittersweet joy and melancholia steeping through me. I am delighted we had the chance to spend time together, while away the hours, no time constraints but also feel a little sad that it will take a while before we can do it again. The lot of someone who has friends scattered around the world.

But as I sat out in the garden and watched the clouds slowly meander past, changing their shapes, colours and some even dissolving into thin air, I felt content, happy about the variety and richness all the people I know bring to my life. Friends,  a little like the clouds above, may change and some may just disappear, but without them the landscape of our lives would be a dry wasteland.

clouds passing by

clouds passing by