And here we go again

And it starts again. The nostalgia and the broken hearts show their faces again, precisely in these last weeks, when you want everything to be perfect.

But this time is different. We are survivals. Survivals from the last semester. Our friends were gone, they resumed their lives where they left them: took exams, met with old friends and couples, graduated... And we survived that. It is hard to believe but one annoying feeling is when you see your friends moving on while you are still in the same place -even if it is a great place-.

We managed to keep alive the Erasmus`s flame and I can`t deny it was hard. Most of us were tired of this purposeless break -hard to believe, eh?- Afera, home of endless memories, stopped being our cult-party place. We wanted to know new things, something like moving on, in the Erasmus world. It`s just that all those places -Kulturalny, Pijalnia, Huki Muki, Goranzka- were full of memories and attachments that didn't allow us to build upon them.

We are survivals because, in some point, our relationships here stopped having that magic of the beginning, that perfect harmony. If you wanted to keep them, you had to work them out, like in any other part of the world that was not Krakow. And that made us stronger.

Life in Akropol seemed more and more like normal life and reality, as we all know, is not magical... But we managed to keep Akropol a little kingdom where everything felt good, our shelter, a little piece of Narnia -or Hogwarts, your choice-. New people helped a great deal in this not-so-easy task. If it wasn`t for the Bisho`s crazy stuff, the lovely Belen and the support of the recently-acquired polish girls, everything`d had been much more difficult.

It cannot be so easy for them either because, as my smart roommate said: "Getting here in the second semester is like watching the second half of a movie".

Now is different because last semester everyone was leaving and we felt abandoned. We stayed here living in a house with ghosts that we managed to fight. It was sadness, it was nostalgia but we knew what we were facing. But now we are all leaving and our rooms -those rooms that were full of ghosts, yes, but also of memories- will be alone or worst: occupied by people that is not us. Now sadness is not the problem but the shock, the certainty of the end. And when we all leave Akropol... Who will be here keeping alive the Erasmus flame?

Now we have to think about our future, that future that was on hold for so long. Maybe that`s what we need: something to be busy on not to think about the fact that we are leaving a place that is spotted -literally- with blood, sweat and tears -in Spanish it sounds so much better-. Is amazing how a building can mean so many things... How a city can be everything. I wonder how we got to love so much this dirty place, where the kitchen is always damaged, where we share the space of a cell with one or two more people, where the bathroom is always busy and sometimes disgusting. But it is our home.

But we have one more month. The goal is not to plan the reunions -that will come- but to gather stories, to collect moments, to take pictures, to film videos, to enjoy, and all that cheesy crap that becomes true when you are living it.

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