First Snow

She was. We had breakfast together the next morning and everything was normal. I was really happy about that because I hate all these discussions and the feeling that I was hurting everybody and doing everything wrong. Furthermore, I didn’t want to leave her in Germany in that mood. I helped her with some things for her computer again and started to pack my things – I had to decide what to leave in Germany until I would come back in February, and what to take with me. It was really not an easy decision but after a while I had packed everything and had to say goodbye to my Mum. I would meet my best friend again to go shopping in another city, and afterwards I would go directly to my Dad’s place because they would bring me to the airport the next morning. She helped me to bring my things to the car my Dad had given me for the duration of my stay – she would have preferred that I take her car but it was much easier to use a car nobody needs at the moment, and we said goodbye to each other. I would see her again soon, because she would come to visit me only four weeks later for five days with her boyfriend. That made the goodbye quite easy.

I went to the small town where my best friend was living and after some relaxing at her place we started to the city in order to go a bit shopping. I didn’t want to buy anything, because I had already bought many things during my short stay here, but I liked to spend some more time with her. So we arrived after 20 minutes, parked the car and went to the shopping zone. It was a sunny day, but it was still incredibly cold, so we went from store to store – even if we didn’t want to buy anything in some of them. We tried several clothes, spent hours at the DVD’s section in a drug store and had something small for breakfast/lunch at a bakery. We decided to return to her place soon, because we had seen all the interesting stores, and it was still quite cold – too cold for an outside shopping trip. So we headed to the car and returned to her house. Before, we passed by an Asian restaurant and bought noodles for lunch. As usual, we got noodles for about 10 persons and didn’t even pay 10 euros. Back to her house we ate our large lunch (her brother received about half of it after we couldn’t move anymore) and watched one of the DVDs we had just bought. It was a typical day as we had already passed them so many times in our long friendship, and it was too nice to have something like that after all the difficult time I had had the months before Christmas. Of course, my time in Tenerife wasn’t something horrific where I was suffering most of the time. But it was difficult for me, because work was boring and the girls were kind of exhausting sometimes. They had other interests than me and another way of spending their free time and sometimes that was too much for me. At home in Germany with my best friend there was nothing difficult, we agreed on a day, we met and everything was fine. No matter what we were doing, we were always having a great time without stress or difficulties. And that was something I had been missing the last five months. In France that had been different because I had had one person from my university I already knew and she had similar interests. Furthermore, I had my (later) boyfriend who helped me to feel comfortable in that country soon, because he helped me to get used to the language again, to understand weird things and he was somebody I could talk to about everything. We had coffee, lunch, dinner, did sports etc. – for the time before I fell in love with him he was kind of a best friend for me. And that was something I was missing a lot in Tenerife, where I only had that group of girls and German tourists. It was too hard to get to know the “real” locals because they automatically assumed that I was a tourist, too, and would leave in some weeks. So they kept distance and didn’t want to start any friendships etc. But I only had a bit more than one month left, so the largest part of my time in Tenerife was already over.

After the movie had finished, I had to say goodbye (a second time) to my best friend, but this time it was much easier because I would see her again in some weeks already. I went to my Dad’s place and had to hurry up a bit because they wanted to go to an event from an association with me – a kind of auction where the association was selling (useless) things to the members and friends in order to gain money for the new year, to do parties and excursions etc. It was called “Christmas Tree Auction” because in the end they were also selling a Christmas tree with some sweets, alcohol and other things on it. As always, I had hurried up too much, because when I arrived at their house, they weren’t ready. I entered and my Dad was still in the shower. So I sat down to have a coffee with his girlfriend while he was getting ready. After half an hour everybody was ready to leave the house and we got to the car. We arrived 15 minutes later at the small club house and entered. I didn’t know that club, but almost all the club members of my Dad’s club were there, too, so I knew a lot of people. I hadn’t seen them since the end of June, so I talked a bit to some of them before I sat down in a corner with Dad’s girlfriend.

We were drinking something and waiting the auction to start. It took a while, but finally it started. The main goal of me and his girlfriend was to avoid that my Dad would buy too many useless things. Of course, it was also about helping the club to earn some money, but we already had so many useless things that it wasn’t worth it. In comparison to the years before he was really rational, he only bought 2 things. After a while it became a bit boring, because the things started to repeat and the microphone didn’t work that good, so it was hard to understand the person who was leading the auction. It took some hours until the last items were sold and it was finally only the Christmas tree who had to be sold. Somebody of Dad’s club bought him for 50 euros and shared it with the other members, so we also received some chocolate. We stayed some more time in the club house until Dad’s girlfriend and I said that it would be better to leave now – we had to get up quite early the next morning because my flight was before noon and it took some time to get to the airport anyway. Furthermore, it had started to snow during the auction and if it would continue like that the whole night there might be a traffic chaos the next day. My Dad drank some more beer, but finally we left the party and for the first time since about one year I saw snow again. It was nice, because I knew that the next day at this time I would be back to warm Tenerife with 25 degrees, but actually I would have liked to stay, even with minus 20 degrees. But I had to finish that before and stay strong for 6 more weeks. We drove back to their house and went all to bed quickly. We only had about 5 or 6 hours to sleep and I knew that I would be incredibly tired the next morning. 

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