I think you've changed

Thoughts on: A hopeless romance, a missing cupboard & the nostalgic nature of humanity

I know that my time here is coming to an end. I'm ready to go. Yet I'm not that ready. I guess you could see it coming: My next sentence and how it will begin: There's this guy... And this is how all the good and the bad stories start. The live changing stories, or the bed time stories, the stories that last a life time or just a week. The love stories. 

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go. I'm standing here outside your door. I hate to wake you up to say Goodbye - John Denver

So there's this guy. I'm not going to talk about how we met, how he looks like or whatever. I'm just going to talk about how he is. And how he makes me feel.

Whenever I feel lonely, he reminds me that I'm not. He cares. I lie next to him - without having sex and without kissing, just staring at him, for hours, staring back at me and it feels good. I don't wonder much about what this is or how we got this. I just want to go on like this forever. I don't want to change it, to develop (even though I know it's neccessary), to break up or to really commit to it. Because I don't want to destroy it. For him, I'm the first one. 

On the one hand. this feels awkward, because I am afraid he will regret it and because he's not the first one for me. 

On the other hand, it's so unbelievably beautiful, it's special. He does not try to manipulate me, he has no high expectations, no broken hearts and no crying nights due to failed relationships on his back. He still believes in love. He's innocent. I like that so much. Maybe because I'd love to be like this again. I would like to go back to my 16th year, before I had my first boyfriend, when love was that ONE BIG THING: that dream, that miracle to find. 

I don't know why this makes me cry now.

When I was younger, I was very afraid of change. For example, I cried so badly when we got a new cupboard in our living room. (#firstworldproblems, I know, but) How was I supposed to live with a new one yet the old one had been so good and reliable and felt like home to me? 

How was I supposed to stand a life where everything I loved was changed constantly, taken away from me or replaced by something worse? How was I supposed to be happy when I knew everyone was going to die eventually at a time in the future, because everyone grows older? And how was I supposed to sustain growing older, being an adult, leaving childhood behind and my parents dying before me?

I hated these nights when I lay awake for hours with the carousel of painful thoughts and questions going on and on in my tiny head. In the end, I cried myself to sleep, over and over. Not every night of course, but some nights - especially when I hadn't kept my mind occupied by other not-so-important things that regarded my daily life. 

Some nights I wish that my lips could build a castle Some nights I wish they'd just fall off - FUN.

My biggest fear was change. Change that would make my body look different and make me feel ugly (commonly known as puberty, kids). Change that would come with the time, inevitably and fast, and give my parents grey hair and wrinkles and would make them die -sooner or later. Change that would end every good time I ever had. And what follows after a good time? For sure, a bad time. There weren't going to be good times following good times forever. I was convinced that change would destroy everything. Change would make everything worse.

Now my home, soon a memory, because everything changes.

Is there still a bit of this fear inside of me? With the years going by, with accepting myself how I've become when I developed, matured and changed, I changed my regard on change. I learned to be more accepting. I accepted change as a part of life. Change is the only abstract thing that is unchangeable. It comes with the time, that goes by and that is unstoppable, no matter what you try. The time as a physical factor noone really understands. Isn't change as a result of passing time the essence of life? Everything is in motion, everything dies and something new is born and even if the material doesn't vanish (like e.g. water) it changes constantly, to ice, raindrops, water from a source, in a stream, in a toilet, frozen in a glacier or on my cheek when I cried my eyes out because of a cupboard that was tossed in the trash 12 years ago. 

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged - The Beatles

You see, I've accepted change, It doesn't frighten me anymore. Or does it? Or does it just make me look back on my "unchanged" or "innocent" self, the past-Lotta, with all her morals and beliefs and opinions? I don't know if she would have liked me now, the Now-Lotta (that will be the new past-Lotta in a few seconds), I often like to imagine she would tell me I've become a bitch. I've changed too much. I've gone to far. But where do we go from here? 

I can't get back.

If I think closely about it, I don't want to get back. It's just this kind of nostalgia you like to plunge yourself in when you meet someone like him. But you recognize, maybe everything is lovely now but it isn't going to work out, because he's going to England for a year starting in September, and you are beginning your studies in Germany, "environ" (=roughly speaking) 861 kilometres away from him. 

Adding to this, you have the solid base of barely one month together in which you weren't really in a relationship at any point. How lovely is that?

On top of all, you see, you're just not on the same level. Yes, you like his sweetness, his innocence, the romantic stuff- but is that really you, how you are now? Not really. 

This is what little 14-year-old-Lotta longed for on the sofa, with her braces watching High School Musical for a billionst time. But is that really you, "grown-up", responsable, 19-year-old-Lotta, an adult, an to-be university student, who does her own laundry, independant, studies for a politics exam, likes contemporary art, has had ONS and still feminist ideas? Maybe you could be together. 

You could be truly in love, you and him, if you would both stay here and had the time. But you know what? You don't have the time. That's life.

You, dear reader, get me. You see that I like the idea of "past-me" and "now-me" and "future-me" as if they were seperated from each another. In fact they are all me, inevitably connected, myself in all varies and shapes and sizes. It's fascinating, isn't it? 

How change, how all the factors of change (time, journeys, people, environment, ideas, experiences, a book, an article, music, a single sentence, a look...) can make you a different person, with every thought, every love story, every year on your back you get richer and better and in the same time more complicated and hurt.

I unsuccessfully tried to find I good metaphor for this. The best I can offer is, to see your personality as a book, or better, a story. A story that is rewritten, changed, edited, expanded, completed, cut off, ripped out and glued together again in a randomly beautiful mess. 

There's no such thing as a "simple character". Constantly changing who I am, I like to document moments, I like to keep records of my change, take snapshots of the versions my story can show. In my poorly written songs and poetry, my blog (YES, THIS IS A SNAPSHOT RIGHT NOW) and right on top my diaries. Because humans love to be nostalgic. 

You can have a good time judging yourself at the age of 3 in pampers giggling and playing in the sand in a bleached out photograph, remembering "The Good Old Times" with your buds enjoying a beer in a bar, laughing at your heartbreak in 7th grade when you were convinced you'd never go out ever again when you read your old journals... 

Every human loves to look back on his life, pictures and pieces of texts and memories and says things like: "Isn't it funny how hideous I looked in my braces?" and "Oh it was sooo ugly that old cupboard in our living room!" and to smile about that lovely little love story that was never meant to be written.

Goodbye ?

It's been a while I know. I had some stuff going on with that one guy I've never told you about but I'm tired of talking (and thinking) about him because it's over before it has even started,  I really don't want to talk about it, so...

I'm saying goodbye again, soon. Or I'm actually saying Goodbye already. Today I had to give my 9-year-old host child girl her goodbye present - an album full of photos of our year together. With a smiling eye I see in the future, because I don't have to care about all those children problems anymore (like where's my stuffed animal? Or can I have ice cream? Why does my brother get all the attention? etc. etc. etc.) and I can make a new start. 

I'm really in for new starts. I'm excited to LEARN again. To actually put stuff into my head, to read, to improve my writing, my knowledge and my skills. I'm craving to learn after that year. The only "intelligent input" I got, I got through books (as normal) and cultural stuff I had to do in my free time. That was no bad, because I got to see many, many inspiring exhibitions, got to know more and different artists and ways you can perceive and do art and got to think about art and culture and how they can be impulses for my brain and my mind. 

I'm going to miss the endless, illimited access to art, music and culture I have here in Paris. I still haven't watched a theater play but it's overdue! I do visit a lot of museums, some seldom, some even regularly, like the Centre Pompidou, I watch a lot of movies (the cinema card, remember?) and I attended some concerts. I like to think I've done a lot during my 10 months here. 

Now, with July, the last month of this year abroad, this amazing time in Paris, starts. And there, the crying eye comes in... I'm using the last, the fourth toothbrush and my parents took my IKEA carpet and a not so small suitcase to Germany with them, when they visited, end of May. Ever since, my "chambre de bonne" looks empty, not as comfortable as in winter. It also reminds me adamantly of my departure and the Goodbyes that I have to face in a short while. On top of that, it brings back the memories of how it all began, the starting days in late August, when I arrived here for the first time.

When this was only a room, not home. When I didn't know the names of the streets or where to board exactly on the metro platform to change trains in the best way at République later. When I had no friends here and no idea how the other interns looked like or were like. When I imagined my year so brightly but also so differently as it turned out to be.

Open the boxes, unpack what you own.
Hang up some posters and make this a home.
Walk down the stairs and open the door.
Look at the things you've never seen before.

This is the beginning, of anything you want.
This is the beginning…
This is the beginning, of anything you want.
This is the beginning…

Get on the buses, learn numbers and names
Your eyes are the camera, your heart is the frame
Hum a new song as you walk down the streets,
Soon they'll be full with friends and memories. - BOY (This is EXACTLY how it felt)

Why did I put a question mark there, in the title, you may ask. I'm not going to stay here, that's for sure. But who knows if I will come back or not. Maybe I'll live here with my family, 20 years from now, maybe not, but I could. When I was babysitting two cute boys from my "Kindergarten" last week-end, I realized that I could do it. I could do anything. There are people doing it everyday. Moving away from "home" and making a new place what home is ought to be. Marry a French man, have kids with him, send them to a French-German kindergarten and school. Go to apérétifs and theater plays, go out in the parks, spend my days doing a job I love, have a nice appartment in the 10eme arrondissment in Paris. I could do anything. I could be anything.

I could just stay here forever. And lie in parks and drink beer in bars.

For now, I'm returning. But goodbye ain't goodbye. Because I'm sure I will come back. And I know, it sounds kitschy and cliché and everything. But I don't care. So here it is: Paris will always be in my heart. I found a new home there. I fell in love there. I won't forget it. So this Goodbye will just be temporary, while most of the other goodbyes (real goodbyes - with people), will be for long, maybe forever. This is hard. I feel the tears coming but I won't let them run down my cheeks. All these kids and their futures lying in front of them like an endless pool of possibilites and chances and failure and changes and love and death.
I love them, each and everyone of them - and some won't even remember me. 

I wish them luck on their way but I know I can't be there for them to help. I can't educate them or raise them any longer, I can't be their mentor, nor their friend. They have to make it on their own. It hurts. But they will.

Paris, tu vas me manquer. Je te dis Au Revoir mais c'est promis: Je vais revenir, mon amour!

I'm a writer

I don't want to say that I'm an author. Or that I actually write stuff anyone wants to read. Or that I actually write real stuff at all and not only unfinished blog posts in bad English and sad kitschy entries in my actually very pretty diary. 

But still I claim that I'm a writer. Simply because I like to write. And I do it a lot. Some people do sports, to get out their energy, to vanish their thoughts away (or sometimes reflect them once again). Others do gardening. Or cooking. Or collecting things. Or just watching TV. And I? I write. That's what I've always done. For me, there's nothing better than pouring all my "forever-alone-crushing-on-that-guy-break-up-lonliness-happiness-what-did-I-eat-today" words into a tiny little notebook. 

"What's the point in writing it all down?" is a question non-writing friends just LOVE to ask me. On the one hand you can easily answer it with that old quote that's about using the experience of your past to conqueor the future. On the other hand I like to see my writing as a part of memorizing my life. 

I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you. - The Fault in Our Stars

It's not exactly what the quote is about, but I love it. And it's similar. Writing is (even if it might be a shout into the void) for me a means to hold on to my memories, my biography, my experiences. I can reread all of my heart breaks, my friendships, my failures and my good moments (They're rare in my texts, I have to admit that, mainly because my urge to write is bigger when I'm sad, obviously). And more important, learn from them. I can recognize patterns and I can follow my handwriting, how it changes over the years and why.

Before I became a writer, I was a reader. I'm still a reader, as you may figured out by the exorbitant number of cute quotes from teen books I use in my posts, or the various hints I hide in my texts regarding my love of books (which are not very hidden, come on). 
Reading was always a possibilty for me to exchange my reality for another. To dive into another world, a different dimension, a different person. 

Reading is letting yourself go far away while you sit steadfastly in a chair. Throughout reading, I gained my words. And I realized the power of putting words together in a row, to make them gain sense and meaning. Through reading I learned how to communicate better, to speak differently and to express myself. Through reading I learned to write. I mean not in the original sense of "learning to write" in primary school. But rather in the sense of writing essays, stories, fiction, diary entries. To put real feelings on the paper. Yes, in fact, it started in primary school, when I had read all the books from the children's section in our local library. Literally every single book. So I started to read stuff for older children and teens. I read books within the characters where 17 when I was 9 or 10. 

When it comes to books, I matured really fast. Since I'm 15 I started adult's books because back in the days I believed I had read all good teen stuff on the recent market and I was not willing to try out classics yet. Now I'm 19 and I read teen books for 16 year olds. What the hell is wrong with me? I loved my German class in primary school Except from grammar and orthography, the exams were all about writing fiction. My favourite exercise were the assignments where you had given several words and you had to imagine a story in which all the words play a main role. I digged it! And obviously had the best grades. I was a literal bubbling pool of  creativity ! And I didn't stop reading. It got worse. Now I reconsider my former reading behaviour and I view it differently. Sometimes I didn't read books, I consumed them. And it's a shame.

My record were 17 books in one summer, which means in Germany, 6 weeks of summer vacation. I was totally addicted. Addicted to books. I've never stopped reading. But I consume less and with moderation now. Because in the beginning I could memorize every plot, every storyline and every character from any book I've ever read. I literally told my best friend a whole book (Molly Moon) everyday on our way to school and home. But I realized that I can't do this anymore. I've read to much. And maybe my memory and my brain kinda suck. I made too few pauses. Consumed and consumed without a stop. Maybe sometimes books are like chocolate. You have to enjoy them, slowly. Or you will have a bad feeling after.

I'm in a constant clinch with friend about how  we should read books and which books. In his opinion books need to give you something precious, a life lesson, a moral, an important thought or something like that, to be good books. I agree. But I disagree at the point when he says: Only these books are worth being read. That's not true. What about all the books that take you to a different place? A journey to a tropical island, or in the head of a sick perfume maker a 100 years ago, on the back of a dragon fighting for peace in a fictional fantasy land? 

I wanted to talk about writing, instead I talk about reading. There's a thunderstorm outside at the moment. It's fucking hailing here. The hailstones sound like an enormous drum on the roof, but unmelodical without a real rhythm. 

One day baby we'll be old. Oh Baby we'll be old - Think of all the stories that we could have told - Asaf Avidan

But reading and writing go together because all we read was written once. A perfect imperfect combination of words and letters to get straight into your mind and make you think. Is this what I do now? Is this why I write? Not to hold on to moments from my past, not to find matter in my life. Just to tickle some neuron in your head... Just to make you think. Of what? I don't know - I'm not you. I'm just the writer, you're the reader. I think it's legit to say: I write, I'm a writer. Don't you?

Lastly, I need to say that I have this "urge to write" that I already mentioned. It's not only like a hobby, not only a form of relief from my thoughts, it's like a strange need for me. I feel it like a soft pain in my stomach. Not all the time, sometimes I miss it for weeks or months. But then it's back, strikes me and forces me to take up my pen again. "Write! Write!" shouts this voice inside me. Randomly, I start to write. I put words together. There's no sense, no meaning, no plan, no book. Just me and a story. Writing is telling stories. Maybe that's why I write. I like to tell stories. Some people would even say I'm good at it. 

Writing is a part of me, like reading is a part of me. It wouldn't be me if there wouldn't be a book on the bedstand. It wouldn't be me if there were no secret documents of absolutely random unpublished unread stories on my laptop. I never told my ex about my writing. I was afraid he'd laugh. I was ashamed. Maybe this is one reason why we broke up. If I'm ashamed for my writing I'm ashamed for myself, am I not? I don't want to be anymore. I'm a writer. I have no shame.

Letter to Myself

The vanilla flavoured green tea that helped me through the rough winter, the routine of being obliged to go down 22 stair steps to go to the toilet. The door codes that you have to memorize or you're lost, the view from my window, the minuscule fridge, the cute and annoying children from my kindergarten... 

They all will be faded memories soon. Memories of "the good days". Memories of my time in Paris. Memories of youth.

Es sind die guten Zeiten, die uns am Ende noch erhalten bleiben und zusammenschweißen für ein Leben lang. - Bakkushan

Now this is the memory, I give it to you, as a present, future-self. Future-Lotta. 

Fly with me once again to the beginning of this year, to the anxiety and the lonliness. Fly me to "all den Abenden, die wir verschwendet haben" (all the nights we wasted), or show me the faces of all those people again who I have kissed. Replay the dates, the rendez-vous, the embarrasing and the romantic moments. Show me again all the movies, like I saw them for the first time. The movies that touched my heart so much that it was hard to get back to reality after. "About time", "Her", "Prisoners", "Labour Day", "States of Grace" (Short term 12) and many more ...

The tension, give it to me one last time, when "PLUS DE PASSION, PLUS D'EMOTIONS" was flitting over the screen. Let me walk that walk from the cinema back to my house, my home, once again, in the rain. Lost in my own world of thoughts, my lonely mind, in such an urge to let it all out, to talk, to write, to communicate my feelings. And yet not able to verbalize all that is happening inside of me. 

Bring me back to the weekends with my girls, the card games and the talking afternoons at Lea's. The times when we were drunk and the times when we were sober. Rewatch with me all seasons of Doctor's Diary and Gossip Girl again. Fall again, head over heels for that American art student. Tinder... does it ring a bell? And all the exciting opportunities you had? You could be the girl you wanted to be. You could decide who you wanted. You could reinvent who you were before. 

Bring me back to the night that I cried in the dark, in January. To all the sorrow I poured into that little notebook with the hearts on it. Remind me painfully of my desperate thoughts and my distress. That I knew, that I divined, something would happen, something that would seperate someone from me who had been indispensable to me. Show me again how hopeless and afraid I was for that friendship, even if I knew we could make it. Somehow. 

Let me please reread and re-listen (in this context) all our hour-long chat and hangout-conversations about all and nothing. His philosophical blog entries that kept me awake for too long. And let me hold him again, one last time, like I did this one night in December when it was so hard to say Goodbye.

Can I hold you, one last time, to fight the fear that is growing in my mind?      - The Kooks

Let me get to know Simon again, have an amazing time with fake laser guns and my girls and let me laugh again until I have to cry or spit my whole drink over the table. I just want to have a hundred more sleep overs with Nuan and make spaghetti with Thea and talk too long and be waaay too late for everything after that. I want to ride home on the 75 bus from Lea's house to mine and watch German "Tatort" and scrounge from her meals again. 

And please let me forget all these wonderful books that I read. So that I can read them again for the first time. Show me my basil plant that I killed and the new plant which has taken its place and blossoms very nicely because the lack of water doesn't seem to bother it. 

Show me my little room under the roof with the fluffy black carpet I dragged through half of the city (IKEA adventures). Show me the bed and the shower and the black and white pictures I put on the wall. Show me this tiny room again that was my safety, my island. And the rainbows in front of my window, over the rooftops of Paris.

And the Eiffel Tower, how it looked on my first evening with the girls. Or how it looked when I sat there eating Maccarons in the sun with my best friend in March. Fly me one last time through the streets, the Canal, the Seine, the Ponts, let me remark all the little details and the street art for which I always loved to stop my walk and stare. Let me ride on a vélib bike for hours and hours again, feeling the heap wind on my face like a summer breeze or an ice cold hand (depending on the weather). 

The warm touch of the sun on my skin and just inhaling Paris.

And if it's really like that, like it is said in "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" (Mitch Albom)... that there will be one place in this world where you will have to pass an eternity of time until someone dies and comes to you so that you can teach him a lesson (because you're one of the 5 people he meets in heaven)... then let it be Paris for me. Let me be there forever. In a time helix, like on the island in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" (Ransom Riggs), where this one summer never comes to an end. 

Where I never have to grow up, like Pippi Langstrumpf or Peter Pan. Where I can be me. Where I can be "mutterseelenallein" (all by myself) and still as happy as I never had been before in my entire life.

The Eiffel Tower. How it looked on this first evening. Pure perfection. Lived clichés.

Bucket List

Everything has an end. And somehow, we believe that we have to accomplish certain things during a life period. That's why there are so many lists and books and magazines telling you what you have to do before you... marry, are 30, die. Which places you have to see and which things you should definitely do during your time in college, high school or on that trip to London. 

Something I've already done: Drinking ice tea under the Eiffel Tower !
But besides, I'm not sure if anyone considers this to be a thing ..

There is one voice inside of my head (kind of schizophrenic isn't it?) who is trying to defend me (us?) from this "Schubladendenken" (thinking in stereotypes) trying to press your experience of a place, a journey or your life in general in a pre-assembled shape. Like: If you didn't do this or that you're college time is worth a shit. 

When I grow up, I wanna be famous, I wanna be a star, I wanna be in movies. When I grow up, I wanna see the world, drive nice cars, I wanna have groupies 

- Pussy Cat Dolls (Never thought I'd ever quote them ...)

But the other voice says: Hey, maybe it isn't that bad of an idea... Especially when it's you who makes the rules. Or in this case, the list. A list of things you really really really want to do. Or at some point in your past decided to do at some point in the future. You and I, we both know the sad truth about most of the things we say "We'll do that later..." or "when we grow up..." or "when we have retired..." - They are mostly never going to happen. 

And afterwards, we regret never having done them. 
I'm not quiet at the point, in my almost 19-year-old life that I can make a list about what to accomplish and do and success in the whole of my life yet.

But I'm more than ready to make a Bucket List for the remaining 2 and a half months of what is supposed to be the best year of my entire life. (And by now, it isn't disappointing, is it?) So this is my...

Paris Bucket list

• Climb on a rooftop
• Take fancy pictures in a cute dress at the most romantic places around town
• Visit the Bois de Bologne and the Bois the Vincennes 
• Go on at least one more amazing concert
• Visit the scary side of Paris in "les Catacombes"
• Watch a theater play
• Buy a French Book
• Having taken every metro line at least once
• Go clubbing in the "Cabaret Sauvage", and the "Rex Club"
• See the inside of the Rodin Museum
• Kiss someone under the Eiffel Tower 
• Make a boat tour on the Seine
• Make a little piece of streetart myself
• Buy the one item that will always remind me of my time here
• Randomly approach someone on the street or in a park
• See a very good French Movie (Hey, I actually did it!)

A French version of American Pie, mixed with prostitution and a different point of view.

That Guy Again

Okay. I don’t know what to think anymore. I didn’t know it earlier either. But that’s not the point. The point is that I can’t get him out of my mind. And I don’t know why. Because nothing happened. By nothing I mean NOTHING. There has never been, in the whole history of the human race, a less romantic, less flirty relationship between two people on a second date. Meanwhile the “setting”, as we German A-Level students know it from our English classes in short stories, was the most romantic thing ever.

I am not kidding anybody here. If someone gave me the screenplay of this date and what happened around us (leaving out the dialogues please, for God’s sake), I’d hire him immediately for my next romantic drama or comedy on the movies. The beginning was Spiderman. “The Amazing Spiderman”, to be precise. Okay (side note: No holding hands, no cuddling, no kiss). But the walk …

Another day, different light, a slightly different place - but at least the same river, ok?

We made our way from Bastille, over Quai de la Rapée and the Pont d’Austerlitz. There is a long green strip along the Seine. And it’s stunning. The tourist’s boats passing by, the setting sun, reflected in the tiny waves of the water, a moment in which you really believe that “la vie est une longue fleuve tranquille”. The light was a mix of orange, yellow, red and a bit of rose. Not too much obviously, to make it just perfect but not exaggerated.

There were joggers, couples who were strolling along the river in direction of the beautiful Notre Dame in the background, enthroned on the little island that cuts off the river in two parts. On its peak you could see lovers on benches and weeping willows. And there were guitar players and a guy with drums, jamming together in an exotic but chilled out rhythm. And we passed by easily and talked. The obligatory accordion player sat on a bridge charged by a million declarations of love in form of locks.

Just sayin'...

It was the right mood for saying something important. Doing something monumental. It was the perfect mood for a first kiss.

Isn't it always the things we didn't do and just imagined to be that are the most important to us? Our expectations, our hopes and our dreams. Of course, it couldn’t be all perfect. It would have been boring, wouldn’t it? There was no kiss. Because boredom is his enemy, I guess.

For me, just being with him makes me feel interesting, important, different. It is kind of like being above everything or maybe just seeing everything from a different perspective. I think about how he looks, how he talks and how he makes me feel: A mix of attraction, anxiety and agitation (alliteration alert). He walked me home and said for next time he’d give me my psychological profile. (Because I asked him what he thought of me last time, remember?)  Which is... I don't know... kind of weird. Kind of business-not-very-romantic-like. And at the same time very interesting for me because I'm always, as you know, very uneasy and worried about my own perception out in the world. And I'm so fucking curious for what he is going to say about me!

Aaaaand… he said "next time". That means that there will be a next time. That makes me shiver again. Before our second date I just had to call my friend to calm me down a bit because I was too f*cking excited (I should slow down my cursing a little, though)! I literally couldn't even!! (Like twitter girls nowadays do). 

I want to hold your hand. - The Beatles

What delights me, too, about being with him or thinking about the whole "Nothing really happens but we talk a lot-Icelandic-programmer-cute-deep-inscrutable-CONFUSING"-guy, is how we end up meeting people like him. How I ended up in Paris, dating a guy from a whole different country, from a whole different world, talking to him in a language I learned for years in school but which isn't my own, my mother tongue, and in which I write quirky stuff on the internet to entertain 10 people and myself. (Best definition of this Blog in a while).

How he ended up being trilingual (literally),having an authority problem, living in Paris, while he's from Reykjavík (btw I love how he pronounces it so smooth) with French/Icelandic divorced parents, dating me, a strange girl from Germany, a country he has never visited before, who loves Spiderman and Artemis Fowl as much as him. A girl who is not really into Game of Thrones (yet?), but very much into internet memes and nerdy websites. And very much into that same, strange guy who doesn't even want to hold her hand, but rather analyze her habits and her mind. Kay. Seems legit.

Obviously, I’ve not quite cleared my confusion up yet. So there hopefully will be another tome adding to the series: “Lotta’s confusing dates: edition 3.0”. I will keep you up about what is happening in my life and meanwhile enjoy yours. And don’t waste too much time on the internet, kids. (The ironic life advice by Lotta, isn’t it terrific?)