Hier sein

I'm here.  The only place I found to access the internet was... a McDonald's.  It's a sad sad thing.  Perhaps I could have found a nice European cafe had I wandered a bit more, but I'm still carrying my backpack, front-pack, and rolly-suitcase around for now and I have to hang around the train station until my friend Christof meets me at two o'clock.
I woke up in an empty apartment, in Frankfurt, this morning.  I made myself an egg sandwich, consolidated and packed all my belongings, dropped the key off in a neighbor's mailbox, and I took my trash out before finding someone to ask for directions: "Entchuldigung?  Ich suche die (or is it "der", "das", "den", "der"?!) .. Dorebusch Banhof."
"Dornbusch Banhof, Ja" answered the woman. "Anoiufaebgerausfpasdfnsdalinks und dann nächste Strasse und dikjfnsadfiuasbfjkfalsdfiasdfkjsnfl".  Wow... this is going to be harder than I thought.  I can pick up about fifty percent of what people tell me.  With the rest, I'm at a total loss.  I guess people speak some English, especially the younger generations, but I want to learn so I must make the effort.  My brain hurts.
Right outside of the train station, in a shop window, my eye caught a poster of San Francisco.  I sighed.  I've been here before.  It's all too familiar: humans go about their lives, working, eating, raising their kids.  And I'm just passing through, chasing the ethereal dream of actualizing myself... seemingly ungrounded, still.
A man walked up the stairs next to me and asked if he could help.  "Ja, danke."  In slow, self-conscious, bad German, I tried to explain I was looking for the train to the Hauptbahnhof (the central station) and then to Darmstadt.  He told me to follow him.  When I asked where I could buy a train ticket, he said "Ich bin polizei.  Alles ist gut."  They don't ask for your ticket to get on the train here.  They might come check randomly and give you a fine if they caught you, but in this case I was apparently safe because this nice policeman in civilian clothes had taken me under his wing.  He led me to the right tracks, found my train on the schedule, and told me it would soon come.  "Aber ich... need.. ein telefon auch" I said.  I needed to buy a cellphone.  So we walked back up, and there we ran into somebody he knew. "Sie ist Kanadierin" spoke my police friend to the other man.  "Ah! I'm going to Canada next week.  Nova Scotia.  It's the world championship for tuna fishing.  I'm a fisherman."
"Cool", I said.
"Ja.  I travel all over the world for fishing.  I just went to California last week" he added.
"Really?  Where?"
"Frisco.  Und San Diego und L.A.  I biked across the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito.  I loooved San Francisco!"
"Yes,"I said with a smile full of surprise and nostalgia,"I was there yesterday.  I lived there for five years.  I just left."
The two men helped me buy a cheap cell phone before we parted.  I went back down to wait for my train.  In limbo.  I wonder if they use that word in German: in limbo.
I arrived in Darmstadt much sooner than I had planned, so I took a moment to put my load down in the grass outside, and stretch.  I took off my shoes to feel the earth, grabbed my juggling clubs, and played a little bit.  My surroundings look simple, organized.  There are German people everywhere, and they are wearing nice clean clothes.
I remind myself that the journey is just beginning... I know this place, I've been here before.  It's the place where nothing special is going on, and it makes me a bit anxious and depressed.  I tell myself that it's only a matter of time, of holding myself through this transition, of allowing my feelings to exist and unfold..
But for now, I need to get the hell out of this McDonald's! :)