Last Stop for Groceries.

Tonight I stopped off for what will likely be my last set of groceries in Germany. It is really amazing how affordable food here is, well amazing and fortunate really. With all the walking I did here, it was good to have easy accessibility to cheap energy. Plus, the winter was rather cold and far longer than any winter I have experienced before, so I really could not get enough energy during that time. My eating habits will certainly change as I adapt to having a real kitchen again, considering the likes and tastes of someone else in my food choices, as well as readjusting to New York food prices. Today I also dealt with finalizing some issues regarding moving out of my apartment and keeping my bank account here functional. Monday I finished doing the last loads of three hour loads of laundry I will likely do in the crazy European machines in the basement of my apartment complex.

In short, my time here is limited. For some reason I am not that nervous yet. I feel them brewing, but the expected feelings of some degree of both sadness and joy along with overwhelming anxiety and relief to be starting my life again just have not really come yet. Part of it is that I feel there is so much to do between trying to wrap up the KdV project here, getting ready to start teaching at Columbia and tying up other mathematical, social and administrative loose ends here that I do feel generally kind of numb. Another problem is that I am just physically wiped out from the trip to Canada last week. I am exhausted from the jet lag and stiff from the hours spent crammed on an airplane. This discomfort has been exacerbated by the continued high temperatures and humidity here in Germany. The magnitude of what awaits me in 12 days time will certainly sink in shortly however, and to be honest I will enjoy it. It seems to me that feeling so isolated and lonely tends to reduce both my capacity for effectively interacting with others as well as for feeling things as deeply.

The other issue is that my emotions are so incredibly mixed about leaving here, that maybe all my feelings are just canceling each other out. On one hand, my wife and dog have moved into an apartment where our big, comfortable welcoming bed, my grandfather's desk, and several bookcases full of my books beckon me home. The shrinking time change will let me catch back up with too many neglected friends and family members I have missed terribly this last year. My friends in New York and NSF sponsor at Columbia are waiting for me to get back and resume living well and working hard there. Several collaborators are close by and there are so many interesting questions I want to tackle in the next two years, it feels like I should start as soon as possible. Plus, the niches, eccentricities and possibilities of New York I have yet to explore seem to be looming on the horizon, just begging me to come back and explore.

On the other hand, the mathematical resources here in Germany are amazing, the work I have done is incredibly rewarding and challenging, and the department seems to actually kind of enjoy having me here. The solitude of this lifestyle is difficult at times but gives me the time to think deeply about a lot of things I just do not often have time for otherwise. This kind of life consisting mostly of intellectual satisfaction is something I easily settle into since it is how I lived most of my youth. I do not claim it brings out the best in me or gives me the most joy I have known, but it is familiar, comfortable and personally rewarding. The friends I have here certainly mean a great deal to me for providing me some degree of companionship and comfort during this year and though it has, in the grand scheme of life, only been rather short time, I find it rather hard to believe it will be a long while before I see them again after I leave. There seems to have been sadly little time to spend together really. Not to mention, this place has been a complete adventure to me. Sure, I could not afford to travel as much as would have been nice, but every time I left the city I went somewhere new, learned or re-learned a bit of a different language, saw places I never knew of or imagined and met some great people.

If someday I had the chance to come back here, I would definitely consider it, especially if it meant more time to spend in Berlin. However, I want to go home so badly I can barely concentrate. It is a quite a tumultuous way to feel I must confess.