Start balance - so medium. Then you sit at the table in the evening in this very special kind of AirBnB apartment that doesn't need any cooking utensils at all, the mood is moderately shitty and everyone asks themselves: what was the problem? To trace how we got to this point, here's a destructive-therapeutic review. The arrival in Istanbul is characterized by the feeling you get when you've been preparing for a moment internally for so long that at some point you forget whether you're looking forward to it or not. And then it comes (finally) and you are a bit empty for the time being. Short walk, Lahmacun ordered, a beer drunk, short small talk about how the last few months were so (most of what we already know anyway) and off to bed or in my case sofa. From then on, a thunderstorm of agreements begins. More or less daily people have to be brought from or to the train station/airport and meeting points have to be arranged, while Erasmus everyday life meets mediocre contact enthusiasm of Jonas & Louis.
With Theo, Anja and Anna in the boat, it's really only possible to take a deep breath on the ferry. Don't misunderstand, a lot of nice things happen, but there is no real lightness. And then there's my birthday, my personal guaranteed stress day of the year. With a lot of support and gifts, it ends fortunately slightly drunk on the street in Kadıköy, with a Louis who suddenly drops all restraint and would have loved to invite the whole neighborhood to our admittedly spacious AirBnB. While the sun slowly rises over the Bosphorus, and I bring Anna with the borrowed scooter to the bus, it is slowly serious. Bills have to be paid, rooms cleaned out, cars packed and friends said goodbye. And then all of a sudden you're sitting in a stuffy hot car with every cubic centimeter crammed with people or luggage, and you have the same feeling as when you arrived - emptiness. Only this time with a touch of melancholy. To take a deep breath, we take the train (Marmaray) back to the city and pick up the forgotten camera. And then you are suddenly out of the city, which I for 4.5 months as good as not left. But now the argument really starts. What was lost in the stress of leisure time in Istanbul: we have no idea where we're going now. On top of that, this project has gone a bit astray here. All our Zoom meetings couldn't protect us from opening an Instagram account that now, like a splinter in your foot, starts to annoy you especially when you think about it.
With Theo in the luggage, this can just be overplayed, just straight ahead, always along the sea. Adana, Kumru and Kokoreç do their best to distract us from the realization, but slowly it bubbles. And in the long run, this kind of diet cannot be sustained. Too many unanswered questions and too little space in the car. The situation doesn't get any better by constantly throwing cameras - from our infinite supply of camera equipment - on the floor, Birkenstock splitting, or unpleasant rashes reducing the speed of movement. It comes what must come, Theo flees by long-distance bus, and what remains is the feeling of a protracted confrontation. The rage first suggests a fistfight next to the garbage cans, but unfortunately/fortunately we are too boring for that. As boring as we seem to be, we sit down at the table, exchange arguments and propose solutions to the problem. Thereby a small side insight. Solving conflicts without a certain amount of ignorance, incomprehension or at least sometimes undifferentiated insults can be unbearably unsatisfying. Playing paintball to compensate doesn't convince me yet - sounds like the USA somehow.
Spoiler: the fistfight might have been better! There is still a fight part 2 to come, and if I'm honest, I think there will be a few more. But before someone insinuates that we don't have a good time, he's wrong. To prove it to you, we must have taken 1000 pictures of us looking happy. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)