It seems like most everyone I know is working on repatriating rather than expatriating. Like Cheryl (moving my very favorite city!), and Katherine, and my ex-coworker Róisín, who just left Frankfurt after thirteen years of living here to move back to Ireland and become a teacher. And here I am, 3.5 months into ex-pat land, moving to a new apartment quite soon (for which I am only moderately equipped, but an IKEA run will happen soon, and in the meantime I am quite delighted with my impulse purchase of these spoons the other day -- I may not have forks or knives or, in fact, plates, but I have got spoons!).
I don't feel totally new here anymore -- I don't get lost walking around the Innenstadt; I have a working grasp of the public transportation system and how to bike to work; the German keyboard seems more natural than the American one on my laptop now (though this latter is just sad, since it means that I have been working too much!) -- but I don't feel totally settled yet, either. Summertime, everyone keeps telling me. Just wait for summer.
I don't think Frankfurt stands much of a chance of knocking NYC out of my number one favorite-city-ever spot, but I guess it doesn't have to. One of my college friends was born and raised in L.A. and had no intentions of ever living anywhere else. "It's the best city in the world," she said. "Why would I want to be elsewhere?" I didn't get it, where L.A. was concerned, but oh, I feel that way about New York. And as much as I miss it right now, it's strangely comforting, too, to know that I feel that way about a place -- and to know that I'm going to go back, that that is where I want to be. It's nice to have that to look forward to, nebulous though my date of return might be.
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