Baggage allowance (published in Hello Alanya, August 2013)

Last month I have been in Amsterdam again for couple of days. It’s been a long time that I haven’t been there. I enjoyed every moment of it. The best was to meet up with my friends. Looking into their dear faces and catching up on small and big things in our daily lives, now so different from each other compared to back in the days. ‘So how is life in Turkey’? they ask. What can I say. It’s wonderful and it’s challenging. It’s lovely and warm but it can be tough too. It’s more laid back but also more adventurous. I love it, like I loved living in Amsterdam, but very differently.

 Another thing I absolutely must do when I’m in Amsterdam is to get on my loyal old bike again, which is always there waiting for me, and bicycle along the beautiful canals. It’s a joy that is hard to explain, one must feel it to understand it. Only then do I feel like I’m truly back in the city. Breathing in the fresh air. Marveling at the one of kind facades of the canal houses. Crossing the tiny bridges in town and checking out shop windows. Usually with a coffee in one hand, the other hand loosely on the breaks. All while avoiding to bump into other bikers or tourists.

I feel that I’m back in my old hometown. I can even still feel a sense of belonging, as if nothing has changed since I left. And yet, everything is different this time. I am a visitor. My time is precious and I must plan my days in a way that I can do, see, buy and eat everything that’s on my list. I don’t want to miss out on anything and anyone that I have missed. It makes everything so much more intense. And special. Even the colder days with its eternal grey skies seem to have something poetic about them. By the time the last day of my stay arrives I feel a little melancholic about leaving. Goodbye’s always  have that effect on me. Especially when travelling between old home and new home. I look forward to going home to Alanya. But there is so much I wish I could take with me from this amazing city and its lifestyle. And my friends first of foremost. 

But once at the airport it dawns on me. There is a strict baggage allowance when traveling. We can’t just bring everything with us to where we are going. We are forced to make choices and decide what is essential to us. Only one piece is allowed. Everything else is excessive baggage, heavy to carry and  even a risk to our safety. If you want to enjoy your trip it’s always better to travel light. The whole point of leaving a place, or closing a chapter in your life for that matter, is to let go. There will be new things waiting for us where we are going.  And to give them a place in our new life we have to create space first, by leaving pieces of our old life behind us. They belong to a certain place and time, where they will always keep their value. It’s a place we can still visit from time to time and enjoy. But we can never take it with us, its meaning would only get lost on the way. Just like with my dear old bike back in Amsterdam. I love to use it there. But taking it with me because I miss it would make no sense at all. Using it here in this crazy traffic isn’t exactly what I call joyful, it would probably only scare the hell out of me.