“You can pick breakfast. I trust you.”
I met Cia and Hoa during a study abroad welcome dinner, and we’d only known each other for a little more than half a day when we submitted our Meldezettels, residence registration forms, to the nearest district office together. Our second day together in Vienna, none of us really knew the city or each other, but they followed me to a nearby bakery jet lagged and with an unexplainable sense of trust. Cia ordered a chocolate croissant, which I would learn after two more café runs was extremely typical of her.
“You okay?”
Koko fanned me with her map of the World Museum as we stood in the historical instruments exhibit and listened to our tour guide explain how he built a pseudo-trumpet out of PVC pipes. Summer in Vienna surprised me with an unbearable wave of heat. It lasted only two weeks but felt like an eternity under the sun and in buildings with no AC. Koko and I tried our best to make the most of our free admission, but we ultimately ended up speeding through rows of medieval armor and cases of ancient Chinese jade in search of a place to cool down. Half an hour later, we ended up in the 15th district buying tupperware from Ikea and cotton candy grapes from Penny Market. The long U-Bahn subway ride back to our apartments in the 2nd district made the day feel like three, but we still remembered to split our salt and pepper when we got home.
“Can you write a poem for me?”
Hoa asked, having already read a poem I published a day before. We’d just returned to our rooms after an unintentional 40-minute trek back from the student center. The plan was to only walk around the 1st district and gaze at the Christmas lights already twinkling in late October. But we caught the U-Bahn just in time, only for it to be too crowded, and within seconds we found ourselves walking the rest of the way back home together. The pretty lights illuminated our path as we breathed stories of the stars and ghosts and deja vu into the chilly evening air. This is not a poem per se, but this will have to do.
“I miss you guys,”
Hoa texted me and Cia in our group chat towards the end of our weeklong Fall break. Cia had just returned from Romania, Hoa was on a bus ride back from Berlin, and I sat on a train departing from Munich. Back in the States, we went to colleges miles apart, and before that, lived completely unaware of each other’s existence in wholly different parts of the world. But aside from break, we gossiped in between classes, got lost in new countries, laughed at our own jokes and sent Instagram reels of new cafés we wanted to try together in Europe–so much so that a time in which we did not know each other seemed vastly distant and almost impossible.
“I wish we could live here forever,”
Koko told me as we roamed the streets of the first district searching for the perfect gelato. I’m never too sure if I ever fully miss places or if I simply miss the people there. I do miss rushing down Kärtnerstraße to class every day, no matter how suffocatingly crowded it was with tourists and locals alike. I miss the beautiful Palais Corbelli, where Koko and I spent three hours in film music class every Wednesday at 9 am and left each lecture with the urge to watch a new movie. I miss the kitchen of The Social Hub, where my friends and I became pseudo-chefs and organized potlucks with too much food. And of course, I miss losing my cash to the endless number of Würstlstands and Döner stands on every block. But a greater part of me misses the strangers who became my friends and made Vienna feel like home within a matter of days.
“We could hear you whistling from all the way down the hall even with your door closed.”
An instinct to whistle always takes over me when the silence seems too loud and I simply must leave an audible mark in space. Normally my whistling signals my entry, but this time, it invited Cia and Koko into my room as I begrudgingly packed my suitcases for my exit from Vienna. Packing really should have only taken two hours, maybe three, but at some point, I forgot I was leaving at all and we spent most of the night singing the entire Wicked soundtrack together–first the English version, then the German one. Perhaps prolonging our waking memories and escaping the dark behind our sleeping eyes was the work of our own silly delusions. If I didn’t pack, I would never have to leave. We added as many minutes as we could to our time together before finally taking a nap in the early morning that lasted two hours at best.
“When you’re in German class, just turn your head to the right, and I’ll be right there like I’ve always been.”
Cia helped me drag my luggage to the airport the day of my flight back to New Jersey. The few hours I had to catch the plane was cursed with out-of-service escalators, and it almost seemed like a sign for us to just drop it all and stay. We climbed the stairs, weighed down by the heaviness of my baggage. We hugged each other among a sea of travelers waiting in line for security, and it took the remaining resolve left in me to save my tears and say a proper,
“Auf Wiedersehen.”
Until we meet again.