After more or less two or three months, I am back. From now on, I will do all the writing again and Lars can concentrate on what he does best: planning and booking.
This doesn’t mean that I have completely recovered. I actually went back to work after our long summer trip in August. To be honest, although I had thoroughly enjoyed all our trips, I felt a relief when I could go back to work and make myself useful again. But after one month, the fatigue and the lack of concentration came back and worsened every hour. Soon I had to stay at home with even less agreeable symptoms: a lack of appetite, a need for sleep (of more than 15 hours a day) and an increasing aggressive behavior. Or in other words, from a moderate depression I had evolved to a very serious one.
Right now, I am facing at least another year at home, to do a lot of healing. I rest a lot, take new medication, see a psychologist and a psychiatrist, both of whom seem to be very happy that my aggresivity has finally come to the surface. Because after all, a depression is based on latent aggressivity. But giving that negative feeling a place in my new life was going to be harder than I ever thought. You see, normally I am a patient, calm and friendly person, who has now become a monster who could snap at any moment. For example, I attacked people with cheeseburgers in a supermarket, because they were blocking the only exit. And whenever I was in the car, I honked the horn constantly, while yelling mean things to people who were not driving fast enough.
2015 hasn’t been a good year for Lars either. In July, when we were traveling around in Albania, his mother died. He also lost his driver’s license for seven months, NOT because of drunk driving. I want to be very clear about this; Lars is NOT a criminal. We were both the victim of some unfortunate circumstances. Anyway, we quickly had to adapt to a new way of living. We do our grocery shopping with the tram, go to my psychologist with the bus and when we have to be in a different part of Brussels, we use the metro. And last but not least, we had to change our way of travel.
Lars and I decided for a week trip to Germany, by train of course.We would start in Groningen for one night, then continue to stay with friends in Hamburg, afterwards enjoy three nights in our beloved Berlin and ending our trip in Bonn. We were both very excited: our first trip after the big one, and traveling with the train, my depression and new bank cards.
New bank cards? Oh yes, you see: less than a week before we left, someone stole the wallet of Lars. To cut a long story short, my cash money and bank and credit cards were in it too. Luckily, we soon had new bank cards. Lars quickly obtained a new Visa card from his bank, but without the pin code, which would probably arrive at home when we were in Hamburg. We decided to go for prepaid credit cards as a back-up; these would allow us to keep a better eye on our expenses. The only disadvantage is that it needs three days to put money on it.
Murphy’s Law kept us company during the whole trip. The last train we had to take for Groningen had to stop in the middle of nowhere because of an accident. We had to wait for half an hour before we could continue with buses and by the time we finally reached Groningen, there was no time left to do some sightseeing. And since we were far away from the center, we decide to eat in the restaurant of the hotel. A choice we would regret later…
In Hamburg, our luck seemed to turn. We stayed with friends of Lars, who turned out to be very lovely people. They could care of breakfast and dinner and we could sleep in one of the two guestrooms. But Murphy hadn’t forgotten about us. When we went sightseeing, Lars broke the zipper of my handbag and I freaked out… I could open my handbag, but not close again, giving pickpockets an easy opportunity to steal from us. It took us more than an hour to get it fixed and then we took an expensive taxi to go back to Lars’s friends.
In Berlin, the situation became worse. The first day was a very rainy and windy one, so a visit to one or two museums seemed like a good idea. Lars and I discovered that the money of the prepaid credit card was already gone, but we still had our bank cards. I had payed for drinks the night before with it and it worked. The lady in the museum tried several times, but my bank card seemed to be on strike. I asked if a supervisor could help us, an idea she agreed with
In the meantime, one of her colleagues had asked Lars to stand aside; the supervisor would help us in her office, we just had to wait a couple of minutes. Unfortunately, everybody had heard the message, except me. So when the lady turned her attention to the next clients, I became very annoyed. Twice I made it clear to her that she wasn’t finished with us, twice I was simply but politely ignored. This made me so furious that I called her a “b****” and I also threw in a “F*** you”.
The atmosphere in the museum changed completely in one instant. Everyone turned against us and the museum personnel threatened to call the police. Because, my dear readers, in Germany you don’t raise your voice in public and you certainly don’t use those bad words. But then, those Germans started calling us names as well: we were “poor people” who “had to go back to Belgium”. With my middle finger held up high, we left the museum. To be honest, I soon regretted my behavior, but the damage was done.
Back in the hotel, we discovered another disaster. We tried to charge our prepaid credit card, but realized we had forgotten our bank card reader! Lars called his Danish bank at least three times, explained our situations, but they refused to give him the pin code of his Visa card. There was only one thing to do: go back home. Luckily, we had already paid our hotel bill and in the train stations we managed to pay the tickets without a pin code. This was the first time that Lars and I couldn’t wait to be home again!
In the meantime, we have learned a lot of things:
- The sooner you buy train tickets, the cheaper they are.
- Keep a sharp eye on your prepaid credit card! We were surprised when we saw how quickly we had spent the original € 200! And don’t forget your card reader! (It is now in my camera bag)
- Instead of booking hotels in the middle of nowhere, we should be closer to the center, so that we can choose a restaurant according to our budget. The hotel in Groningen for example charged us more than € 75 for two courses and two beers.
- And why not going to smaller destinations? Most of them have train stations as well and tend to be cheaper.
- When Lars notices that I become agitated and angry, he has to put me aside and let him handle the situation.
Anyway, we are now planning our last trip of the year and looking forward to visit Christmas markets. In January and February, Lars is going to concentrate on getting his driver’s license back, while I will do a lot of resting and healing. In the meantime, I will post regularly on this website, because we still have to tell about our trips of this spring and summer.
