Where I've Been..

The past four months have been real hard. And I dreamt of the day I sit in my own house, take photos of my regular morning, tell you all about my journey since I abandoned this blog. But now that I have settled in things are slightly different than I imagined. Let me explain to you the lack of photos in this post and the lack of quality in that one photo.

When I first fell in love with photography I directly decided to buy my own DSLR.

It took me three years of collecting cash, I was too young to work back then but I saved money from Eids and money from after graduation and so on. Where young people get their money from basically.

The exact day I reached my cash goal I ordered a camera. And it was basically one of the happiest days of my life when it arrived. That camera became my best friend. If it could speak it would tell you all about me; it would have been the 'thing' that knows me best.

One day I broke the lens of that camera, and I had to exchange for a new one as the warranty subjected me to. I was so heartbroken, a brand new camera was surprising to most people not what I wanted. I remember crying so damn much when I put it back in the box and gave it to my uncle to exchange it for me. And if I had to do it again today I'd be just as heartbroken, nothing has changed, that -somewhat silly to some people, part of me hasn't died yet.

A few days later the same exact model of my camera arrived in a brand new, never opened, box. It wasn't the same to me but this was my new best friend.

Not to catch you by surprise but I did love that camera. It also became my everything and it meant to me just as much as the old one did. This new camera saw more of my life, a better part of my life. It celebrated way too many happy memories with me. And dear God, it was not just a camera. People who treat things as things would never understand.

All fairytales aside. I have lost this friend. To some level, it felt like I've lost everything.

I was riding on a train from Munich to Berlin on new year's eve. And, me the trusting naïve person, put my camera bag with the lens and everything inside wrapped around my carryon's handle and I left it on the luggage rack. In Germany, I have done this many times, leave my bags at the door, so easy to grab and go, but it never happened. The train I was on costed the minimum of 60 Euros per ride. I never imagined that a person who had this much cash to spend would be a thief. But apparently, the world is uglier than I hoped for it to be. When we went down my camera bag and carryon were gone.

The next 30 seconds were so slow. The realisation of life with no camera hit me like high tide and dragged me underwater until I hit the bottom of the ocean and I couldn't breathe. I gasped for air and I said to my friend that's it, it's gone.

All my German friends and family told me not to hope for anything. And I didn't. I knew it was the end. I filed a police report and did everything I could but I haven't and probably will not hear from them ever.

And now I open my blog and I think, is this the end of it? What is my blog without pictures?

See the past four months of my life have been so tough. But this was the toughest thing I've ever faced. It got me down so much. It kills my insides every single day. With every sunshine through the window, with every beautiful palace, I enter, with every beautiful snowflake landing on my wrist, with every smile on a friend's face, with every frame I wish I could capture. It kills me so many times in a single day. And it never gets easy. But I remind myself that everything happens for a reason, and God has wished for this for a grander purpose that I am too small to understand.

I opened my blog today to write this post wanting to quit blogging. And the page of the stats was the first thing I saw. I'm going, to be honest I was so shocked. People from all around the world still visit this blog. Even though I haven't posted anything in months. I still have views every single day since I left. And I just can't abandon ship. Even if there is only one person who still cares about my rambling I will not leave. I will figure this out.

Until then...

P.s: I can put a few hundreds and buy myself a new DSLR. But if you know me you'd know how attached I get to things. And the camera I buy is a camera that is going to stay with me until one of us dies, or in another ugly case, it gets stolen. So I want to invest in a really good camera, I want to take my time and gather a few thousand and get something that I dream of. I have been forced to change, so I will use this opportunity because it wouldn't have happened any other way.

Wiesbaden

It bugs me, looking at all those people and not knowing the story of any of them.

As I and my cousin were in Prague a nice old American woman puzzled by the way we looked asked where we were from. I paused.

A question like than you answer in a yoctosecond;

What's your name? Leen

How old are you? 21

What's your religion? Muslim

Where do you come from? Pause.

I looked over at my cousin as she answered: Jordan.

It's not new to me pausing after such a question, it has always happened, where I'm from has always been an answer that takes more than one word. But this incident is stuck in my head because the answer that was on the tip of my tongue was Germany.

We had come all the way from Germany, I have been living in Germany for a while, I have a life here... so much that my inner mind thinks it's home.

I have got to know Wiesbaden really deeply. I embraced it like a friend that needs to open up and I listened to all of its stories. It showed me everything and told me about everything, except for the people. Wiesbaden never told me the story of this relatively old lady in red hiking clothes who comes to Starbucks every single day sits for two hours and plays Farmville on her iPad with enjoyment, or this young lady with the beautiful smile who works at this small cafe she spreads good vibes around like she was born to do it, or this young boy who walks around the streets every day pushing an old lady enough to be his grandma on a wheelchair and buys her a treat from a different place every day, or that old Asian man going around town in rollerblades making the streets his stage and performing to all the people, or this lady with white hair and a hatchback who walks around the train station every day for hours without getting on any train, or that man who sits in the tunnel of the train station every day and plays his accordion creating the warmest welcome to everyone who enters the city.. Those people and more have become part of my life, part of my daily routine, I know what they look like but not where they come from. And I wish I knew.

There is nothing worse than having to leave a friend you got really close to, and Wiesbaden was like a friend to me, it was more than just a city.

I write this now with so much gratitude that I had the chance in this life to live in this city and get to know it as much as I did. Full of gratitude for the eternal friends it gave me, for all the beautiful memories.

I will miss its sky, I will miss its sun. I'll miss the streets and knowing exactly how long it takes the traffic light to open. I'll miss my dear friend and her laughing at my fond love of ice cream. I'll miss the Starbucks and the Dominos where I spent most of my time. I will miss the benches where I sat in the middle of the night hunting for the internet. I'll miss the parks. I'll miss the shop owners. I'll miss needing something and knowing exactly where to get it from. I'll even miss Vodafone's showroom one of the most hellish places for me. And most of all I will miss my home. The first place to ever be mine. I have loved that house more than I have ever loved a bunch of walls and a roof. I'll miss watching the stupid german shows on the small tv screen, I'll miss having to turn off all the electrical devices so I could turn on the oven without the electricity cutting off, I'll miss the long days and nights spent on the glass of the window watching people coming in and out of the supermarket, I'll miss unlocking 100 doors to get to my apartment, I'll miss the weird smell that my house had, I'll miss my plant and talking to it about my day, I'll miss my neighbours, the noisy one who woke me up every single day to the annoying sound of the drill and the lovely one who set me to sleep every night to the beautiful sound of the piano. I'll miss all of it, and I love all of it. Every sky high and every rock bottom, it was all beautiful.

No matter how much times passes, in Wiesbaden, I'll always find a home.

"You never really leave a place you love, part of it you take with you, leaving part of yourself behind"

Until next time..

Füssen

If this is earth what is heaven like?

The only thing that went through my head as I walked the beautiful land of Füssen.

I read this today and I just had to share it here and I found it really relevant so I'll just paste it here for you:

In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other:“Do you believe in life after delivery?” The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”

The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”

The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”

The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”

The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover, if there is life, then why has no one has ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery, there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”

The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”

The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her, this world would not and could not exist.”

Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”

To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and you really listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”

It blew me away and wondered how it never occurred to me before. it is such a beautiful example.

Heaven to us is like life to babies in the womb. How huge and beautiful and limitless it is is not something we can ever imagine. But may we all get there, Amen.

Back to Füssen, I have never seen anything so beautiful, and being there in autumn just made it so much better! The views were incredible, the lakes were too blue and everything was too green, the air was clean and the people were nice, it was all perfect. Honestly, I can easily say I had a heavenly vacation.

If you are ever in Germany please take the time to visit Füssen, you will not regret it! Visit the castles and the lakes, it will be an unforgettable couple of days. I promise.

I am definitely going back, three days were not enough time to enjoy all of it.

I've seen beautiful photos of it in winter and the weather in summer would be perfect, and I bet spring would be amazing! To visit Füssen in all four semesters is officially a goal of mine. So until we meet next time, Füssen.

And until next time readers...