A Familiar Staircase

If there was a way to capture this smell in a perfume, I would.

I'm carrying a suitcase and bags of leftover food up to Kendon's apartment in Köln, and I'm breathing deeply. I'm not out of breath, but I'd lie and say I was if anyone saw me.

I'm savoring a very specific smell of damp stone and cigarette residue that I've smelled in staircases in 3 continents so far. It reminds me of hostels in Europe and apartments in San Francisco and Hyderabad and Brooklyn and Florence and the Bronx and emerging from subways and stepping into basilicas or museums or theaters or cafes or bookstores or record stores or, or...

It smells like a feeling that's ever-present yet nostalgic at the same time. Like I'm on an adventure with people I love, who are and will be the constant while the backdrops of cafes and paintings and languages and histories fluctuate.

This smell reminds me how much I love my friends.

I imagine the market for this smell is slim... and I might have to learn how to make it myself. Köln is probably a good place to start, right?

Heiligabend im Flugzeug / Christmas Eve on a Plane

"Oh man I'm so linguistically unprepared," I type into my phone. "This is the first time I'm linguistically unprepared after knowing I should be prepared."

I didn't know I should be prepared in 2011 when I went to Greece not knowing how to read or speak in Greek. The consistent feeling of not truly being able to engage with the people or environment around me made me commit to knowing at least the basics of the language whenever I travel. So I've practiced Italian and Polish and Japanese and Korean. I've kept up with Italian because I like it.

But my trip to Germany is sort of last minute, and I don't have the time or mental energy to learn German on my own.

"This is the first time you're traveling to another country like a normal person," Adi responds. Julia's "like a true American" hits my inbox soon after. 

I settle into my seat and prepare for my 9 hour flight to Munich. I want to try and sleep now even though it's only 4pm because it's after midnight in Germany. But I also need to eat dinner, which will take a couple of hours. 

I decide to watch "Das perfekte Geheimnis", a German comedy from 2019, on the plane. Periodically, when words are repeated enough, I rewind a few seconds and practice them under my breath.

Unfortunately they're words like scheiße, danke, nein, kuss, and "spektakuläre anekdote" said very sarcastically.

No matter. Progress is progress.

 

I'm somewhere over Coral Harbour and Igloolik in Northeastern Canada. Soon I'll be above Greenland. 6 hours from now I'll be in Munich.

***

After a long nap, I begin looking for a German TV show with English subtitles. Finding one becomes increasingly frustrating as I realize subtitles aren't available in any language even when the German dubs are avaliable for English shows. So, I watch the one thing I know almost word for word:

Water... Earth... Fire... Luft.

Luft? Huh.

Kendon's hand-written notes for language practice