Don’t I know you from somewhere?

THU 10 June 2010:
It still feels strange to sleep in the Globspot (DigiNomads sleeping and working place) in Amsterdam a city in which my earliest memories are kept I travel like a stranger in my own city. The first years I stayed with my parents but while I’m now traveling and working at the same time this didn’t seem like such a good idea. This morning I visited my dear mother and father, still living in the house where I grew up. And not only it still looked like that time it still was like that time. A computer was nowhere to be found a mobile phone couldn’t be tracked in this house So plans with my parents always had to be made in advance, while a quick text message isn’t possible. But what ever happened to them would always be reachable and that felt comfortable.
Strangely enough the train trip back to Brussels was rather melancholic. Although I come to Amsterdam a few times a year I had big difficulties saying goodbye this time so I kept watching the city from my window while the train drove out of the city. And suddenly I realized. What had started as an experiment to still keep track of something familiar after the last houses of Amsterdam had faded away, had in the next hour turned in to a way of saying good bey. And to say good bey to something, I thought when the train was moving on, you had to create a internal distance. You had to shift the silent- and diffuse officiousness of the thing you were strained with into a clarity that made clear to you what it meant. And this meant that it had to become something with distinct contours. It had been a month since I had been in Amsterdam. I had the feeling that the train that was moving out of the station left a piece of my behind. A little bit it seamed like I was drifting away onto an open, cold see, on an ice rock that had been loosened because of a small earthquake (based on: Nachttrein naar Lissabon, Pascal Mercier).
Back home I immediately checked my flight of next day to New York. And skyped with a contact over there to check if everything was still in order and still expecting me. I phoned my parents that I was home safe and checked my last e-mail messages. I already did some work in the train but to make up with the time I lost yesterday I worked a little more now.
And before I went to bed I wanted to chat a little bit with my girlfriend so I started my MSN-messenger and got lucky she was online. See was in Mexico right now for some weeks doing a project on housing in slumps. She was going back home on Saturday. So we wouldn’t meet for a long time. She had a big surprise for me she had a ticket booked that made a stop in New York. So she decided to stay in New York for some days.
I didn’t sleep that good for a long time and sunday I would sleep with her next to me.......