BONN, Germany – Grey is the color of departure, that short
kiss of goodbye, that open-ended farewell. Of fourteen hours of separation.
There are no warm hues, no kaleidoscope, no crimson orange sun on the horizon
nor are there denim-color clouds above. There is nothing but gray, as gray as
the last hour of a rainy day, as drab as the last smoke from a smoker’s burned
lips.
The clock reads 8:44 pm but the sun has yet to set. It is already pitch-black elsewhere in the
world but not here in Europe. Yet, the long hours of daylight bring me no warm,
especially not today as I stand on the dusty pavement of platform 1 at the
Grand Central Station of Bonn and watch the red and gray IC train leave the
rustic tracks and disappear toward a place called Hannover. I bade Jes goodbye as he left to pursue a total stranger in that far-away city to talk about photography.
The departing train leaves those left behind with nothing but the smallest
particles of dust, too small to see but large enough to represent the feeling
of melancholy on anyone left alone on that empty platform.
What follows after the deafening sound of a speeding train
is total silence, a dingy emptiness. And then the footsteps of hundreds of passengers walking
toward the rest of their lives as they wait for the next train.
Train stations are a stark metaphor of life. It represents
hellos and goodbyes; of endless journeys; of people coming and going,
disappearing into different directions. It’s about people moving on, moving
away, moving to nowhere or moving to stop again. It’s about getting lost along
the way and for the lucky ones, finding their way back or to those who choose
otherwise, it’s about choosing to die by jumping off the tracks.
It’s about getting derailed. It’s navigating through the
labyrinth of the subway at least 10 feet below the ground.
It was getting dark when I left the train station. It would be the first time on this trip that I would be
walking alone on the cobbled streets of Bonn, back to a two-star hotel that had
been our home for days since we hopped on the train from Frankfurt.
I managed to make it back to our borrowed room, thankful to
my heart for lending some buoyancy when I need it, especially on the heaviest
of days.
I spent the rest of the evening packing my stuff while the
rest of Germany or perhaps the whole of Europe – in street cafes and bars, over
beers and cigarettes -- watched Portugal
battle with Spain on a jam packed football field in Poland.
I was, as always, eager to go and leave again to yet another
place and to go back to Manila in a few days. I could never get used to the coldness and
grey skies of Europe, notwithstanding the fact that I have visited more countries in
this continent than I have ever done in Asia or America. I don’t really mind the
weather. I have a wardrobe to keep me warm for any country on the world map but
even the thickest of clothes can never warm the heart.
And so I bade the cobbled stones and the Renaissance
architecture of Bonn goodbye, the blue cheese and the ice-cold beer, the
euphoria in the air over Spain’s victory the night before and walked back to the
Grand Central Station of Bonn to take the train to where my home really is whichever part
of the world I may be. See you in three hours.
