Change

There are countless travel destinations in the world – sprawling cities, adorable villages, stunning national parks, brilliant white beaches, etc. etc.  I can’t find the statistics to support this statement because Google doesn’t know either, but it’s a fair assumption that you could travel every day for your entire life and still not see even a tiny fraction of what this planet has to offer. But despite the plethora of destinations, people often return to places they’ve already been.

Why do we do this?  Usually it’s because we know people there, we loved the sights or the atmosphere or the food, or we want more time to explore the countless things we missed. I constantly re-visit certain destinations, for these and other reasons. But regardless of the “why,” every time I find myself in even a quasi-familiar place, I find myself comparing my past and present selves, contemplating the ways in which I’ve changed and – more commonly – stayed the same.

Neuschwanstein in 2004 and 2012

The first time I visited Heidelberg, I was a sixteen. I exhibited the typical characteristics of a teenager: I was bright-eyed and stupid, fueled purely by the volatile combination of hormones and rebellion. My worldview was hopelessly naive – I hesitate to use the word “innocent” for reasons obvious to those of you who know me – and I was so concerned with fitting into my new group of American friends that I completely ignored the foreign culture around me. Oh, and I had terrible fashion sense (exhibit A, pink pants to the left). But I was also excited and happy because I was three weeks into my first true international experience (besides Canada, but that never counts).

Seriously, look at those pants. Heidelberg in 2004 and 2015

When I decided to return 11 years later, I found the city remarkably unchanged. European cities tend to be very secure in their identities, set in their ways like nonagenarian humans who only change when it damn well suits them. The ruined piecemeal castle still perched in the misty hills above the city, a weary knight watching over his citizens. Souvenir stands selling the same things still clung barnacle-like to the base of the 700-year-old cathedral. Confused clumps of Japanese tourists swarmed across the grand stone foot-bridge, following cheery pink signs toted by their tour leaders. The only real scrap of evidence that we were no longer in the early 2000s was the prevalence of skinny jeans and selfie sticks.

 
The castle ruins and a painting on a streetside electrical box

But although the city was much the same, I couldn’t say the same for myself.

On the surface, I only looked slightly different:  my laugh lines had deepened from countless hilarious conversations, my cheeks had lost their baby fat, and I was a little more physically scarred from various undergraduate misadventures.  Unfortunately, my terrible fashion sense has not improved.

The experiences I’d weathered, though, had done quite a number on my personality.  Since that day 11 years ago, I’ve gotten a SCUBA license and dived with sea turtles on the Great Barrier Reef, snowboarded down double-black runs on 13,000-foot Rocky Mountains, been used as a jungle gym by an orphaned baby monkey, camped alone on the border of Mexico, been bitten in the face by a juvenile pelican, pledged a sorority and became its vice president, earned a high school AND bachelor’s degree – both with honors, mind you – and survived it all long enough to move to the Black Forest to start a Master’s program.  In between all those adventures I’d also learned how to “adult,” coped with heartbreak, made new friends while letting go of some of the old, confronted demons and turned myself into an outgoing introvert.

You can’t experience all that and come out the other end unscathed.  It’s safe to say, though, that I’ve turned myself into the kind of person I always wanted to be.

  

It was almost hard to focus on the beautiful castle ruins in between thinking all these ~deep thoughts~, but I managed to take some nice pictures.  It’s a remarkable place, built up over many centuries and comprised of myriad building styles and ideologies (one building is covered in statues from Pagan and Christian mythology). It was destroyed by a series of unfortunate events in the 1700s – guerrilla mining by the French had cleaved many of the stone towers in two, followed by a lightning strike that quickly annihilated the other half of the castle. It was subsequently abandoned and forgotten, left to the the whims of the elements until a French romanticist wandered through its dilapidated halls and saw the beauty that remained there.