Everything that goes up must come down, and in my case, it went back up again. After having lived in Germany and returning to Chile, a moment came when a crucial decision had to be made: school was over, and it was time to figure out what I would do with the rest of my life. Go to university? Start a career as an artist? I wasn’t sure. The only thing I was sure of was that someday I would have to return to that country that had welcomed me with open (and freezing) arms for those four years. My parents had already made a plan for my siblings an me since we left, and I, being the oldest, would be the first to experience such a journey.
I arrived at the Nuremberg airport with my mother, the city where we would stay for a short while before traveling again. Everything looked as if it were frozen in time, just as I remembered it. Although I had lived in Erlangen, Nuremberg was also part of my childhood, which I remembered only faintly in comparison. What affected me the most were the smells, bringing back memories that had been more deeply buried than I had thought.
Before officially settling in Germany, I had to get a visa called the Working Holiday, which allowed me to stay in the country for a full year. That was my parents’ main plan: to spend a year in Germany, certify our English and German, and then return to Chile to do whatever we wanted with our lives. But by then, we would already have a foundation and maturity to build on. To obtain the visa, we had to travel to Zagreb, Croatia. Only there was a German embassy that would allow me to schedule an appointment and apply for the visa. We also passed through Venice, Italy, since my mother couldn’t miss the chance to see that city again, without knowing when it might be her last time.