What's Melbourne

And I’ve come; you were warm, hot even, gorgeous, lively, loving. It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve left you - your crazy summer, your jasmine smelling streets, friends’ babies made after I moved, friends, friends’ friends I’ve met for the first time, my Michael whom I’ve seen only once - behind, without any anticipation of coming back anytime soon. You were a great surprise, the first time, and this time. Until then; that unforeseeable future day I’ll see you again. Thank you.

I’m coming to you my beloved Melbourne. Who would’ve thought? For work and for a very short time but I’m coming to your late spring, to your trams, to the pizza smell of Lygon Street, to the cycle path by the Yarra, to Grub Food Van, to the graffiti in Fitzroy, to friends, to two new babies, to Shandong Mama dumplings, to Michael, to friends, to your sun… Late November, open your arms, I missed you so much and I already dread the day I’ll have to leave your warmth and come back to the darkest of the dark time here. Wait for me, My Love,

I miss you .

Difficult to believe I left my beloved Melbourne exactly one year ago. Today, in my beloved Helsinki I'm celebrating Juhannus with already dear friends. I'm lucky. But also not. I miss Melbourne. I'd miss here if I left. I have heartpieces scattered around the world.

Sunday. I’m thinking Melbourne. Autumn is falling upon her while here I wait for a never-seem-to-be-coming spring. I was warned about the winter’s dark which surprisingly I managed to survive, yet no one has ever warned me about how frustrating the spring can be. I’m still wearing thicker clothes than I did in the peak of winter in Melbourne. The days are already very long which messes up with my body clock as significantly as the dark days did. But I can’t complain. Let there be light. I haven’t been missing Melbourne for a while. But today, all of a sudden, she’s sweetly haunting me, calling me, perhaps jealous because I’m going to my very first love -Rome, the city I wanted to live in for many years long before there was any hint of moving to antipodes in the flow of my life- on Tuesday. I haven’t seen Rome since 1999; now I’m 18 years older and have been transformed by the lush of New Zealand and fire of Australian bush, by manuka, banksia, roos, keas, and every single amazingly wonderful detail that antipodes has thrown at my feet. How will I feel in a thousands of years of old city of marble? I’m very curious.

I’m cheating; I shouldn’t be writing here as I am not in Melbourne anymore. But our experiences with cities that we lived in, we traveled to, we loved is not bound by physical interactions only. In between my two flights from Helsinki to Aalborg I am sitting in Copenhagen airport, outside in cold, drinking my shitty Starbucks coffee, and imagining my Melbourne trying to sleep in the heat of the night, sweaty, salty, perhaps even smelly. Oh but no, you had your showers before bed, right? I don’t know how many hours of my life passed in airports, in all main cities between the antipodes and Europe over eleven and half years. Airports are in-between places, therefore, they’re good for reflection. They don’t impose themselves on us emotionally like cities do. Before I moved to Melbourne I never imagined I’d fall in love with it. I never imagined it’d hold a few of the people now I love most, or that I’d cry for days before and after making a decision to leave it for Helsinki. All of this happened in the course of three years. Melbourne has become the first place I loved living in. I still miss her, still think of her as I’m falling to sleep. Cities are like clothes we wear; they don’t stay on anyone else as they do on us, we become through wearing them, therefore we are a different person in every city. Now I am used to the Nordic silence, the beauty of frozen sea has replaced the beauty of ocean when I need solitude. The taciturn, elegant, distant yet direct and open Finns have replaced the loud, the lively, yet rather puzzling and diplomatic strayans if I may generalise. The coffee I’m afraid is a lost case; the best Helsinki coffee is still not good enough and yet Finns are the most coffee consuming society in the world. Helsinki is growing on me though. I may one day cry for Helsinki too. I wonder if I’ll ever move back to Melbourne. If I do I wonder if I’ll like it as much. Surely it’ll be a different experience; I’ll have changed, acquainted with Nordic ways, maybe I’ll think it is “too much”. Will the ice cream at Spring St grocer be as amazing? Will the NGV still be putting up gigs on Friday nights? Will Hosier Lane still be a tourist attraction? Will all the men I flirted with be still around? There’re breaking points of falling distant by way of falling apart. How far into the future will I again be a stranger for Melbourne? For now I can still feel it’s pulse. Memories of joy and heartbreak are so fresh. But time never dies, right? And circle is not round.

I hear Melbourne's spring is being temperamental and has been frustrating people. How unlike Melbourne! Oh, I miss you. In these early but already too much dark and cold days of not even winter but autumn, I torment myself by way of checking insta accounts dedicated to Melbourne. Again, romanticising. I did this for Istanbul for many many years; now I'm only a short fight away from Istanbul, she has become "easy" and therefore not the centre of my attention. Also, my close friendships in Istanbul have been going downhill and many attachments are now broken whereas there're a few people that I miss a lot in Melbourne. I should stop this, right now!

Funny. I'm still keeping my membership to Melbourne buy&sell, flatmate etc Facebook groups. I read emails from The Wheeler Centre and The Melbourne Festival to see what's on. I check out Domain website every now then to see if any nice apartments have become vacant in Fitzroy, Collingwood. I often feel like I'll leave home and walk along the Brunswick Street, then I remember I'm actually now living at the other side of the world. And knowing that now it's spring in Melbourne (and colder and darker here everyday) I feel a heartache around my belly button (does that make any sense?). I miss Melbourne. But what I miss is a life I never had in Melbourne as mostly I felt quite lonely there. That's why my memories are mostly about places and activities I did on my own and less so about people.

I miss Melbourne, desperately, although this city has treated me very nicely so far, I've lost two out of three reasons for coming here within my first week.

That's it, I'm leaving. Thank you Melbourne for being an amazing home for me. Thank you for M, love of banksias and you know what else. I'll miss you dearly. Take care.

My last night in Melbourne; seeing the Netherlands Dance Company perform at the State Theatre. A great finale as I transition to Europe.

Melbourne I'm reading your final pages which regardless of its length wouldn't be a complete book ever. My flight to northern hemisphere is in 7 days. Big times.

It's time. Tomorrow my stuff is going on a cross-ocean journey towards Europe. When I reunite with them, as I unpack, I'm sure I'll say "why on earth I did send this all the way" for at least a quarter of stuff. But majority of them will comfort me, will make me feel I'm home again.

Finally Autumn weather is hitting Melbourne. On Friday movers will come and pack my stuff to load on a ship which will take three months to reach its destination. I'll have moved there by then; in search of a new home to set it up with belongings I collected in the antipodes for eleven years and with some new things I'll acquire there. Surreal, when I imagine my future self going through yet another home-setting in the fourth country I'll live, love, work and play. On which street where my new home will be? How will it look, feel, smell? Who will be my new friends? Will I have new friends or will I sink into loneliness in the dark of the cold winter? Will there be someone who'll be brave enough to steal my heart? Will I be brave enough to give my heart away? Will...

I'm in transitionary limbo. It's difficult to find time for introspection amid the chaos so I don't know how I feel. I am physically tired and mentally alert, in high spirits mostly but at times sad for the loss that's awaiting me. Slowly losing this city and its people is difficult. Some have already withdrawn, I'm gone for them, not needed anymore. But for some I am a loss too and they're those I still rely on, they're those I will dearly miss. Friends.

J is coming to pick my (now her) plants up. They've been significant signs of me settling here; I gradually collected them in the past two and a half years, I watered them, cared for them, propagated them. They made my house feel like a home, a real home, a hearth for my heart to dwell in. Separating from them is as painful as separating from my good friends here. We, being expats or from different cities, rely on each other, in the lack of families or partners, we write each other's names in "next of kin" parts of hospital forms (at times we don't merely leave those sections blank). Similarly, my plants were anchors of comfort, of solidity of my life here. I am sad. I am taking three small pots with me though, along my long journey, hoping I'll be able to keep them alive, and they will survive in Helsinki.