Luke, around the world.

Amber Volakis is dying on-screen to the tune of Bon Iver, re: stacks, and I fixate on one thing she says before being disconnected from her life support equipment.

“We’re always gonna want just a little longer.”

After several delays, I’m finally starting the long-awaited trip. From a velleity to a hankering, from hesitation to firm resolve, from ossifying stagnation to constant flux, here I come. It’s far from easy, leaving my hometown. I have gotten used to being here, I have tamed that beast once more after so many years abroad. For a while, around Easter, me and my family were as numerous as several decades ago, with a few new faces, and a couple more returning, unseen for many years. Most importantly, my two little feline dependents are safe and sound, joined by a stray Aiko my parents found on a wintry day on the terrace.

So there’s that. My bed is soft, the fridge is full, the days are getting warmer.

It’s only halfway through my trip to Warsaw that tears start welling up in my eyes. The high-pitched voice of Justin Vernon is soothing, cathartic. And I think of Amber, and of myself, wanting just a little longer in a place where no dramatic decisions await me.

Warsaw is never a good host; within its bounds I only ever found heartbreak and exhaustion. Besides, it’s changed immensely. What’s really up with this architectural nightmare? Phallic protuberances made of glass and concrete, gigantic constituents of yet another city in the plains, signifying… what exactly? Craving for power? Domination? I bet Freud would throw in repressed sexuality. Thousands of square metres of office space in a country that will be half its current population in less than a century. I guess all those real estate developers, architects, politicians, are living in the moment more than I ever could.

It is within that scenery that I start contemplating the limits of hypocrisy. Quoting James Keziah Delaney, please understand, hypocrisy I hate most. I have burned quite a few bridges when I could no longer hide my disgust for people speaking out one way but acting its complete opposite. I buried my best friend R for that very reason. But, bear with me just for a moment, what if I am not any better? All the big talk about a grand, formative trip, yet I’m scared shitless and I haven’t even left the known world. Maybe whatever explorer and experimentator I once was, maybe that splendid person is gone. I meet C and somehow manage not to lash out at her for wasting my time, all those years of back and forth and we are still stuck in her fantasy world. And I want something real, something tangible, something I do not have to imagine. It could as well be that my appetite is too big for my stomach, and I’ll become a hypocrite in the blink of an eye, as soon as the thing I’m striving for becomes palpable.

A reunion with T and B is a little different. We meet under the Poniatowski bridge, right where it starts past the Powisle train station. They seem distant; they probably are. Almost six years since our menage-a-trois, and there is none of that spark left, no primitive desires, just a memory of what happened. Later on, waiting for their bus on Krakowskie Przedmiescie, next to the university gate, T gives me a quick reminder not to second-guess myself. ‘You could be working right now,’ and I cannot refute their logic. I could be, and I would hate it with every fiber of my being. But I am not, that was my plan from the get-go, am I right?

It’s a tough start anyway. The second day is an improvement. I complete my travelling equipment by buying a money belt at the Samsonite store and then decide to relish once more the garlic-butter turkey meal at Thien Ly, a cult place among both the students and the alumni of the Warsaw School of Economics, myself included. Just before getting a ridiculously low-priced plate, I enter the main building of my Alma mater, only to find a blank in my memory. I know this layout, I know these halls, it feels familiar and yet foreign, just as foreign as the flat I rented with B and T during our last year at uni. The flat, situated inconveniently in front of the Church of St Stephen (think the tolling of the morning bell), was a game changer in my life, in a year full of watershed events that pushed me out of my relationship with J and into an embrace of another J, and then into an embrace of some material things I’d rather not write about at this point in time. What transpired in the winter of 2012/13 eventually transported me to the present day, to this trip, to a question mark lurking behind every corner.

Cutting the memory lane trip short, I once more find myself under the bridge from the day before, this time meeting with A. Our meetings are wholesome, she says afterwards, and she’s right. We nibble on some Japanese street food delicacies (Sakamoto-Ya, highly recommended), and then amble towards and along the Vistula until we reach the Old City. I know most of it is just a meticulous restoration effort after Warsaw was destroyed in 1944, but thank heavens for such endeavours. We walk slowly, enjoying the relative calm, the narrow streets, the quaint townhouses, our footsteps echoing on the cobblestones. We talk and talk and talk and quite unlike me, I want to talk more; I am not exhausted.

The emotions connected with meeting friends are as varied as the emotions I have about the trip. Back in my hotel room, I again start considering my plan to be a feat impossible to achieve. That I could be conquering Royal Leyndell from the comfort of my single bed with a bevy of pillows, with Purek or Sylvester pressed against my thigh or lying on my stomach or just nearby, purring. That I could effortlessly follow my green veggies diet. That I could sleep well and retreat to the forest on a daily basis. That there was this article about the senselessness of travelling among young adults. That all of this seems, and probably is, insignificant.

And just before I go to sleep: that I will never again have the same opportunity unfolding in front of me right now. Fear needs to give way to wonder; anxiety has to eventually be replaced by excitement.

And then, a bit calmer, I fall asleep.