I thank you, God, for giving me such amazing experience throughout the year. There were a lots of wonderful things in 2012 that make me really feel more than blessed. Sadness, anxiety, joys, love, hatred, failure, success, and elses so that I could possibly call it "life". God is truly good!
Managed to pass the selection process and then got a scolarship to continue my study in France is obviously one of the major thing I should be forever grateful.
I'm also blessed for being able to see new things, visite new places, taste new cuisine, meet new people, learn another foreign language, share new knowledge, mingle in a new culture, totally new experience! As well as meet "fake" friends which made me be able to see clearly which ones are the real friend ;)
I learned a lot (and I believe I will still keep learning) what it really means of happiness, lonely, sincere, giving, choice, decision, patience, family, regret, to love, to respect, to share, judgment, tolerance, to give up, to believe, striving, dreaming, dedication, and also continue to figure out how to love and to live my life in a good way.
Not all of it is good. But, even the worst thing was giving me an amazing lesson as human being who is in progress to be a better person. Hopefully.
At the end of 2012, I did a short trip crossing the border of France (Strasbourg) - Germany (Kehl) by...walking. Well, actually that was not weird since Kehl, a small town in West Germany, is now becoming the suburbs part of Starsbourg and they are connected in local public transportation network.
But for me, this is quite interesting, remembering how those two countries once were fighting in a war like crazy! We all know from the history of World War I and also World War II, that there is never be a single good thing in war. Tell me, if any.
And nowadays, we can go from one city to another by train, by bus (headway every 30 minutes), by car, or like I and many people right there do, by walking! There's no border and no document needed to move your ass to another country. Strasbourg and Kehl even have a beautiful spacious collective public park "Jardin Deux Rives" in both sides of Rhine riverbank.
It takes less than 10 minutes to walk down the river and cross the bridge. There's a non-motorized bridge (or called "passerelle" in French) that can be used also by the cyclist or the parents with baby stroller.
THE CUTEST PART of all of this border thingy is, right in the middle of the bridge, we can stop for a while and sit in the wooden benches. Maybe it's just me being dramatic, but in my opinion, the idea is just simply cool!
Imagine you're sitting right there, calling one of your friend and then telling them, "I'm in between, my right ass is in Germany while the left one is in France!", hahah...
We can also find the love padlock as we seen at the bridge near Paris Notre Dame or maybe at many other bridges (because I just found the same thing at a smaller bridge in Strasbourg).
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| La passerelle |
In that spacious park we can see the elder couples sitting or walking while enjoying the river scenery, the loverbirds holding hands and giggling, the kids playing around happily. We'll hear they talk using French in the German side or vice versa. Wonderful!
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| Germany's side |
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| France's side (notice the crêperie kiosk that is so "France" :p) |
Well, it was just a "border crossing" experience but beyond that it gave me a reflection that in our life, we might have a very bad experience in the past, we might passed a horrible moment, we might done evil, in the France-Germany case: one of the cruelest war ever..., whatever we've done or how bad it was, we can never turn back the time.
But, we have to realize that we will always have a chance to do our best, to give our greatest effort,to make a progress, in order to be better and to have something really good and wonderful in our future. Each of us deserves it!
Welcome 2013, I'm so ready!
:)
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