In love again

We have not met for about a year and I just could not have come to Europe without coming here. I planned my trip home to France, but somehow I had to make a hook. I'm sitting on a terrace, having a coffe at Cafe Vian on Liszt Square in Budapest. Our story somehow finished in December 2004, when I decided to leave and move to Shanghai. Although I am now far away, I have never forgotten this feeling.

I have just spent the last hours walking in its streets and old feelings come back so fast. The city and me just find back each other. I notice every detail, every change in its heart. I touch the walls, the old stone still has the same feeling and the same soul. Flashbacks about people and events that I have lived here come back at each corner. There is a deja vu feeling and the return of past habits is just like fitting back in long worn shoes. I sometimes feel that I never left, that the whole time in Shanghai was just last night's dream and that I still live here. Spending time with old friends, sitting at the same restaurants as we used to and feeling somehow part of the group again, those are feelings that are worth coming from the other side of the world just to enjoy them.

I am still in love with Budapest and being here is just like restarting this relationship that we had before. I thought I would never leave, and somehow with fatigue, habits and all the events that we lived together I ended considering going away. I eventually left for this new girl of Shanghai. New and unknown feelings were overwhelming, but it took me a long time to really absorb the end of our story and feel like a part of it. Shanghai is now my home and the relationship with this city is just as intense as the one I used to have with Budapest. I still enjoy living the old times again, spending some time between the nineteenth century buildings and feeling Hungarian nostalgia again, although knowing that the story is over. As much as I feel home here, it does not take long to realize how much a different person I am now. Any return would be the start of a new story, and imagining anything different would be fooling myself. The city is like an old girlfriend of mine, and meeting again is just so nice for a few days, just to enjoy a little bit of the nostalgia before going back to Shanghai, my new home.