City on the edge of forever

Remember that South Park episode when the boys relive landmark moments in their lives while the school bus is teetering on the edge of a cliff?

Although in a less dramatic situation, I've been having quite a lot of flashbacks lately, for no apparent reason. And where there's no reason, there's obviously room for speculation.

The other day I was talking to a fellow expat who told me that while he did miss his country and his friends and the things they did together, he had no flashbacks because Warsaw did not remind him at all of his hometown in Portugal. In my case, it's not so much a matter of Warsaw triggering memories of Romania, I think my brain has reached a stage where it would have the exact same reactions in any other city.

A sunset on a Friday takes me back to Bucharest on one of those early evenings when the air smells like spring and endless possibilities. I walk the streets of Warsaw and suddenly remember the long walks I used to take with my Gran on Sunday mornings, the smell of lilac reminds me of my orange room back at my parents’ place, I hear Cohen while shopping for dance shoes and suddenly waltz is the last thing on my mind, as I find myself daydreaming about Vama Veche, drinking coffee in the sand with salt on my lips and sand in my hair. Walking back home from work I'm reminded, again for no apparent reason, unless the sight of a white fluffy cat counts, of the nights spent with A. pretending to be studying for our exam in linguistics while actually watching movies about the fall of communism and planning to do some serious writing about it.

So here's my theory: if it's true what they say and love does indeed last three years, then my love story with Poland is about to come to an end. Exit passion, enter a more domestic-friendly feeling of settling down. Very home-like. And that, of course, brings back memories of the other place that has functioned in a similar way a few years back. And it's exactly at this point that I feel like making a change. Much like in all other aspects of my life, when it starts feeling too comfortable I feel an impetuous need to try out something new. (In other line of thought, that’s why dancing might be something I’ll be doing for a long time from now on, because it is far from feeling comfortable, and as I'm writing this my body is still recovering after today's rumba). I'm well aware there are still a lot of things to do in Poland, so many options to be explored and discovered and enjoyed to the fullest and that's one of the reasons why I'm not packing my bags yet. But I can't help but wonder if I could start over in a completely different setting. And just for how long can this game be played before it becomes boring, or tiresome, or both.