Uncle Dan’s Blog - Au Revoir and Auf Wiedersehen

Posted by Uncle Dan on December 20th, 2007 | Categorized as Blog | 194 views and 5 Comments

I’m leaving Brig today, my little town in southern Switzerland. It’s the end of term, Christmas season and all that, and I graduate in a few months. It’s the beginning of that long process of saying goodbye, but this place is a little different from most universities.

See, here a term is 11 weeks, which is a little under 3 months, and the school runs all year. This is because it’s a pretty international college, and people come from all over the world at any time of the year. It’s only around 250 students any term, and so the place is absolutely fascinating. In a lot of ways, it symbolizes a TCK lifestyle. It can be home, very easily. People are coming from the other campuses in Bouveret, and Sydney. Americans are coming from Washington State for a study abroad. And importantly… people are also always leaving. Some are graduating, some are taking terms off, and some are going for internships for 6 months, a year, a year and a half…

So goodbyes are common. Sometimes they’re easy, because you say “in 6 months, you’ll be back here and I’ll be here ready to give a hey and a hug.” Sometimes it’s a bit harder, and you treat it half-heartedly, with “Well, good luck with life!” it’s coming to that point where there are more and more of the latter. And I’m meeting people who come in, and I don’t meet them for most of that term. Which is funny, because in just the last few days I discovered more TCKs. Two people I thought fairly ordinary ended up being TCKs. One being German, but grew up in Japan, one being Korean-Canadian, but spent the last few years of his teenage life in Sri Lanka and gods know where else before that.

That said, it’s getting to a point where I’m wondering if I should just be concentrating and valuing the friends I’ve had for the past 2 years. I wonder about that too, because I call them friends only because we’ve seen each other around for most of the past 2 years, but never necessarily got close. So does time create good friends? The funny thing is that all the people who really WERE there for that time… I do consider good friends. So what makes friends? Shared experience? You can probably get along with almost any decent person, so long as you know that they were there. It still feels dry though.

One way or another, when it comes time to really say goodbye for probably ever and YOU KNOW IT, ahead of time… That can be rough. It’s as rough as you let it be, and knowing it’s permanent can get you in a mood. What surprises me is that TCKs and non-TCKs run together on this one. It really depends on a person’s emotional level. Some people let them run free, and some people are good at holding it in, or never letting it bother them.

And sometimes you say goodbye to a place. New dorms are being built, and they’re closing this “dorm”, which is half a hotel converted into student housing for the last 10 years. And this place has had some history to it, and is the place I’ve lived in for the last year. Friends were made, left behind and said goodbye to, here.

It isn’t really that you miss the old sofa in the kitchen lounge where people fell asleep hanging out after a long night out, nearby the international poker table, where every night at least 6 nationalities were being represented, while we ate South East Asian meals cooked by ourselves to share among people unaware of them… No, not the sofa itself, just what it represented, what it was there to be witness to. I’ll miss that we can’t lie on that sofa again. I’ll miss that it won’t be the same half-functioning kitchen with its falling oven door, unreliable stove, and notoriety for silverware theft.

I’ll miss that the experiences I had there will be lost to memory. That I won’t be able to just see it again to remember it. It’ll join my long list of places I can only remember.

A pet project of mine is to record friends on video before they leave. A little interview, easily accessible, and you’ll bring a lot to your experience. And you’ll be able to remember them in a solid way. This is my way of tangibilizing these experiences, bringing them to life in a way I can always know them.

So far goodbyes have been pseudo-happy. Very few people are actually upset, the general sentiment being either optimism that they’re finished, delight at going home, happiness for having had a great time and meeting you and everyone else, and that they’re too busy to dwell on what they might be upset about. What, with packing, moving and graduation ceremonies for those done already, it’s a busy time all around and rushed goodbyes are what’s possible. But then it’s always a rush. There’s never really enough time to say goodbye to someone, let alone get to know them.

People have been telling me, however, “I’m not saying goodbye. I’m just saying ‘Until we meet again’, because we will, right?” And I nod yes, and smile… but sometimes I know I’m bad at keeping in touch. I know how slim the chances are that I’ll see them again properly. So what do I say? What justifies everything I think? There’s no good umbrella term for all the ways we can say goodbye.

No huge point here, but just something I wanted to express.

Daniel Nguyen-Phuoc

Vietnamese in ethnicity, born in Houston, Texas. Lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for 14 years while going to a British International School to finish with the International Baccalaureate. Survived only two years in the University of Michigan before ending up in Switzerland. Graduated from an international (and that's meant in every word) hospitality college. Interesting life, to be sure. But not the only one.