Crisis of Identity

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Finally a good night’s sleep! Up this morning for my last breakfast at the Mercure Helluvia. It’s a very nice hotel, but I’m over it. I started getting homesick, or maybe just bored, yesterday afternoon. This trip has been amazing, but I know it can’t go on indefinitely. My mind has already wandered home to my cats, my job, my friends, my life. My life? How can I go back to my life? The world is so much bigger, so much grander than before I left Tallahassee. How does someone incorporate all of this into their usual day to day life? How will my life ever be the same, and do I want it to be?
This has been deep thoughts, by Jer O’Connor.
Well, after breakfast, I didn’t have time to think much on all of that. Showered, dressed and packed, we left the Murcure and hopped in a taxi to Sopot, Poland. Now, this was a little odd to me, because the wedding was at a cathedral a couple blocks from the hotel in Gdansk. It turns out, the reception is at the Rezydencia in Sopot, and that’s where we’re heading. Gdansk, Sopot, and Gdynia are called the tri-city area. Essentially, they all follow the coast. Gdansk is the shipping port, Sopot is the beach and tourist area, and Gdynia is up on a cliff over looking the Baltic Sea. If you like old, go to Gdansk, if you like new and energetic, go to Sopot, and I didn’t get to go to Gdynia, but that’s just one of many reasons I plan on going back.
Now, my father gave me a number of pieces of advice, and for some of them, I got laughed at on this trip. The relevant one at this point is, “Always keep your passport in your front pocket. Make sure it’s always on you.” Back in Gdansk, I caught a little flack; just gentle ribbing, from the whole of the Hamman family. I want to make it clear, it was in no way mean spirited, merely that they were traveled, and I was obviously new to this. So Lindsay’s dad, John, and I go to check into the Resydecia, while the women are in Gdansk hosting a Ladies’ Lunch. The first question, “What name is the reservation under?” followed, almost immediately by, “May I have your passports?” I pull mine out and hand it to the lady behind the counter. John smiled sheepishly and said his wife had his. Long story short, I was able to get checked in, and we took everyone’s stuff up to my room. Then Robin met us downstairs and we headed into the lovely coastal town of Sopot. It’s a typical beach community. I love the beach, and felt quite at home here. The only downside was it was incredibly touristy, and nothing was old, or at least didn’t look so. Come to find out that kids from London fly here for the weekend to go clubbing. They don’t even get hotel rooms, they sleep where they fall, then climb back on a plane on Sunday and head home. Gdansk it is not. Beautiful nonetheless, we walked all the way down to the beach, saw the cliff by Gdynia, the ports of Gdansk to the east. The beach is made of what we call sugar sand in Florida, but it’s brown instead of white. The water isn’t bad, maybe 70 degrees, but it’s very dark. There’s a pier that jets out about a third of a mile into the water, but we’re not going out there today. We set back toward the hotel, and stopped for some lunch at a restaurant on the main drag. Paula and her two children, Georgina and Charlie, three of the wedding guests from London, joined us at the café and we all have a lovely time. Then we headed back to the hotel to take stock, get the Hammans moved into their room (which was expansive, to say the least), and lay out a game plan for the big day tomorrow. A light dinner in a small restaurant, and I find myself back in my room.
I’m sitting on my window sill, cross-legged, with the window open. The sounds from the streets of Sopot are rising up to me from three stories below. To my right is a small, but luxurious room in a four-star hotel in a seaside town. To my left, a street, a park, train tracks, and primer gray wall with huge letters spray painted in red, VINO. Beyond that is a very large world that I have only just begun to discover. I’m supposed to head down to the pub for a nightcap with everyone, but the questions from earlier come back to me. On this trip I have gotten to live like a King, chosen to eat like a native, ridden with business men and school children on trains, walked, ran, slept, eaten, thought, dreamed, devised, reconciled, seen, been brave and scared. I miss home, but how do I go back to my life? I’m going back to Tallahassee a very different person, or at least that’s how I feel. The biggest journey on this trip will be the one home.

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