Before the snow.
By: Ms Snow
Tags: Lovestory, Relationships, Travel

It is a long story. At least I think so.

But I will start now by the end. I am leaving his hometown after 5 weeks at his place. My daughter is at the airport’s glass windows looking at the airplanes and singing a music she has just created which starts with his name. She also created affection for him. My heart is broken in so many peaces, but seeing her sing his name is the ultimate peace. I am even more heartbroken because she is heartbroken.

But why have I decided to go there? I don’t have a logical explanation apart from I wanted to try as it would be better for my lifestyle choices of how I would like to raise my daughter. I sincerely contacted him after all those years so he maybe could give me tips on finding a job. I wanted to find a job which would sponsor me a residency visa. I was probably naive. I am naive. But when I first wrote to him, his first reply was: “I think I can help you because I am also looking for a job and I am single”. And I always wondering what his reply meant and I thought I had the answer when we spent so many days and nights chatting to each other.

So when my work contract ended in Brazil, I had not even a second thought before buying a flight to try my life there. Of course there was a bit of a fairy tale music in the background, but who hasn’t ever fallen for that? He hosted us, he prepared her bed. He had some juice in his small-single-guy fridge. He prepared a nutritious meal, though with too much spicy for a little girl. But he did try. But it was maybe too much to ask him. And maybe he was not sure of what he wanted. Or maybe there was too much of us in his single-room apartment.

I met him on a train from Thessaloniki, Greece to Sofia. I started this trip in a cabin with a American girl who convinced me to head there with her while we were having breakfast in our hostel in Crete, and a bunch of French teenagers who got kicked out in the border because they had no passport on them. They thought all the European continent was part of the European Union. I ended up having a whole-kind-of bed thanks to the poor French kids.

My American companion was a good influencer and when we descended the train she convinced a group from Finland to look for accommodation together. Off we went to find a Lynch-style room with red and purple velvet chairs and a strange wallpaper. I am not sure how we all slept in that room or even if we slept at all. What made my memory up to this day is the daytime we all spent together. It was his birthday and he invited us all to have lunch together. It was my first real meal in a long time. I ordered a fish whose taste I will never forget. He made sure to pay for all of us because of his cultural tradition, although I made my argument against it. We had just met and he was way too generous after we were so on a budget for our accommodation. We also spent the rest of the day/night drinking beer together.

They left on the following day and I was in Sofia for a few more days. By myself. We spent just this day/night together back in 2006 and then another couple of days in 2013 when I made it to Finland for the first time. That is when he hosted me for the first time. He had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend. We had just spent a nice time together. Until the day I texted him again in 2018 and told him I was single and I had a daughter. He told me he could see Finland’s best amusement park from his window. I told him his window sounded appealing. Off I went.