Part 4: Buses and Byes

Tim Jurgensen

08 Oct 2024 — 6 min read

Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

This process of healing involves leaving what feels familiar, even if unpleasant, and venturing into an experience that feels foreign, awkward, and frightening.
— Alice Miller

I walked out to where the buses seemed to be coming and going.

Then I walked back inside the train station.

Then I walked back out to the buses.

I felt as lost as I looked.

My over-stuffed backpack, my suitcase, and my carryon were succeeding in their unified mission to make make my feet and lower back ache.

“Did I overpack?” I wondered.

“Nevermind,” I thought, “nothing I can do about it now.”

I couldn’t figure out where to buy a bus ticket.

In my jet-lagged stupor, I somehow successfully deduced that the ticket kiosks inside were only for the trains, not the buses.

It was January 24, 2021 at around 9:00am.

I stood outside the Nijmegen Train Station.

I was somewhere between; neither was I where I had come from nor had I fully arrived at where I was going.

There is a term for a place such as this: liminal space.

Many traditions and cultures view liminal space as sacred; they are the thresholds of transformation. The necessary “in-between” in our process of becoming something new.

The morning sun was breaking through the greyish-white clouds that were slowly revealing more and more blue sky.

Sun and blue sky — something I would learn to cherish as dearly as Dutch people characteristically do amid their long bleak winters.

The air was cold.

And the place felt eerily quiet.

The Netherlands was still on a strict COVID lockdown and still had its strictest measures in place, part of which included a country-wide curfew.

No wonder the train station was quiet, only but a few “essential” people rushing around with blue masks on their faces trying to reach their destination with as little germ-y-human contact as possible.

Reality hit.

I was here. I was doing this.

“Wait,” I thought.

“Am I really here?”

“Am I really doing this?”

“What am I doing here??”

“Am I crazy?”

This was not the first time (or the last) that I felt this way.

I had felt it many times in the weeks prior to my departure.

Truthfully, it was a miracle that I was standing here at all - observing the blue sky peeking through dissipating clouds and struggling to buy a bus ticket.

It was a miracle because I had had COVID less than a month prior to this moment.

And although I had fully recovered, if I was to get the required travel PCR test needed for entry into the Netherlands, it would still show that I was testing positive for COVID.

“As if moving transatlantically to a country you had never been to before by yourself in order to question everything you have ever known isn’t hard enough,” I thought, “add in a global pandemic.”

As soon as I got COVID back at Christmas time, I began proactively researching extensively what this might mean practically for my departure for the Netherlands just a few weeks away.

I became more familiar than anyone should ever be with obscure parts of US and Dutch Government websites.

Multiple international phone calls.

Emails.

More phone calls.

More emails.

I still had no confirmation that I would be permitted to travel and enter the Netherlands.

In my efforts, however, I had somehow managed to secure myself a case manager at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

And she assured me that she was working on it for me.

Seeing as I had fully recovered and was not contagious, as per my doctor, she was trying to get me an exemption to the PCR entry requirement—a rather unprecedented exemption.

It was everybody’s first global pandemic, after all, so all of us were just figuring it out in real-time.

And so, without any certainty that I would actually be allowed to travel, I continued my preparations to move across the globe.

72 hours before departure - I still had no confirmation from my case manager regarding the exemption.

I went through all my belongings and packed up what I couldn’t fit into my suitcases nor keep in storage and, in the form of various boxes and bags, dropped them off at Goodwill.

48 hours before departure — still no confirmation.

I met with some friends over coffee to connect once more before leaving and to say goodbye.

I sold my car, handing over the keys one last time.

36 hours before departure — still no confirmation.

I started my laundry and began thinking about all those last-minute things you need to figure out — snacks for the plane, perhaps stocking up on a bottle of Costco-size ibuprofen, and whether or not I should bother packing toiletries if I can save the space and just buy them there?

24 hours before departure - still no confirmation.

I was supposed to leave for the airport at 4:00am the next day and I had already started putting things into my suitcase and strategizing about my weight limit — and still, no word from my case manager.

The thoughts emerged:

“Am I crazy?”

“What am I doing?”

“Is this really happening??”

At 11:04 am, on January 22nd, 2021, a mere 17 hours before I was supposed to leave for the airport, I finally got an email from my case manager:

Exemption approved.

“Wishing you a good trip tomorrow and lots of success with your study.”

Exhale.

Relief.

Terror.

Elation.

Fear.

Anxiety.

Hope.

It was happening.

It was really happening.

With the confirmation finally secured, I said to myself, “Now I have to get as many hugs in as possible.”

I continued, “Once I leave tomorrow, I’ll have no way of knowing when I’ll get my next.”

The next morning, at the airport, I did exactly that.

I hugged my family tightly.

And they hugged me.

Tears were shed.

We lingered longer than we probably should’ve, making the farewell even more painful than it needed to be.

I didn’t know when I would see them next, and I didn’t know if any of us, myself included, would recognize me whenever that reunion might be.

I remember I resented the fact that there was no substitute for the work I was setting out to do.

No one could do my integration for me.

No one could ask my questions and get back to me with the answers

There was no easy or convenient workaround; this was a journey I had to walk alone – and I resented how costly the price of my own peace was at that moment.

Nevertheless, I hugged my family one more time.

With puffy eyes and that strange nauseous feeling I always get just below my stomach whenever I say goodbyes, I turned and stepped into the unknown.

Two flights later and a near two-hour train journey from Amsterdam Schipol to Nijmegen Centraal, here I stood observing the sun breaking through the clouds.

This bus, that I couldn’t figure out where to a buy a ticket for, being the last thing between me and my final destination.

So close and yet so far.

I had already overcome so much.

I took a deep breath in.

I was going to figure this out too.