Moving

I'm moving to Madrid. 23 September. It is now official, ticket in hand, parents' hearts broken, vague plans made. I'm gonna live, work, settle, ride my bike, find the perfect boyfriend (haha :), make some beautiful kids in a few years' and be happy there. Possibly win the lottery as well. That's the plan and I'm hoping I can tick all those items as I walk my path.

Moving does not scare or excite me so much anymore. I know that whatever I do I will be a tourist for a while drifting into the status of a permanent resident slowly. The transition is very gradual and I'll have to get past the stage where I'm New. I recently read that Steve has moved too and he wrote something I feel sums it up so perfectly:

"New, I hate being new, I have to sit quietly and hear stories of all the things people did before I was around and it takes about two years to be somewhere long enough to be in a story"

I don't feel like explaining my reasons why I'm moving but in a moment of collecting-dora's-life-statistics I came up with some facts related to my relocation mania, so here you are if you have nothing better to read:

*I have lived in 3 different European capitals and 5 other European cities over the past 10 years
*I changed my postal address up to three times a year since this craze begun
*I learnt the cultures and the languages of the two countries that were not my own
*I held jobs ranging from barmaid in an Irish pub to "Negative Confirmation Analyst of the Invoice Resolution Team in the EMEA hub of The Accounts Payable Centre for IBM" which is a ridiculously fancy name for some accounts related admin yawn.
*I made and left behind new friends everywhere (too many to count)
*I broke hearts and my heart was broken in these places several times (I can count it but won't tell you ;o)
*The only thing that came with me everywhere was my favourite mug I got when I was 12 and it's going to move again. I don't know how he feels about it though, he doesn't complain much.
*I realised that there is bad television, worse television and the worst television. I haven't found a country yet where TV belonged to any other category.
*As much as it saddens me to be away from my family I can't have enough of living this way and I feel there are at least 3-4 other cities I would love to live and breathe

And my favourite statistics of all (which is something between sad and cool, can't really decide):

*I have had 49 flatmates (=roommates for American readers) from 7 different countries...

That's my Saturday morning musing for you. And a bit of an explanation why I'm not so active a citizen of the blogosphere these days - there are too many parties, dinners, BBQs and chit-chats in cafes I wouldn't miss for a world because soon enough I will be living 1991 kms / 1237 miles / 1075 nautical miles (whats that???) away from my oldest friends and my family.