Episode II - The Arrival

Song of the day: So Lonely - The Police (Every Breath You Take)

Arrival was, to say the least, hard. Not so much getting to Semporna - got on a van with a Spanish man, Marcos and who seemed to be his girlfriend, Barbara, from the South of Switzerland, the Italian-speaking area. They live together in Zurich, but she speaks fluent Spanish, so that's the language we used to communicate. We spent the whole ride just talking about diving and traveling.

Once in Semporna I was taken to my room in the dive center's staff quarters. Photos shall soon be published. Quite tiny, the only furniture is a "shelf", a locker/wardrobe, a small window with a curtain, a standing fan and something distantly similar to a bed. The bed frame's quite right, but the bed is three centimeters of foam on top of a wooden plank. Quite hard, yep. The room was crazily hot, it's right on top of a restaurant, from which noise comes in until 1am.
You say you want a bathroom? Yes, well, sorry, it's not ready yet in here, there's no water nor shower. Well, you see, there's this toilet here. With a bucket and a hose. Not too bad, if only it were cleaner. Anyway, if you need a better bathroom, you can just go to the dorm you stayed at with your friends in March '11. Ooff, at least I know those are quite clean and provide toilet paper. In fact they're quite fine. It's just uncomfortable that I have to go down the stairs and across a street dark as obsidian to reach it.

The perspective of staying in such a shithole was quite disheartening. Not so much because of the lack of comfort - I've been through that, I can stand it. The problem is going through it alone. Spending three months on my absolute own, without anyone in a similar situation. No friends, no one within a range of 20 ± 3 years. To get internet, I have to walk a couple of minutes to the closest bar and, of course, order a drink. But there's a lot of noise and not much light.

So, loneliness was growing into my heart with ice-cold roots. Never have I been through such a painful feeling. And I was scared, scared as hell. Not so much scared about the place itself, but about being able to adapt to it. How am I going to manage is something I have just started to catch a glimpse of.