Tierra a pie

On a sleepless summer night in the streets of Amsterdam, I was met by a rare sense of clarity.
It’s nearly 11 pm in Vondelpark and my Dutch companion tells me I am the luckiest person on earth.
“Do you think I am?” I ask, raising my right eyebrow in a display of foreign cynicism.
Merita is a 28-year old brunette with a flat tire who makes a living as a cartographer. I have just learnt this information during a brief conversation that begun when we left the bike shop four hours ago; I was trying to rent a motorbike and she was fighting to get her bicycle repaired.
“It’s the warmest day of the year”, she replies matter-of-factly. Apparently, you only get sweaty nights, like this one, three to four times a year in the Netherlands. This information drives her cheerfulness but lights no candles in me after having spent seven weeks wandering breathless from one lonely train station to the next one.
We walk past a small lake crowded with trendy Amsterdammers. I tell her she is the only Dutch with brown hair among this blonde landscape, and she points out that her parents were born in Aruba, a Dutch colony I am not sure where to place on a map.
“Not everyone is blond and tall in Holland”, Merita says smiling at my lack of wit. “We have the most multicultural society in Europe”. I wonder whether she read that on Wikipedia or if she knows because of her job.
How one becomes a cartographer is a question I am 10 minutes away of asking with calculated spontaneity once we arrive at Central Station. In all honesty, I have been thinking a lot about how one becomes anything in life since I left Madrid two months ago.
We are about to exit Vondelpark and I stare at the trees for the first time. The leaves are glowing with an almost fluorescent green that reminds me of all the pesto I ate in Milan two weeks ago with an Armenian couple. Now that I am about to embark on a journey back home short on cash and epiphanies, I wonder what the future has in store for me beyond this summer rendezvous with freedom and warm beer.
“Mapmaking follows on the heels of discovery”, Merita tells me before getting into the ferry that will take her from Central Station to her house in North Amsterdam. I turn back and walk toward inside the station. My train departures in two hours and I hope I will have enough time to fantasize about this day.
I remember sitting on a cool metallic bench in the platform and tipping “Aruba” on the search engine of my smartphone before waking up.