(Elena and I blowing soap balloons in Amsterdam yesterday. Thanks, Amsterdamian for the lovely photo!)

Today feels strange. One friend, Nico, is leaving Amsterdam to move back to Paris, after more than a year of living here, while another friend living in the US, Elena, is in the city for a few days en route to Romania. I met both of them here, in Amsterdam.

As Elena writes on her blog, referring to Amsterdam: “There is an ease to moving around the city. It’s easy to walk and take public transportation. But there is more to it. Perhaps it’s something about the sea level or atmospheric pressure. Perhaps it’s all the cyclists gliding by, their constant yet seamless motion, or maybe the boats on the canals, the closeness to water. I have a feeling here of floating. Not the untethered kind of floating of the island; a different kind of floating, an ease of movement that seems surreal.”

I would go a bit further and say that the same kind of dynamics applies to relationships, too. Like swirls of energy, people glide towards each other in Amsterdam, a city that is nothing but a temporary base for some, and a real home for others. Yet, no matter how short the staying, Amsterdam brings people together in a way that few other places are able to.

And, just like energy, these relationships have their own movement, always in transformation. People come and go in Amsterdam, and, no matter how sad it makes me to see my friends leaving the place where our friendship started and happened, I am forever grateful for having met them in the first place.

And so, as a stone that is not displaced by the running waters of a river, I stay in Amsterdam. I let my energy swirl and float around the city, knowing that life is all about transformation – yet another lesson that Amsterdam has taught me.

(Nico`s last days in Amsterdam, already making plans of when to meet next.)