Last Weekend in Belfast

So this weekend just gone was my last weekend in Belfast for a few months, as I try desperately to pack up my life into two teeny tiny bags that weigh less than 25kg, and persuade myself than I can live without the 100s of CDs, American sitcom DVD boxsets, Italian film posters, back copies of Biba and Private Eye, various kitsch knick knacks, photos, and two bookcases worth of books that adorn my flat. I always seem to end up throwing away furniture, clothes, and bedding, and keeping half empty shampoo bottles (but is an amazing shampoo I bought in Sephora in New York and makes even my hair less frizzy) and photos of ex-boyfriends I haven't seen for 10 years (the boyfriends, not the photos). I spent my time washing, ironing and folding clothes while watching the tennis. However, I must also say a strange nostalgia swept over me. I was meeting J and her ex-boyfriend B in the Duke of York on Saturday night and bizarrely actually got there early (practically a first for me) and was sat in the back bar, looking at all the lovely coloured mirrors with their adverts for Bushmills whiskey, and the poem by Yeats engraved on the wall, and the scratched dark old wood, and the mismatched stools and the old men sipping Guinness while young boys pushed round them to get their designer lagers, hearing the buzz of chatter from the main bar, and felt a sudden rush of love and affection for the city of Belfast (and I'd only had one sip of my pint). Couldn't quite believe it was my last Belfast night out with J for quite a while. Then later I went on to meet a different group of friends in Radio K, a strange night as it was quite empty - a combination of the university term ending and the 12th this Wednesday meaning everyone has left town. Ended up flirting lots with "Gunther", a half German, half Northern Irish boy of my acquaintance. He's a funny one - he's extremely flirtatious and even asked me about Ballymena boy, so he was obviously on the scene last time we spoke, and I was amazed he'd remembered. But we've never snogged - it's all just very childish (holding hands, suggestive comments, massaging necks, sitting on lap, rubbing cheeks, dancing together). I'm not sure if this is just Gunther's way with everybody - but I don't think so - but I always feel there is this expectation from the group something will happen, but it never has. Anyway, all this to say my last weekend was fun, and funny, and made me realise I will miss Belfast terribly in some ways. Now is this just the way we always are when faced with change - overcome with nostalgia for an experience, even when not all of it is great? I still have times of feeling intensely lonely and isolated here, so it is not as if everything is rosy. But it has been my life for the last few years, and even though I will be back in February, this break feels long enough to be significant, and to be removing me from a place that has become my home, almost despite myself.