{"id":8299,"date":"2025-11-04T20:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/?p=8299"},"modified":"2026-02-15T15:10:47","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T15:10:47","slug":"why-nothing-feels-as-exciting-as-it-did-in-your-twenties-warschauer-strase-and-other-places-i-cant-return-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/why-nothing-feels-as-exciting-as-it-did-in-your-twenties-warschauer-strase-and-other-places-i-cant-return-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Nothing Feels as Exciting as It Did in Your Twenties | Places I Can’t Return To"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have these memories, certain fragments from my past, when I remember feeling and being entirely free. These memories pop up in my mind when I hear certain tracks, or when my daily life stills and my mind starts to wander, and it takes me back in time. I find myself wanting to be in the past, to get to relive those moments once more, even though I know they’re gone, and I can’t relive them. I feel grateful for those memories, because through my recollections, I can still feel the past with me. Sometimes, I experience nostalgia in the same place as I am in the present, with the same people, with myself, but it feels as if it is in an entirely different world.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to feel the same again as I’ve done in the past. I know things change because I change, and the world is constantly changing. Every moment and memory is a special constellation of the world as it is at that specific moment, and of the people and things as they are at that point. It makes me sad, though, to think that certain feelings and experiences are gone, knowing I’ll never get to feel them again. I can never move abroad alone for the first time again, or experience the same cities I used to dream of, for the first time again, either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walking Around Europe<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I wonder if I will ever feel the same as I felt when I was in my early twenties, when I moved abroad for the first time, when walking the streets of Europe on my own. When I first moved to Berlin, I remember being full of excitement from waiting for the U-bahn, of walking past all the construction buildings at Warschauer Stra\u00dfe, looking into all the stores filled with things I’d never seen before. It was just this feeling of having done something brave, for myself, of giving myself up to what scared and excited me the most, of being free and open to experiencing anything that might come my way. For me, Miss Kittin is one of those artists I used to listen to at that time; two special tracks for me are Stock Exchange<\/a> and Bassline<\/a>, and they always manage to bring me back to how I felt at that time. A few of the others I’ve gathered in this playlist.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, I’ve been back to the same streets, same stores, and same parts of a city, but it just doesn’t feel the same. I’ve tried to do it, in Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gothenburg – but it’s never really the same thing as it was in the past. Things get boring. Returning to the same place doesn’t bring back the past. Perhaps it’s nothing to strive for, to relive anything from the past, but I can’t help it when the past has been beyond my wildest dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Comes Next?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What if the past has qualities that are highly attractive yet entirely unattainable, and what if the past contains experiences you can only experience once, such as the first time you get to do something? After that, you change, and the world changes, and you can’t do the same things for the first time again. What does that mean for the future? It makes me wonder, what type of new experiences can we hope to experience as we get older?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t feel the same type of excitement anymore, because I’m not scared of doing the things I do. I don’t get nervous about new challenges, as I feel strong, safe, and confident in my own abilities to handle them. Some things I once thought were so important, so unknown, and so exciting, I have now become familiar with. I feel safer than ever, more comfortable and confident than ever, but I wish I could feel the thrill of excitement. I feel like excitement comes from a blend of expectation and courage, and courage must come from fear. If you are not scared of the thing, how can you be courageous against it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope there are many experiences left, and excitement to live. I just don’t know how and where to find them. I’ve traveled, I’ve moved, I’ve challenged myself. I’ve quit a job, started a company, taken the leaps, scrambled to get on my feet, and now I stand firmly on the ground again. I feel more grounded than ever, but I want to take the next big leap – but where to? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is the solution to do frightening things, challenges that require courage? If so, how can I find those challenges, and how can I keep finding them? I don’t know the answer to these questions yet, but I hope I’ll find the next big jump to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have these memories, certain fragments from my past, when I remember feeling and being entirely free. These memories pop up in my mind when I hear certain tracks, or when my daily life stills and my mind starts to wander, and it takes me back in time. I find myself wanting to be in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[214,471],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spirituality","category-thoughts-en","entry","has-media"],"gutentor_comment":0,"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/dclassic-2023-05-28-112822.680-scaled-e1762288254360.jpg",1928,1237,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/dclassic-2023-05-28-112822.680-scaled-e1762288254360-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/dclassic-2023-05-28-112822.680-scaled-e1762288254360-300x192.jpg",300,192,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/dclassic-2023-05-28-112822.680-scaled-e1762288254360-768x493.jpg",768,493,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/dclassic-2023-05-28-112822.680-scaled-e1762288254360-1024x657.jpg",1024,657,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/dclassic-2023-05-28-112822.680-scaled-e1762288254360-1536x985.jpg",1536,985,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/dclassic-2023-05-28-112822.680-1542x2048.jpg",1542,2048,true],"ocean-thumb-m":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/dclassic-2023-05-28-112822.680-scaled-e1762288254360-600x600.jpg",600,600,true],"ocean-thumb-ml":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/dclassic-2023-05-28-112822.680-scaled-e1762288254360-800x450.jpg",800,450,true],"ocean-thumb-l":["https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/dclassic-2023-05-28-112822.680-scaled-e1762288254360-1200x700.jpg",1200,700,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Wendy Zhou","author_link":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/author\/wendy1111live-se\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"I have these memories, certain fragments from my past, when I remember feeling and being entirely free. These memories pop up in my mind when I hear certain tracks, or when my daily life stills and my mind starts to wander, and it takes me back in time. I find myself wanting to be in…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8299"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8365,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8299\/revisions\/8365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendyzhou.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}