The Clashing of Worlds

Sometimes in a person's life, when they've established a really good group of friends in one place - say at college - then they move far, far away, we'll say to Germany (I'm just spitballing here), and make some friends there, it is a really strange sensation when there is any cross-over between college friends and Germany friends (again, these are all hypothetical situations, I mean, it doesn't have to be Germany, it could be between college friends and, I don't know, friends from Switzerland or something equally as crazy). I call this phenomenon the Clashing of Worlds (dramatic, yet appropriate). 
Most people experience the Clash (for short) when their high school friends meet their college friends*. My first encounter of the Clash was when I moved to Switzerland. It started when a few of my friends from home visited me in my new-formed Swiss life and met my new not-Swiss-but-met-in-Switzerland friends. Then again when a couple of my not-Swiss-but-met-in-Switzerland friends visited me in Georgia and saw me in my "natural habitat."

The most recent Clash for me happened less than 2 weeks ago when Andy (you know, of Franken!) came to visit me in Athens. He is spending the summer working in South Carolina, so we made the deal as soon as we knew we'd both be in the south east this summer that we would get together. But finally actually having him in Athens was just such an odd feeling. 

First, it felt incredibly right, because our entire friendship thus far had been built as two displaced Americans making it in Germany. And suddenly here we were in our own country. It was kind of like re-Americanization for a friendship. 

Then it felt a little bit weird, because I am in my ETA and Famous element when I'm around Franken (tpntr) - especially around Andy - and when we went out (I took him to my favorite bar in Athens - Trappeze, of course) we didn't get a single "we're famous" stare. WEIRD. 

But then it just felt right again, because it was so much fun to see him. I introduced him to Georgia micro-brews and he introduced me to Geocaching (omg, so much fun, check it out if you've never seen it. I felt like I was totally hunting horcruxes, for all you Harry Potter fans). And, of course, we got some quality pool time in! 

Even though we had less than 24 hours, it was great to see him and I was so excited to give him a little insight into why I am the way I am (let's face it, Watkinsville/Athens is to blame for a lot of me). 

*This didn't really happen for me because I went to college about 10 miles from where I went to high school and about 90% of my friends did to, and we were all in band so then we all got mixed in with the same new college people and my high school friends were part of my college friends and, yeah, it was never really weird