I'm Adely Moe and this is The Slowdown.

When I was 17, I graduated early from high school and moved to Germany to follow my boyfriend

who had moved there with his father.

The goal was to travel as much as we could on the very little money we had saved up

from working through high school.

We could use his father's house as home base.

He lived in a little town called Vickshausen and from there we went to Spain, France, England,

Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Chechia, mostly by train, mostly staying

in hostels or camping, mostly fighting and then making up again.

We weren't home in Germany too often, but when we were, one of our favorite places

to go was a little Italian restaurant that was a few miles away.

It was cheap and served as wine.

We'd walk there across the train tracks and through back roads and miraculously passed

a field of sunflowers.

I remember being so taken aback by how many sunflowers there were.

It felt like being attacked by beauty.

I loved that field so much.

I remember thinking I could be a sunflower seed farmer just to be around all those big

faced flowers part of the year.

What is it about noticing beauty that brings you out of yourself and returns you to yourself?

I remember three or four sunflowers growing in the little plot of dirt in Brooklyn each

early summer and I delight in rooting for them.

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