8:35 PM in Berlin
What Happens When You’re Alone and Your Mind Wanders in an Unfamiliar City?
It’s 8:35 pm and I’m sitting in the top bunk of my hostel bed in Berlin. Maybe it was the perpetual gloom of the day — a stark contrast to the inviting Barcelona warmth — or the feeling that I’m more alone than ever on this trip, but I feel a heavy sadness in the pit of my stomach. Munich was so welcoming and pleasant that I didn’t even need to write about it. Every night, I would go to sleep in a happily exhausted state. I think it’s because my friends there made me feel at home in a city (and country) I knew little about prior to last week.
Berlin, on the other hand, was not as forgiving. Leaving my raincoat and umbrella on the train from Munich, fined at the station (my fault), and searching for minuscule items like a padlock and nail clippers without the necessary cash proved tiring — I felt like the city had already kicked my ass even before I really ventured into it. Once I did step out to take in the local scenes (a “vibe check,” as I call it), it seemed unsettlingly familiar to me, like New York, but if New York were entirely Brooklyn and German. Needless to say, I was disappointed. How could a city be so abundantly hipster and punk, yet follow rules which I considered to be excessive (official ones such as mandating only two types of masks to be worn in public, and unofficial ones such as only being able to walk on the right side of the sidewalk lest be yelled at by a passerby coming from the other side)?
I walked around in the cold gray haze of the city, past unforgiving cyclists and stark concrete buildings. Once I got into the city center, it became much more commercialized and I again felt the disconcerting dichotomy of a radical populace with their graffiti, tattoos and leftist sticker messages against a capitalist elite in the form of ritzy stores tucked away from popular view into the little semi-hidden alleyways and squares. Something just doesn’t feel right to me.
Maybe it’s because I’m here, now. What am I doing here anyway? Am I lost or am I here to find something? What am I doing in a city that has no love (or even grace) for me? Why aren’t I trying to get my shit together in Barcelona? Why did I leave? What did I escape from? Did I even escape from anything? How do I shape my future and do I really even know what I want it to look like? It’s mid-August — shouldn’t I know what comes next? I have no permanent job, no country I feel at home in, no traditional markers of success that one can celebrate after completing an MBA. Instead, I have a feeling of dread and despair. Happy graduation, indeed!
I don’t need to answer those questions right now. They’re fabricated (both meanings of the word intended) out of the insecurities I feel about my life choices. But the beauty of those (or any) thoughts is that they are fleeting and will naturally give way for new ones to take their place. Tomorrow comes a better day. A day of new beginnings, new friendships, new sights, and new thoughts in Berlin.