I found this picture on
Instagram today, and I just realized that, if someone asked me to sum up all
the things I love about Berlin
in one picture, this would probably be it.
Six years ago, I was
sitting in one of those trains, watching the autumn leaves quickly passing
before me, still in disbelief. It was the autumn – the first thing I loved
about Germany.
As soon as our plane came out from behind a thick layer of clouds, right before
landing in the Berlin Tegel Airport, the first thing I saw were the cooling
towers of a nuclear power plant, a few lakes, and the trees covered in autumn
leaves – red, brown, orange and yellow trees everywhere.
“They have AUTUMN!!!” I
screamed. “This is TOO hardcore!!!!”
Visiting Berlin on the last days
of October was definitely the best idea we could have ever had; despite the
cold, despite the short days… This is what Berlin feels like for me, and I couldn’t
possibly love it any more.
There is something
about the Mediterranean climate that feels asphyxiating after a while: the merciless
heat, the ever-present sun, the almost imperceptible shift from too hot to too cold and back, and the never-changing vegetation. That’s
probably why, seeing an autumn landscape looking exactly the way I felt it was
meant to look caused such an impact on me.
There’s something about
the German autumn that reminds me of home – my Russian home, the one I left
when I was still too young to remember –, but I don’t love Russia the way I
love Germany. Not even close. Despite the fact that I’ve been living in the not-so-free capitalistic world for
twenty years already, I think somewhere deep inside I’m still afraid of the
Iron Curtain. I still have the fear that, if I ever step on that country again,
I will get locked and never allowed to go back.
That doesn’t happen
with Germany.
Germany is similar enough to
Russia
to make me feel at home, but different enough to not make me feel imprisoned by my
origins. It’s free from memories. It’s free from family ties.
Aside from that, my
love for Germany is a
mystery, just like my love for Japan. All I
know (and I learned that thanks to that one and only trip to Berlin I made in 2007) is that it was there before I was conditioned by my love for
a certain German band we won’t be discussing here.
Berlin is an endless city. It
extends beyond the horizon, and you can’t even imagine how far you are from
reaching its end. It makes you feel so tiny, when you realize you can’t even
walk from one landmark to another without catching the U-Bahn, or the tram,
or the bus… And the day is over before you’ve even had a chance to explore a thousandth
part of the things you wanted to explore. It swallows you whole, and you don’t
mind. And you feel happy about it. And you know that, no matter what you do,
there is always going to be a million things you will never be able to explore.
Berlin is so huge; it
has so many worlds inside it: the cleanest parks and avenues, and the dirtiest
streets; the extremely crowded landmarks, and the loneliest and quietest places you'll ever see; the ultra-modern buildings of the corporate age, and the
shabby ruins of the DDR, still standing; the bullet holes in the walls, the
pieces of the Berlin wall, the decrepit squat houses with half their roofs
ripped away by the bombs; the most civilised people, and the drunkest hooligans; the agents of order, politely reminding you of what you can and you cannot
do; the disgusting doner kebab restaurants, the pretzels, the currywurst kiosks,
and the delicious China-Box take-aways; the McDonald’s at the train station,
open at 5am, where you can eat and take a nap while you wait for the morning
bus… And all the things I will never be able to know or see, because the city
is so big…
That is what Berlin means to me.
I look at this picture
now and I realise that, somewhere in Berlin, the leaves are still golden, and the
U-Bahn and S-Bahn trains still roll from end to end of the endless city,
transporting thousands of Germans (and not only Germans) every day. And it makes
me feel that maybe the world is not too small for me, after all.
Despite all the
bastards, the awful tabloids and the horrible reality and talent shows on TV;
despite Heidi Klum and Dieter Bohlen, Germany is still a place worth
dreaming of.
Or that’s what I need
to believe.
