One time I wrote a blog post sitting alone in a crowded airport terminal, inwardly nervous about flying 8 hours across the world’s largest ocean (jk that would be the Pacific but it helps the intensity of this sentence), while outwardly trying to pretend like I flew to foreign countries all the time (completely false). That day, I had no idea that airplane would hurtle me across the world to a city I now consider a piece of me. I know Berlin – the graffiti on the way to class, the heavenly U-Bahn trains, the TV tower rising in the distance – better than Evanston, better than.. well, anywhere.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked “How was Berlin??” as I stumble for words. I know I seem unappreciative standing there with nothing to say, but it’s really a hard question!
I mean there was that one time when I hiked the Alps until our hostel was just a blur in the Bavarian village below and boated on a pristine lake beneath the craggy, ominous Zugspitze.
I suppose I could mention getting to show my friend a chaotic, profile-pic worthy stretch of the Berlin wall that’s been taken over by graffiti artists…
Or gazing out mesmerized from the glass cupola of the German government building onto the leafy canopy of the Tiergarten and the city sprawling in every direction.
But these moments and countless more are so individual to me that I can’t do them justice. Berlin offered me so much and I, a tourist trekking around with leather backpack slung over my back and camera in hand, have nothing to give back but my appreciation… for the endless ice cream scoops, the days where one Döner Kebab just wasn’t enough, the talks on the sometimes stuffy but always efficient public transit, the quirky German phrases rattled back and forth to each other, the sun setting over the Spree at 9:30 pm.. and well, I think you get the picture.
Hopefully this is an Auf Wiedersehen (until I see you again) to Berlin.
Liebe,
Haley