1. Standing behind the yellow line at Alexanderplatz, I wait for the next scheduled arrival of German efficiency. A drunkard in a khaki jacket staggers around on the platform, holding a plastic bag full of empty beer bottles. A couple of the bottles roll onto the tracks. He jumps down onto the tracks and starts casually picking them up. There are shouts and screams and two people rush to pull him out of there just as the next train pulls into the station. I swear the S-Bahn almost hits him. He curses at them and then strolls away, laughing. 'Jesus Christ', I say. The man standing next to me agrees. 'Crazy', he says. 2. Lachlan joined us at the hostel with a grizzled Cat Stevens beard, looking broken, out-of-sorts, a dark lank sulk. From the moment I re-laid eyes on him, I knew that agreeing to accompany him was an error. Before long we were bickering like an old married couple as we walked the East Berlin streets. We snapped at each other at the Christmas markets and had unproductive exchanges at Checkpoint Charlie. He berated me in my cups at a bar and I avoided him like a bad cough when we trudged around Potsdam. Nothing seemed to be able to make him happy and all he could talk about was his miserable Canberra gossip, his miserable ANU politics, his overwhelming retentive misery. Did I mention I regretted being in Berlin with him? The glummiest grumpster holidaying Germany in December of 2013... 3. It became night so quickly at that time of year. And even though I expected it and tried my best to prepare for it, I was still stunned by how sun-robbed and day-poverished my hours were. It was an effort to push and enjoy what I could of this grimy, captivating capital in the little natural light that there was. No amount of glühwein or bratwurst or cheap suspect kebab meat could nourish my body's hunger for more sunlight. The priceless art and archaeology of Museum Island felt diminished in the stale, cement-like air while that strip of energetic street art on the remnants of the Berlin Wall seemed a doleful afterthought. The Brandenburg Gate was a weakness of stalks. A dark wetness sucked at every surface. The only thing that became unlost was the Holocaust Memorial: its normally baffling, oft-critiqued blocks finally rendered appropriately brutal. 4. The Christmas dinner came from a dumpster, according to my friend from Oxford. He was living in a share house (a commune?) with a large group of international students, some of whom evidently had a passion for zero supply chain waste. A plate of meatballs, some bread and potatoes, and a drop of wine. Not bad at all. Though the salad didn’t look that good and had to be re-discarded. It was good to be in his company again, after studying with him many, many months ago in Tokyo. I didn’t take him for the lefty sort, but I guess that's what happens to you when you’re trying to save money doing a museum internship in Berlin that you’re not enjoying (or being paid much for). The next evening, I had a hearty plate of Bavarian food at a restaurant for dinner. 5. — Mr Liu, these impressions of Berlin are a decade old! Why write these at all?
— You're right, terribly right. Blinking at these photos it's almost like the pixels have faded, degraded as if on print. Trying to come up with these anecdotes, it's like remembering a past life. Maybe the Hindus and the Buddhists are right after all... — Why not just go back? Replace the sad and cold with the warm and sparkly, do a reboot, a redux, etcetera, etcetera, that sort of stuff? — Ah, here's the rub: I don't think I will go back, and even if I did, this version of myself and the city no longer exists. Delicious and broody... sweet and resentful... it's all a former incarnation, now untouchable, now impossible to interrogate. — Agreed, Mr Liu. But then I must ask, why go off at all? — Verily, I could not tell you.
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AuthorMing is an economist, traveller, and creative writer from Melbourne, Australia. He’s a nebulous collection of particles on the lookout for a good corner to sit with a book and a cup of coffee. Archives
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