I always try to remember what is the
first time I first thought about Berlin but I just don’t. When I was
only 14 or 15, so I think in 1995 our school organized a field trip for
the second language class students. Those who were learning Spanish,
like me, had a wonderful time cruising around Andalusia; but those few
who had been unlucky enough to study German came back from Berlin with
only disappointment and hunger as souvenirs. Grey, they said, grey and
ugly and sad were the words to describe the city. They had been hosted
by families, mostly families from East Berlin in need for some extra
cash, and were given food so blend and tasteless that it seemed the
beginning of a Roald Dahl Novel were a poor kid feeds on potatoes. We,
Turkish kids, are the apples of our parent’s eyes; we only eat the
finest dishes. My peers accounts had engraved
Berlin and Germany in general as somewhere not to set foot. In my early
youth, I had been lucky enough to travel to most European countries but
all I knew from Germany was the Munich transit lounge, and I id not
mind.
And yet, flash forward to 10 years
later. I am finishing my studies in New York and my visa is about to
run out. What I liked about being there was its outmost regenerating
power, as you become the person you are when you set foot in the city.
New York had made me who I was, liberating me from the dusty heaviness
of an accumulated past in the old continent. Walking large sidewalks of
a dirty but expensive neighborhood (NYC’s favorite paradox: dirty but
expensive) I found myself at loss. Could I find the same freedom back
in Europe? Would I be able to escape the debilitating vortex of a
bourgeois-bohemian life in Paris, or the career obsessed chaos of
Istanbul? One night at a gallery opening I
heard a conversation. It was about Berlin. And just like a girl flashes
on a man walking past the door, well I set my heart that I had to go
see myself, discover how on earth Berlin had become, well… “Cool”.
Fehler in der Vorlage:Bei einem <we:link> Tag fehlt entweder das Start- oder das Endtag!
Vorlage: /placemaking/include/navigation/navigation_placemaking.tmpl
