The City As A Companion

mapping my relationship with Berlin

Jul 15, 2024

Welcome to The Flâneurs Project. This post is part of our Longing for Places series. I am always so happy to interview people about the places they love - you can book a time slot here if you want to share your stories, or if you simply want to connect.

In the past few days, I’ve unearthed essays written during my sabbatical year. The essay I’ll share below is one I often remember because it helped me understand why I left Berlin, why I came back, and why I left again, this time for good.

I believe that the relationship we have with the city we live in is as important as our closest friendships.

We can find solace and strength in a city if we learn its ways and see it as more than just a physical container for getting from A to B, and then to C, and so on. A city is a living, breathing entity, made up of people, stories, nature, history, unique places, hopes, desires, questions, and so much more. As in any good relationship, we need to be honest about who we are, who we want to become, and what keeps us moving forward, hopefully in a constant flow with the city we live in.

Essay written in the summer of 2022 after leaving Berlin for the second time.

The Ending

At the entrance, a mailbox: last opportunity to make some sign to the world one is leaving.

― Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

In a recent conversation with a friend, I compared coming back to Berlin to that love affair we want to rekindle, only to prove that ending it a while ago was the wisest choice.

In the early summer of 2022, the decision to move back to Berlin seemed to have solid footing. My partner and I moved into a temporary home on Marienburger Straße for two weeks to buy some time while hustling for apartments. Two weeks and around seventy applications later, we were offered an apartment in the Mitte area, much to our surprise as the market was beyond hectic. It was more hectic than in 2018 when I was searching for another place to call home in Berlin, and as difficult as it was in 2015 to find a student dormitory when I moved to Berlin to study.

A few days after moving into the new apartment, I had a strong gut feeling that the decision to move back to Berlin was based on all the wrong reasons. It felt like the moment we know there is no future left in a relationship, and we need to stop striving for that future and let go.

Among the most difficult things is letting go of the ghosts—the past experiences scattered everywhere in the city, from local cafés to public spaces. I saw my ghosts this past month while walking on almost every street of my old/new neighborhood. The past was still buzzing because the grief is still somehow pinned under my skin. I’ve seen myself more clearly than I did some years ago. I’ve seen my mistakes in ways I couldn’t before. Berlin wasn’t a companion anymore, just a witness.

The first time I officially left Berlin was in January 2020, in a car fully packed with luggage, some furniture, and lots of books, driving towards Switzerland. The new beginning energized me even though my body and mind were already too tired from moving and the ongoing job hunting. Many hours later, I arrived in a village one hour away from Zürich and settled in a house by the mountains near Lake Zug. Two months later, the pandemic hit and left the whole world on pause.

The Beginning

Moving from Romania to Berlin to study in the autumn of 2015 felt like the most exciting way to start my new life as a young immigrant and student. I remember my first S-Bahn journeys from the campus in Adlershof to Friedrichstrasse: fifty minutes of vibrant life, listening to music, reading and writing for upcoming courses, the soft morning and evening light beaming through the train windows. Berlin was cinematic and always in motion. The little details of everyday life were intoxicating, and my awareness was always sharp. I mirrored myself in the life of the city, in its streets and neighborhoods, in the hopes for a thriving future. Berlin was more than a witness; it was a close companion. Alles war möglich. Everything was possible.

The In-Between

Romanticizing places is something I have done ever since I was a child. The genius loci, the atmosphere of a place, was more important to me than the practicalities of living in a city. I always jumped with my heart forward, sometimes without anything safe on the other side. The potential of a place to ultimately change my life was almost like a promise that I kept believing in, even when there were clear signs that this city would be (like previous others) just a temporary home.

The in-between is the stage of “bad and good,” where things start to crack slowly under the surface, even if on the outside most things stay the same. We want love to stay.

The solid ground crackles when we step further and further away from ourselves in this promise to stay. Love fades away even quicker when we no longer know who we are. I made some wrong choices in Berlin instead of continuing to follow what felt difficult but good and right.

Relationships fade away when we no longer like ourselves. Berlin didn’t stand a chance. I was already gone.

Beyond Zugzwang

The house with the pomegranate tree was my major acquisition. In this sense, I owned some unreal estate. The odd thing was that every time I tried to see myself inside this grand old house, I felt sad. It was as if the search for home was the point, and now that I had acquired it and the chase was over, there were no more branches to put in the fire.

― Deborah Levy, Real Estate: Living Autobiography 3

These past months since leaving Switzerland, Romania, and, now Germany, I have been in search of a new place to call home—a place to rekindle my love for places. It has been a real struggle to find one. Overwhelmed with practicalities, administrative tasks, constant financial worries, and what-ifs, no place seemed good enough to be considered. I found myself in Zugzwang, coerced to move, with every move forward feeling disadvantageous.

And then I moved forward. Picked a city once again. I’m moving forward even if, for a little while, I am seeing the losses more than the gains. And I’m in love again.

Update 2024

It’s been almost two years since I wrote this essay and began living in The Hague. Looking back, moving here amidst that frenzy of crises was one of the best decisions I’ve made. Just yesterday, I was walking through some neighborhoods in The Hague, feeling very much alive and grateful that I can still see this city with new eyes, almost every day.

I have to admit that sometimes, I still dream about faraway places, and one particular dream of mine is quite clear: living for a couple of years in the States. I’ve always been drawn to its wild landscapes and bustling cities. But for the time being, I’m happy here, and I think there’s still a long way to go before my relationship with this city might transform into something else.