It’s nearly noon in Berlin on my third full day here, and I have not gotten out of bed yet. Since my alarm buzzed me awake three hours ago, I’ve thought about getting up, even imagining what I might do with my day—the last fully free weekday before I start a part-time job on Monday—but then I just…can’t. I could go to a museum or a cafe to write or walk around, but inevitably I come up with a reason that these activities feel too daunting. Instead, I stay in bed, looking and thinking.
Through the window I can see the top of the ornate Altbau—the name for pre-war buildings—across the narrow street. Above each decorative moulding, sharp spikes stick straight up to prevent birds from landing. And yet, a fat pigeon has nestled on the rounded center portion, its neck sunk into a puffed, mauve chest. Behind the roof the top branches of a tall tree sway in the wind. Even from here I can see that the ends have thickened, getting ready for spring. By now, I’ve memorized the scratches on the wall above the radiator, which gurgles and hisses occasionally. A car rushes by on the street below and someone throws a glass bottle into a recycling bin, which lands with a high-toned crash. Patches of blue become visible in the grey sky and I tell myself I’ll get outside soon.
It’s the kind of activity relegated to the montage of a movie like Under the Tuscan Sun, the kind of day Emily in Paris has never heard of. Usually, the scene begins when the protagonist throws the covers back and steps! with! resolve! into the adventure. These stories barely acknowledge that following the dream, however right it may be, is lonely and difficult. This is a theme I’ve come back to several times, that most of life is not the stuff of stories. Maybe this only bothers me because I’m a writer, since I have a tendency to narrativize my life as I live it. Do other writers do this? I’d text some friends to ask, but they’re all still asleep.
All week, I knew I would send this newsletter today, the first after many posts about finally getting to Berlin. I noted little details throughout the week, wanting to paint a beautiful picture of a dream realized. How I talked nonstop with my taxi driver from the airport about my decision to move here, how the sun was warm enough to feel it on my skin the first day, and the way a runner that passed me twice yesterday held his left pinky out at an angle. It didn’t feel like enough. I felt the compulsion to lie about the way things have happened this week, insinuating that it’s been an ecstatic return tour, complete with friends holding up a sign at the airport and barely a minute to myself. Instead, the first thing I did after waking up on Wednesday was go to the doctor.
This is probably not the first dispatch from Berlin that you expected, but it’s the honest one, including a lot of UTI talk. Some might call it oversharing. I call it the reality.
On Monday, one hour before my flight, I sent my friend Jenny a frantic text about my suspected UTI. She nicely booked an appointment for me with her GP. “When you arrive, tell them you have a Blasenentzündung,” she wrote. After arriving late and finishing off the last sandwich I’d assembled in LA, I went right to bed. When my alarm went off at 6:30am—aka 9:30pm LA time—I took the U-Bahn to Prenzlauer Berg and walked the exact route I’d taken to my German classes nearly five years before, realizing I must have walked by a hundred times. The office was in a normal apartment building on the first (European) floor. I walked in to wall-to-wall yellow paint. We’re talking Big Bird yellow, radioactive lemon yellow.
The doctor wasn’t in yet, so the receptionist gave me a cup and told me to leave my sample in the bathroom. No dice. I walked out and said I was so sorry, but I hadn’t had enough to drink since waking up, did she have any water? She offered me a coffee in addition to the water and told me I could sit near the window with my mask off since I was the only patient in. “It’s not great coffee,” she said handing it to me, “but it’ll do the trick.” The breeze was strong and icy coming through the open window. I wasn’t glad to be there, in pain, jetlagged and groggy, but there I was, drinking doctor’s office coffee, making small talk auf Deutsch! When the doctor eventually arrived, I continued in German, having already written out a paragraph to describe my symptoms. They weren’t like normal, I said. Then, she asked a question. I understood everything but one word, and figured I’d just move forward. “Ja,” I said. After that, she switched to English, and my cheeks burned with embarrassment. She was very nice and it was clear that communicating in English was more effective. Not to mention, she isn’t a language teacher, but a professional doing her job. I left with a prescription and said she’d call in a few days with the culture results.
When I stepped onto the street, I looked up the meaning of the word I’d missed. She’d used the word “häufig” (which sounds like HOY-fee-k with a very soft k at the end), which can mean anything from regular to common or frequent, but for some reason I’ve always struggled to understand it in the moment. Some words are like that for me. I realized that in response to my saying my symptoms weren’t like normal, she’d asked me “What are the regular symptoms, then?” To which I’d replied, simply, “yes.”
I spent the rest of the day walking around the city, taking pictures and revisiting old favorite buildings and wandering along the canal in Kreuzberg, where I’m staying for the month before moving up to Wedding (pronounced like Vedding) for four months. The streets are familiar to me here. During my first three months in Berlin back in 2017 I was only five minutes from my current spot, and last fall I stayed right across the canal. I have traversed most of this neighborhood and so even some of the graffiti is familiar to me. I know where the swans collect at various spots along the water and which entrance to use at the U-Bahn stop. There’s something strange about feeling so out of sorts, so very new and disoriented, while being deeply anchored in a physical space. It reminded me that what makes a life isn’t an intrinsic knowledge of a city’s streets but deep relationships with the people who live on them, something that takes time after being away for years.
Yesterday, day two, I felt with it enough to unpack and to make this temporary apartment feel a little bit more like home. I decalcified the hot water heater with lemon slices and laid my work things and German text books out on the desk. I met up with a friend for dinner, and from the moment we said hello, it was as though we had never stopped the conversation since I’d seen him in October. And still, it was hard to get out of bed today. I imagine that it will be like this for a while.
Four years ago, these low points felled me. The expectations I had for how my life should look and feel (perfect German, immediate community) were so intense that I often became paralyzed in response. I didn’t understand then as I do now that the montage is as valuable as the plot-driven beats, that the margins are as much a part of the page as the text is.
As I’ve written about before, I want to make meaning from the liminal. Part of that comes from writing honestly about this process. But what I really want is to understand that a hard day is just a hard day, something to tolerate, not a referendum on my life as a whole. Also, to remember that googling “what to do after a nuclear explosion” is not a great idea emotionally. Speaking of the new Cold War, the strange symmetry is not lost on me that thousands of refugees are arriving in Berlin this week, moving not from privilege as I am, but out of terror and heartbreak. Knowing that doesn’t remove my homesickness, disorientation, and jetlag blues, but it does put things in perspective.
Ultimately, life is about contradictions, as I wrote about last week. It’s not just the experience of going through a life change while war plays out in a neighboring country that offers a jarring contrast. Sometimes the things we love, want, and work hard for can make us sad and lonely. It doesn’t mean they’re not worth doing, nor does it mean that there won’t also be moments of joy like the sun briefly streaming through a break in the clouds. Speaking of, I’m finally getting dressed and headed out to stroll the streets.