The Separation of Berlin｜Schönhauser Allee's No One's Home

Did I mention it? In the east of Berlin, are the house numbers 1234567 arranged like this, until the end of the street and then switch to the other end? This is probably the unique arrangement in the world. People who come to Berlin for the first time will always go in the wrong direction. Who knows that the exit of the subway station is obviously No. 23, but it is necessary to turn right or left or cross the road. What about the 98th?

Confused about the arrangement of the house numbers, it was the first time I felt the loss of direction in the huge Berlin.

It's not just the house number that makes fun of people, even going back to your own home is like walking through a maze. Many people asked for my address and said they wanted to send postcards. The first reaction after receiving it was: Your address is very short. In fact, there are probably dozens or even hundreds of people sharing this short address, right? Pushing the door under the door sign, you enter the courtyard house. There are doors around the atrium, and there is an atrium behind the atrium.

But don't think that people live in a circle, it adds warmth. Each household under this house number is a one-to-two-person accommodation unit, single or a partner. It is self-contained when the door is closed. Who is the neighbor? face to face.

In the first decade of the 21st century, there are still many empty houses in Berlin, and the people living in such lonely units. As for the relationship between people, alienation can be summed up in two words.

The second month of moving to Berlin, because I couldn't bear to sit in my room alone, looking at every room around the patio, as the night got dark, the lights came on and off, but no one could talk; because there was no way Enron was walking alone on the noisy street, meeting too many strangers but only passing by, so I kept moving outside of Berlin.

During the journey I flipped through Hesse's Wanderer again and again, and listened to Avril's Nobody's home again and again. "She wants to go home, but nobody's home. I's where she lies, broken inside." can almost accurately describe how I missed Berlin and didn't dare to go back to Berlin.

When I was admitted to Freiburg University, the advisor heard that I was going to give up this place to go to Berlin, and he repeatedly warned me that Berlin is definitely not as warm as Freiburg, and it is definitely not a friendly environment for international students. I naively believed that this was just his side of the word. Later, when I arrived in Berlin, I lost my loved one at the same time, but I liked living in a big city. Faced with such alienation and loneliness, I was still reluctant to admit that I regretted moving from Freiburg to Berlin.

The man who left me asked me, "Will the potted plants at home not die when you are wandering outside like you?"

Yes, even though the lyrics of Avril's song are written in a very sad way, when she sings "Be strong, be strong now..." in a strong voice, there is always a lot of stubbornness in my heart. Life in a foreign land is generally like this. Even in this too large and indifferent city, there are still many unpredictable personnel and events, but life, no matter where you are, can continue as long as you grit your teeth.

 Note: Postmen in Berlin, or all over Germany, also carry a large set of door keys when delivering letters, then open the door by themselves, and go into various mailboxes to deliver letters.

Received @Motonokia's reminder, in fact, although it was not finished when it was published, I didn't think about serialization (doubt?). So far, Berlin has accounted for at least one third of my adult life. It was supposed to be the most brilliant time, but as I wrote before , maybe it turned out to be just an irreversible trauma.

As an author, perhaps I should first add the reasons why I want to leave and stay in Berlin.

Before moving to Berlin, I had been admitted to the Ph.D. class of the History Institute at Freiburg University and the scholarship promised by the professor, had a stable social circle in that small town, and a boyfriend. Turning to the letter I wrote to my ex when I decided to leave Freiburg:

 Ich habe dir gesagt, dass ich schnell nach Berlin gehen möchte, obwohl ich ein bisschen ängstlich bin, jetzt allein nach Berlin zu ziehen. Ich will dorthin, weil Berlin eine Stadt ist, die mich reizt. Trotzdem bereite ich meinen Umzug noch nicht genug vor , und selber fühle ich mich auch noch nicht vorbereitet genug.

Vielleicht weiß ich bis jetzt nicht genau, was ich möchte, aber eigentlich möchte ich, dass du in die Welt gehst. Deswegen ich habe gesagt, dass ich jetzt nach Berlin ziehen will. Einer vom uns muss sagen: „Ich gehe!“ Dann kann auch der andere genau wissen, was er¬/sie macht.

At the beginning, I waved my sleeves proudly and said that I wanted to leave, in order to allow both of them to make better decisions for their future (I hesitated to stay in Freiburg, my ex-boyfriend was considering going to Central and South America for an internship). And insisting on letting go of what he already owns in Freiburg and moving to Berlin is okay, and he doesn't even care about the possibility of a long-distance relationship.

However, after my ex-boyfriend said he was going to move to Berlin with him, things seemed to be messed up: it's normal to break up at a distance, but after he insisted on moving in, he said on Christmas Eve that he was going after another girl and asked me to move out of the apartment we rented together first. It's not an ordinary hurting person, it was originally an inspirational study abroad story, and the style of the painting turned into a clichéd love soap opera . Life in Berlin started like this absurdly.

As for later, I will not talk about the daily racial discrimination in life, from the failure of various scholarships, the annual pollen allergy, the outbreak of depression, the persistent entanglement of my ex-boyfriend, to the death of my sister. I was willing to say, "I said I would come first, how could I be the first to leave?" So it dragged on for several years in Berlin.

Is this a waste of youth? "Life has only the past without transition", many years later, this may be my final comment on the time in Berlin.

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