Living in Berlin is living in two places.
I went to a fashion week party and met people from Venezuela, Korea, India, and probably places in Africa. Don’t worry, there were also tall white modelesque Europeans with long blonde ponytails too. While sipping my mini bottle of champagne from a straw with the sound of techno bleeping through the air I looked around at all the different faces and thought, we could be anywhere in the world right now.
#fashiontech show @bikiniberlin with @elektrocouture #blingbling pic.twitter.com/7skj8oxD3n
— david bizer (@bza) January 20, 2016
But that’s only part of being in this city.
When you move to a new place you must maintain your self or you’ll get lost in being someone else. Your identity, personality, values and ideals. But somehow you as who you are also must also participate, contribute, and accept local way of living.
Half of Berliners are from elsewhere. Morgenpost mapped the census data from last summer to show the thousands of people here born from Buenos Aires, Hanoi, Tehran, New York, Beirut and so on, not even counting the new 1.5 million expected from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. So how does each newcomers negotiate maintaining their self and truly living as a Berliner?
And I wonder what assumptions are people make about me? New friends, new clients, new boyfriends, people on the street, police officers, other expats, other immigrants. I have seen more subtle sexism and semi-unprofessional behavior in Berlin than I have anywhere in the world. But actually none it is has been from Germans. I’ll never know if someone is rude or kind to me because of my color, gender, accent, or even social class. Or maybe that’s how they treat everyone. And in these experiences, I am living in a very global community that has the cosmopolitan luxury of these concerns.
But then, there are times I am unmistakably in Germany. When I join longtime Berliners for a Saturday breakfast or a weeknight cocktail I really wish I spoke the language. Not to be included in the conversation, but to feel the subtleties of the discussion. When I make eye contact with a friendly faces on the train I want a smile in return. I want to find it easy to be remarkably punctual. In small moments like these I really feel like I am in Germany.
Berlin is not fast like New York, bright like Tokyo, loud like San Francisco, nor smokey like New Delhi. Cities that have become themselves through great change. This city, just like its people, is coming into its own and asking how to maintain its self and adapt to the change.
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