Being with Berlin

She is dirty, often smelly, and talks very loud, especially when we go on the U-Bahn. She likes to take the U-Bahn to have something to blame when she is a bit late. Sometimes she rents a scooter just to park it in the middle of nowhere. When we are together we like to walk or bike or both. Each time we meet she has a different bike, very vintage, very borrowed without permission. Berlin is multifaceted and needs to have options and variety. She enjoys smoking, being drunk, stoned, and dancing all weekend. I’m the opposite, and she finds it boring. Occasionally she wants to have a healthy lifestyle and starts running, doing yoga, detoxing, growing her own veggies, and making her own Kombucha. Until she gets invited to a secret festival in a secret forest, where she’ll stay dancing for days, forgetting why she wanted to be healthy in the first place. She is also green, like the political party, and needs to recycle everything. She dresses with used, broken, badly worn things she bought for very little at a Sunday flea market or for way too much at a hipster second-hand shop. She almost always wears black. And she is obsessed with yellow. And I love her for that. She can cook and likes to brag about her vegan recipes. She loves people, from everywhere. She loves dogs and often leaves their poop behind just to laugh at the faces people make when they step on it. She likes squirrels too, and ducks, and swans. Although at night she prefers cats, rats, wild boars, and foxes. She has never seen a cockroach. Her favorites are the crows because they match her black clothes. She has a lot of tattoos. The biggest one is a wall across her body, which she tried to remove a few years ago but decided to leave some parts of it, to remember her mistakes. We go to the canal a lot, to talk, walk or sit and think, have a drink, and then leave the bottle to the first person who passes by asking for coins, or directly for the bottle. Sometimes she notices people sleeping on her streets and then pretends she didn’t see them. I still don't understand why, but she has the bad habit of screaming every time an ambulance passes by. People cover their ears and complain, but no one can shut her up. Berlin never has a home and that's why she leaves her things on the streets, to give away to whoever finds them. She keeps moving all the time. From a sofa to a room, to a one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom apartment, more and more expensive, no way to register anywhere. Luckily she has many lovers, of all kinds, shapes, colors, tastes, and preferences, with and without gender. She spends her time with artists, writers, musicians, and DJs, to whom she gives all her money as long as they keep her entertained, cultured, poor but sexy. They all love her and chase her in spring and summer, but as soon as autumn comes they start to disappear. From time to time we get news that they left her for Mallorca, or some other warmer and more beautiful place. Understandable, since Berlin turns grey every winter, and she doesn't want to go out, talk, or socialize. I don't quite understand how she earns money. Maybe from a ridiculously cheap thousand-year-old contract that she rents for a lot to someone without a choice. Maybe with a secret startup that no one needs, but everyone pays for. She is a feminist, but only when it suits her. Every now and then she joins a new organization with a somehow important cause and goes to all the demos that come her way. She has posters everywhere. Berlin loves parks. She doesn't love the sun, but when she sees it she always wants to eat ice cream, go to the lake, or have a picnic somewhere. I follow her. I love it when we go to one of her community gardens or poorly groomed cafes. She loves museums so much that she has a collection on an island. She likes to hate Germans, but I know she secretly loves them. Even those who complain that she's doing everything wrong. We have been together for more than a decade. Being with her is like living on the island in the series Lost: I don't know how I got here, I want to leave, I need to come back. One day in between all the back and forth about our committed, open, long-term relationship, she introduced me to a German man, to get married if I wanted to because she wasn't going to, as long as I wouldn’t leave her. She has many secrets and sometimes I find out a new one by accident when I’m walking with her on what I thought was the right street and suddenly I come across something unexpected and inspiring. She has a fascinating history. She is very old, but it doesn't show. She has been able to reinvent herself, be reborn a thousand times, and grow. She has helped me enormously to reinvent myself, to be reborn a thousand times, and to grow. Berlin always makes me feel at home. She is my new home, my old home, my only home.

NOVEMBER 2022

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