Leaving a city where the very ground I walked upon was over two thousand years old and every corner I turned held a new ancient wonder to behold for a city built from rubble with sky reaching buildings and a modern sheen. This is a clash of two very different worlds that I have suddenly found myself inhabiting in the span of a few short days. Rome to Berlin, the first leg of my journey. Ancient to Modern, where no longer do I feel the touch of tufa under my fingertips, instead it is the sleek and shiny veneer of glass and a skyscraper’s concrete. Only a few short hours by plane apart, but a world of a difference.
My time in Rome is done. I still cannot quite get over those words, my tongue stumbles and my heart breaks. It is a strange time of transition in which I am done in Rome, but still not going home. I am finding new homes with friends along the way on a mini tour of Europe for a month: Berlin, London, Amsterdam (Utrecht). One month, four countries including Italy, a slow paced exploration of things beyond the boot shaped peninsula I called home for a semester. When I decided to stay in Europe I wanted to do things right. Dedicate a fair amount of time to each place I went to, to try to get a feel of what these places are like beyond the monuments and the famous sights. I hope I can achieve that, but honestly what I feel right now is tired. Tired from the emotional and physically draining experience of saying goodbye to a huge part of my life. This will be a grand adventure of that I am sure, but what it holds I really cannot know.
Berlin: A city that has taught me how to love Chai Lattes, listen to the rain, seek out church bells, and find life in every neighborhood tucked into this great city. Berlin is complicated and in my short time here I by no means whatsoever lay claim to know it, but I have come to enjoy it. I honestly wasn’t sure how I would feel coming to Berlin right after Rome. I wasn’t sure I would like it just by virtue of the fact that it wasn’t Rome, but I am glad to say that is not so. It is so wildly different, I cannot even begin to bring myself to compare them or equate them even though it is interesting to discover their differences.
My first night in Berlin my old college roommate met me in the airport and it felt like we had never left Berkeley in a strange way. Just the two of us in Germany, together. It was disorienting but great, I loved getting to see her as I set foot outside of the airport. I would be staying with her the duration of my stay in Berlin, almost a whole week. Without thinking much of it, because we were so enwrapped in conversation, we took a bus and the U-Bahn to her apartment in Kreuzberg, a lovely neighborhood in Berlin. We went into the U-Bahn with fading light and came out into darkness, my first night in Berlin.
After showing me her adorable apartment, which she shares with two elderly German ladies who do not speak a word of English and another student named Ti. I collected myself from a long day of stressful travel and we went out for a little dinner at a Thai food place where we sat and talked for hours. We talked about cultural differences, our respective study abroad experiences, and just life in general. The Thai food was a huge marvel to me because Italy really only has one type of food offered and it is Italian food, so seeing my favorite type of food and getting to eat it was quite a treat. After finishing we wandered down the adorable streets of her neighborhood lined with colorful restaurants, cafes, and bars all decorated cutely, and settled on an adorably hipster little bar where, like the real adults that we are, got non-alcoholic fruity beverages that were really fantastic. Sitting in a warm corner of the bar on couches and leather armchairs we continued talking well after our drinks were gone.
It was a great first night in Berlin and since I was exhausted from not really having slept in the last two weeks because of finals and then leaving Rome, I went to sleep around midnight. I went to bed with the sound of raining falling just outside our window, wondering what Berlin had to show me next.