Traveling can have many meanings for people. It can mean seeing the grand palaces of old cities, majestic waterfalls and mile long beaches, or overdue reunions. Traveling can mean a continuous journey of being lost and found. Finding yourself through interactions with others, through clarity of thought as we are detached from everyday routine, through finding oneself lost in a city. When I first stepped out of the train at Berlin Central I could feel the buzz in the air. This was a city of the living. There was no one single feeling which I felt about the atmosphere, when making the journey to my Kreuzberg hostel. It is a multitude of new and old, tranquil, packed, fast, slow, happy, angry, posh, bohemian, clean, dirty. Berlin had it all. Maybe it is the 20 some years of living in a quiet, laid back, somewhat conservative city, that has me used to cars stopping for pedestrians, knowing my neighbours by name, the exact time down to the minute it takes to drive to the mountains. Maybe it is that my mind has not been stimulated since the last time I went traveling abroad. All I knew was that even though I knew exactly where the Bahn was going, I was lost in this city, all it's voices, colours, and whispers. Kreuzberg is a super hip and artistic neighbourhood in East Berlin, housing many students, people of Turkish descent, studios, cafes, bars... However, 10 years ago, if you were to take a taxi through Kreuzberg your taxi driver could potentially say that you are entering a "bad" area. Quote, unquote. The buildings in my entire city together probably have the equivalent of one block in Kreuzberg of street art and graffiti. And yet here I was, away from the masses of tourists, or people trying to sell you a walking tour, on a quiet street by the canal, and for the first time in a long time, as I walked, I saw life spring up in the smallest things. Personal touches, on the walls, in the windows... It was in the air. People had really made these streets their own. "If you are racist, homophobic, or an asshole, don't come here" read one message on a hostel window in green marker. I didn't know it yet, but I was home. One of the ways in which I like to get accustomed to a new place is to go out for a jog. It puts me in pace with normal life, before I submerse myself in all the tourist activities. I started down the canal, and as I ran on, past the mothers in scarves pushing strollers, shops already smelling of fresh coffee or kebab, cyclists, other joggers... a familiar feeling came over me; of the days of my childhood, when my grandmother and I would go walking along the river in Ukraine, and of how we used to ride bicycles around the alleys in Canada. This was the first of many such feelings.
The longer I remained there, the more I saw, the more people I spoke to, the more I began to understand the underlying decades of conflict and repression in Berlin. And how after repression came a tidal wave of freedom of expression. People were still very passionate about this, because after all, the wall only came down in 1989/1990. It reflected a conflict which had been inside of me since I moved from my birth country of Ukraine, to Canada. A sort of pressure to fit into society and conform to the "acceptable way" to live your life. Why I still think this is defined by finishing school, buying a house and car, and having kids...I don't know. But what I do know is that for years I was fighting for this normality, to have this kind of life. Sitting in a dim bar at night, decorated with mismatching pieces of furniture and lit just by candlelight I further realized why I like a place with a certain degree of disorder. It is because such places have more character and expression. It is that you are able to be anyone, making the most of what you have, being able to go wherever you wish. It is encouraged to be real, frugal, and enjoy the life which you have. Exactly what I felt more than 20 years ago, when I was a kid, running barefoot on the molten cement of a post world war 2 village in rural Ukraine, getting into trouble. In the days when people grew their own produce, had bomb shelters, and old wives tales were taken seriously. Here, I found freedom.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Where in the world is Po?Home, Canada Archives
April 2016
Categories |