WILD WANDERER – – « Ich liebe Berlin » V2.4
I leap into Berlin with a puzzle in mind: Is Berlin made for me and I for it? I leap into Berlin not to get an answer, but to let the city keep asking me the question. I am making my last spring wish true: I am not “doing” Berlin, I am being made by it.
With no agenda at all, the first day is weird. My French life sticks to my bones and mind when I need a rest. Until I stop on the edge of a beer, the Spree and a boat pool in which I have just swum my 15 laps. The first day of a journey is always peculiar. Strange. Foreign. With no time nor goal. Time for me to get acquainted with what the hell I am doing here. And this first dive looks a lot like home (except the water is fucking freezing!). In a good way. Like a good habit I have made mine.
The second day, I have having the unavoidable rendezvous with a National Library to write my mind. To dream my stories. I sit at an Eastern Europe seventies orange table and chair. As the already autumnal grey sky dances with the clouds to create my wolke studies.
I make up stories that never existed. I write the lives I wish I had lived. I am on the edge and I can tell, one day, I won’t be able to know what was lived and what was written.
I cycle back “home”, with a detour by the Tiergartem for the sake of it, before setting with the sun on the Landwehrkanal banks, a canal similar to mine…
The third day, I met a French author settled in Berliner soil, like a good excuse to be here now talking about literature architecture and Europe. I am so intimidated by her desk, the one I dream to have one day, that my imagination is on strike. I am too moved by my past, by my broken heart, to get lost in other stories.
In the end, I decide not to quit but to stop struggling against a blank page. I wander throughout Shönenberg, the Bavarian kietz, on a “back to school” quest: finding my year planner. Berlin is definitely a great place to live. I could picture myself here, in this district, once again, so similar to mine… I seem to always seek a home abroad, looking for clues there could actually be a home to build a life in.
The third night, I meet many French-speeaking authors settled in Berliner soil, like a sweet promise to further creativity here or there.
The fourth day, I am less intimidated by the desk – or maybe it is just my hangover?! – but my inspirations run elsewhere, it brightens in parallel streets and golden parks.
Since I have arrived, I haven’t visited Berlin. I don’t live in Berlin’s time. I live on my own time but in Berlin. A time both in and out of the ordinary. A time in a foreign place. I wander from A to B always with a pen in my hand. To give thoughts to my novel my heart my words. To dream for my tales and my life.
I can’t tell for the first time I am travelling not in time. Just in now.
I have always dreamt to travel in time. Theater, writing and journey are my only ways to make it true. Then I can’t stop filling up notebooks, then I can’t stop wandering the world. In order to reach my story. Our History.
My travels have always started with a goal to reach and a work to do. I used my job to leave home. Let’s not forget the time I went to Berlin was to come closer to one of my German characters.
Not this time! My journey, my departure, is speaking from the heart. There is no other purpose than travel. Therefore, I travel in thepresent without thinking about yesterday (except mine) without dreaming of tomorrow (except mine).
My days are full of pieces of life, of Berlin, perfectly ordinary making my instant perfectly extraordinary. I go through each day like I belonged, like it was my daily life. This is how I recognize transforming journeys and moving departures: when I can feel at home, when it sounds like a new heimat.
I can’t really explain. It’s a bit like meeting somebody.
Either it is friendship or love, the moment when it matches is unspoken. You can’t put it into words, give it a reason, know when it starts. It just happens. You sense it is the good person for the right moment for yourself. I feel the same with Berlin; I sense but I don’t know. Although there were some failures in our encounters, miscommunications, impossible departures and arrivals, but it matches and that’s all that matters.
Berlin relates to me, with no urge nor longing.
Berlin is an opportunity not a necessity. A possibility not an obligation.
Berlin speaks to my heart as I speak from my heart. Broken. Soft. Lingering. My Kintsugi heart. But alive.
Justine T.Annezo – August, 31st to September, 4th 2026, Berlin – GTM+2
