Aggressively Free
Three years ago I was planning to move to Berlin. All I knew about this city were the things I had learned in history class about WWII, plus a few stories from friends much older than me about the wall coming down. I also knew it rained a lot and was grey for months in the winter. I thought Berlin would be oppressive.
Berlin is far from that- Berlin is aggressively free. It is free in a way that seeps into every part of your thinking and being and makes you respect humanity in ways you thought you already did back when you were sitting in your high tower. A few days after I arrived I went to a bar, alone. In the US I would have thought twice about doing that, you never know what drunk boys will do to you on a Friday night, but fear didn't even cross my mind here. I started talking to someone at the bar and I told him about my assessment: “Berlin is so free” I told him, “how unexpected!” “Yes” he said, “we work hard at that, it wasn’t always this way.” What he was actually saying to me was “don’t mess it up, tourist”. Since that night, I have felt a great sense of responsibility, my prime directive as an expat, to aggressively protect the freeness of this gem I’ve found.
I love the way freedom is celebrated here. I love seeing scant, silky, beaded costumes on a Sunday night, slowly dragging their feet towards home after 24 hours of partying. I love watching people drinking a wegbier (beer for the way) on the train and then stopping at the crosswalk even when the street is completely deserted, as everyone else blows by. I love hearing conversations in a third-wave coffee shop wander from performance art to EU politics to the transsexual agenda to kindergarten applications. I love this reaction to a Nazi parade: “I am glad that we live in a place where anyone can voice their ideas and be protected by the police”. Even more, I love experiencing the ecstasy of the counter-protest which is 10 times as large. I love the ever-evolving graffiti on the walls of classically built houses - don’t worry, nothing is very old anyway, all the real historical treasures were bombed in the war.
Today Berlin is a city filled with people that protect each other’s freedom. People that defend the minorities and the oddball ideas. People that love the weird, the normal, the new and the traditional, and they all stand joyfully together appreciating the same art exhibits.