Ich bin Berliner

It was around midnight when I arrived, Flixbus had left me in the not-very-central-looking central station. All I could see was a bus stop, and all I could feel was..

Vibrations filling up my lungs, butterflies. There was this feeling, I had difficulty understanding what that was at first, I felt scared to call it out and be disappointed in the end. I hadn't seen anything yet, it was full dark.

I decided to go with Google Maps and walk to the place I'd be staying. Some bikes passed by me, only traffic lights enlightened the streets. I waited for that feeling to dissolve, disappear... Yet it only became stronger as I kept walking, with my each step I felt anxious that I didn't know the place and yet it felt like as if it was me walking those avenues down for the thousandth time. I felt home.

I felt anxious to think it out loud, I whispered to myself instead as I kept walking. City lights began dimly enlightening the place, I walked in the darkest of streets. Holding onto the the feeling inside, making na?ve attempts of its comprehension.

The next day, it's a beautiful morning. Feeling is still there, stronger.

I start walking towards the places I clumsily selected with the last bits of Wi-Fi I was able to find. I remember my English Literature class, I remember the pictures I selected as I was the one to present the beginning of the fall, their rise.

I keep walking, everywhere I look the city vomits art, not as if. Musicians on the streets, posters exercising their rights of artistic expression; the city is a whole with them. I pass the bridges, it is easy changing sides. The lanes are wide enough, there is too a place for bikes, even their own lights. Everywhere I look, I see art.

The trams feel like toy trains, as if I'm somehow a character in Toy Story. The smell of them is unique and I'm sitting right there as I speak. Looking at its windows, covered with little Brandenburger Tors.

The next time I eat a pretzel when I arrive, it tastes like heaven. I see more of the city this time while I'm on my way to the place- well thinking I was on my way as it turns out I got on the bus in the wrong direction. I'm glad I did, because I had loved that huge avenue.

It soon became clear I was not cut out to live in a small city, a village, in peace...

My fight to be myself started when I was in primary school, probably around the first grade. I never wanted to act like someone else, as an exchange to feel that sense of belonging. I never felt like I belonged. I'll admit openly for the first time that in Istanbul I go out to a place I've been at least a hundred times and act like a stranger, a tourist. I look around as if it's my first time there, like an outsider.

Since forever it has been like this.

That city overflowed and it was just is. The way it is. Just like the way I am.

I thought it was not possible to fall in love with a place, I thought it was just another piece or slice of coast that a different language-speaking people lived. I was wrong. Because what and how I feel, I never felt that for a person.

For the first time in my life, I truly, feel like my roots have been always there. And it's funny when I at the first place have never been, let alone consider the possibility the existence in this intricate intimate way before.

In my short time there, whomever I met acted as if I was already a part of there, whomever I met, made me feel like home.

I was respected, valued, and just am. The way I am.

So dear reader, I wanted to share this, I think a beautiful story, with you because I found that place that I can co-exist with. I found the place where I know has always been my home.

10-year old me quirkily smiles at me as I'm writing these lines, 12-year old me saying she always knew while making that promise to us. The promise fulfilled itself, in a manner much greater than her verse.

From that second I left the Brandenburg airport, knowing that it's not a goodbye. It's an auf Wiedersehen, and it is to, really, come home.

Until that day I'm home...

Thank you, for witnessing my story.

Yours sincerely,

Ceyda.