Fifth Letter, January 18

Dear Berlin,

I may find the time later to write about yesterday and the lovely snow and human interaction that occurred, but I just had a perspective-shifting conversation that I couldn’t wait to share.

It happened, as beautiful conversations are wont to do, at breakfast.

It was 8:24, and Moon and her man were dining there and offered me coffee and a chair. He, surprised that I was up early, and she, knowing better, concerned that I was up late.

We were talking about you, of course. Nicholas and I (to be honest, I’ve forgotten if that’s truly his name, God forgive me) are relative newcomers here but aren’t so easily swayed by our host city, whereas Moon has been here nearly two years, and still adores it.

So, I asked her why. (The alternative click-bait title of this letter is “I-asked-my-roommate-why-she-loves-Berlin-when-I-hate-it-and-her-response-blew-me-away”).

Moon just said that she feels like anyone can belong here. You can find all kinds of people, people who would be considered weird in any other context, and here they are accepted. People dress how they want, subscribe to every kind of alternative lifestyle imagineable, celebrate cutting-edge visual and performing art and pursue space for tech startups and underground music. There are trans and non-binary presenting folx. There are old East-Berliners and young Western migrants. There are generations and generations of refugees and guest workers.

I imagine the difference between individualistic Berlin and the monoculture of South Korea is a dramatic one. She said she often feels out of place, never really fitting in anywhere. But in Berlin, she’s not “weird”, she’s just herself. Moon appreciates the diversity of people that are accepted in Berlin.

I find her words interesting: she sees Berlin as diverse and accepting, while I have always thought of it as individualistic and hip. She focuses on who is represented but I focus on who feels included and who fits. Maybe it’s because I have not felt ostracized that I don’t desire something like Berlin. Or maybe it’s because I see that under the guise of free expression, there is still a right way and a wrong way to be subversive, expressive, and self contained. The community is based on a collective rejection of traditional communities, and the only places you can find such communities which have come to be so important to me in the past few years are within families, religious groups, and ethnic enclaves that embrace their similarities.

No, dear, you are indeed a city which expounds upon differences instead of trying to bring people together. But today Moon taught me something about that: for those who find their identity in what makes them unique, ahead of the curve, non-traditional? This is a utopia, a safe-haven and a playground for experimentation.

Thoughtfully,