Tenth Letter, January 25

Dear Berlin,

I am riding the U7 from Kleistpark to Rathaus Neukölln, just like I used to do every day on my way home from work. I am to meet Matt at a camera store, where hopefully someone more practiced can understand the faulty shutter mechanism of his Canonet QL17. I left my SD card for my Nikon DSLR at home, so two days in a row, we are both camera-less.

It often feels like my time in Neukölln was an era. I return there more than anywhere else in the city to reminisce, now not only on my time with Istanbul, but on my time living in that lovely Turkish quarter as well. I lived there for perhaps 16 days, but my heart stayed there.

I wouldn’t call that “how we met”, per se. Maybe better termed as our first date: we walked Sonnenallee and went to Imren Grill for mercimek çorba.

It was there where I had my first “regular” coffee shop, secondhand bookstore, found Karam at the grocery store. It was there I walked in the sunny month of September feeling sure that I was going to fall in love with you, kissing and dancing on a rooftop, looking up at clouds from the middle of Tempelhof, a great big nothing field in a great big city, in a foreign country where I’m still learning the language.

I think that Neukölln, dear Berlin, is your heart.

Love,