To See a City Breathe: A Californian’s First Glimpse of Europe
After 14 hours in the air, mindlessly watching movies, failing to sleep and desperately trying to stretch my legs, I found myself glancing out the nearest window once the plane’s descent began. The bright sky turned into a blanket of overcast clouds right before my squinting eyes.
I had arrived in Europe, the place where history seems to begin in the West. The place to where I and so many people in North America can trace back their ancestry. I didn’t grasp the gravity of the trip yet. I wouldn’t at the airport, on the train, or when I finally reached our hotel and struggled to stay awake. It was only on my walking tour the next day that Berlin hit me square in the jaw.
The city was beautiful. Something I actively wanted to look at.
Like many Americans who grew up on the West Coast, I had viewed cities as places of necessity. Everything should be pragmatic, serving some purpose in the rat race of life. Every business, apartment, and office building drives towards a single goal: profit. In cities I had experienced, there was no history, no love. Even the museums and art houses seemed artificial, like two-bit imitations of what an outsider imagines culture to be. Everything is for sale, everyone has a price.
But Berlin was different.
Around every corner and next to every café there was a mix of beauty and purpose, like the city itself was alive and breathing. Zigzagged streets led into wide boulevards where buildings of every make and era stood. Museums told tales of great Germans who didn’t just see the world as a check to be written but a story to be told. Beautiful classical European palaces juxtaposed next to modern architectural wonders. Statues, monuments, memorials, and history lessons all came together in a crescendo that is wholly absent in Los Angeles or San Diego. Berlin, a city that had been built up and then leveled a dozen times over, found a way to combine the marvels of the past with the wonders of today.
You may presume I’m an American romanticizing his first look at European culture. You’d be correct. Sure, the grimy parts of Berlin reared their ugly heads from time to time. The perennially litter-strewn sidewalks and back alleys made that abundantly clear. But these features contribute to a feeling of realness. This city was built for people. The United States, a country that has only known growth and progress, seems to focus its energy on turning out luxury apartments, fast food chains and strip malls. With real culture, there is pain in every brick laid.
Hearing about the trials of the German people and the evil committed for aristocrats and despots, lends a sense of temporality to the city. It changes and grows. The Berlin I saw today will never exist again. Its people and culture are in constant flux and, hopefully, moving ever closer to a more just world.
Berlin isn’t just beautiful— it’s real in a way that America hasn’t been and may never be. So while I wander its vast streets and endless corridors, I will savor every moment. Because, for once, I want to look at the world around me.
Blake McQuilkin is a recent graduate of UC Santa Barbara reporting from Berlin this summer with ieiMedia’s Berlin Beyond Borders team of journalists.
