The Accidental Berliner

Berlin welcomes everyone from refugees to the artistically inclined to the sexually liberated, and everything in between, but why didn’t one writer feel more at home there?

Photo by David Farley

As the ambulance sped through Berlin traffic, its flickering emergency lights nervously casting the 19th-century buildings that flank my street in a deep blue hue, the paramedic asked me to remove my jeans. “Well, um, uh, this is a bit embarrassing,” I said, “but I’m not wearing any underwear.”

The male and female paramedics shot glances at each other and the male said, “Well, I don’t mind.” It was the female’s turn to vote and she said everything by saying nothing. A better assessment of the damage I’d done to my knee by crashing my bike would have to wait until we reached the hospital. In the meantime, for reasons that I still don’t know why, I grabbed my phone and took a selfie in the ambulance.

Moments later I was wheeled into the emergency room on a gurney, my jeans firmly hugging my lower half, and was deposited in a hallway of an emergency room overflowing with people who were either unconscious or writhing in pain. A nurse came by to take my blood pressure and mumbled something about an hours-long wait. I looked at my phone. It was 11:17pm. So I lay there thinking about what I’d just done to myself. One moment I was riding home from a pleasant, if uneventful evening, and a few minutes later, I was laying on a gurney in a Berlin hospital.

How did I get here? I thought.

I practically grew up on a bike. In the suburban Los Angeles town where I was raised, my friends and I would seek out all the BMX tracks in town and spend our afternoons racing and launching ourselves through the air on dirt-caked ramps. Sometimes we crashed, but we were resilient 12-year-olds and would get up, brush the dirt off and do it all over again. In New York City, where I lived for 13 years before moving to Berlin, I’d bike all over town, eschewing taxis and the subway for the city’s bike sharing program. I’d pedal through town with impunity, darting up traffic-snarled Sixth Avenue with confidence, weaving through yellow taxis on 42nd Street without any fear of the legendary Big Apple gridlock launching me across the Hudson River (or into a hospital). I’d often ride to dinners or parties or dinner parties with my friend Tom who, once off the bike, would offer a compendium of “near misses” he’d witnessed as he lagged behind me. I’d brush it off, telling myself that he was exaggerating and just didn’t understand my confidence on a bike.

When I left the Big Apple for Berlin a few months before this unexpected trip to the emergency room, I went from a city with a gazillion friends to a city with no friends. It took a lot of adjustment to being a loner. I resorted to doing things that would have been unimaginable before. I pleaded with friends of friends to meet up with me, and most of those who agreed seemed they were doing so only because they owed someone a favor. I tried out the food-related events offered on Meetup.com. One meet-up at a pizzeria consisted of bad pizza and even worse conversation, dominated by an American expat who seemed to play word association with any topic that was mentioned, even in passing. “Oh, did you say ‘dream’? I had such a strange dream last night. Let me tell you …!” The following day, I was prompted by an email from Meetup.com to write a review, which I mistook as a review of the restaurant. “Mediocre pizza at best,” I wrote. One star. Later on, someone else from the group chimed in to denounce me for my criticism of the organizers’ hard work and ensured I’d not be welcomed back in the group.

“The Purple One”

So my best friend became my purple bike (which I’d named "The Purple One," naturally) and I rode him everywhere around town. Because Germans are, as the stereotype suggests, a very rule-abiding people, I often would get reprimanded on the street for not following the rules of the road. I’d ride the wrong way down a (non-busy) street because I’d want to get a closer look at the Berlin Wall. Bikers would zoom past me going the opposite direction and give me the Teutonic stink eye, shaking their heads, or wagging their fingers. Even on foot, I’d cross a (non-busy) street, without a car in sight, albeit on a red light, and be met with locals yelling, “Respect ze light! Respect ze light,” always in English because they knew a real German would never disrespect the light.

After four hours of waiting in the hospital emergency room a nurse pushed me into a smaller office where a spiky blond-haired doctor with an eyebrow piercing was waiting for me with a clipboard. “You’re going to have to remove your jeans,” she said. I bit down on my lower lip and emitted a nervous giggle. And then explained the risks of doing so. The staff placed a cloth around my waist and then pulled my jeans off. “You picked the wrong day to not wear underwear,” the doctor said, feeling around my knee and asking me to indicate when it hurt. “Were you out clubbing and you crashed on your way to another club?” she asked.

In a way, I wish I could have said yes. But I had actually been watching a soccer game with Eliot, one of my few friends here. I’d had one beer and was on my way home about 11pm, a time when most Berliners are just getting revved up for the night.

I haven't fully taken advantage of the debauchery and vice that this city is famous for. I’m not really sure I want to. After all, the common weekend escapades include clubbing from Friday night to Sunday evening (or sometimes 'til Monday morning). I would have maybe partaken in this weekend-long party in my 20s, but now that I’m in my mid-40s, I’d rather binge-watch TV shows than binge-dance to techno music at clubs.

One month into my stint here I went out with some local folk. We sat in a loud bar in the hip Neukölln neighborhood talking about EU politics and the refugee crisis while sipping beers. And then about midnight, I announced I was heading home. I looked around to see everyone staring at me, mouths agape. There was a collective gasp, followed by questions of concern for my well-being. I assured them I was feeling just fine. They haven't asked me to join them for drinks since then. 

I’d spent long nights drinking beer in Prague when I lived there in the mid- to late-90s. I ate with abandon living in Rome and New York City during the last decade. The fact is my lifestyle has inexplicably shifted since I arrived in Berlin. I jog every morning. I eat mostly vegetarian at home (which is often), and I drink less booze. I’ve become the opposite of a typical young-ish Berliner. I got cleaner. Not rowdier.

Which raises the question: why did I move here in the first place? Every person I meet in Berlin asks me this. “Because I wanted to,” I’d shrug. I wish I had a more satisfying explanation – an exciting new book project, even an unyielding love of German ham hock – but it was simply a gut feeling that drove me here. Sure, I have a graduate degree in 20th-century European history and Berlin is the capital of 20th century: draw a line through the major events of the last 100+ years and, like the Berlin Wall itself, it zigzags its way through this city, a palimpsest of the last century. Here history either hits you over the head or quietly tip-toes right into your life.

But on a more personal level, every time I’d visit Berlin I’d leave feeling like I should be living there. I loved the carefree attitude the denizens of this city exhibit. I loved that, dating back to at least the 18th century and going to the very present, the city has a reputation for welcoming the displaced. Someone here once told me, “If you move to Berlin and you’re not an artist or creative person or an entrepreneur, it’s weird. It’s the opposite of most places.” This was, I had decided, the city for me. At least for a couple of years.  And so after a visit in May 2014, I made up my mind. It didn’t exactly happen overnight, but about two years after that, I finally made the plunge.

I think I’d been dragging my feet because I was terrified of un-attaching myself from my life in New York: from the deep friendships I’d forged all the way down to the place I had coffee and read the New York Times nearly every morning. The day I left I sat on my couch in my West Village apartment, my two carry-on-size bags sitting at my feet, and I cried for fifteen minutes, thinking about all that I was leaving behind.

And so here I was on a gurney at 5:30am in Berlin. I thought about the time I told an acquaintance here that I’d bought a bike “Be careful,” she said. “But also bike accidents in Berlin are a rite of passage here.”

Many people crash on Berlin streets because their tire gets lodged in the tram tracks. Or they’re intoxicated. My accident was the result of neither. It didn’t even happen because I was riding with the confident abandon I’d so become accustomed to in New York. It was due more to my impatience to get home. Perhaps to go to bed early, like the adult I’ve unexpectedly become.

As I was riding I saw an intersection up ahead and realized that if I sped up, I might make the light and cross the street. If so, I’d be virtually home. But instead, realizing there wasn’t much traffic on the two-way street, I crossed right then and there. What I didn’t realize was that the sidewalk had been recently extended into the street to create a bus stop. It wasn’t completed yet, so the sidewalk extension, curb and street, were all black tar. When I hit the invisible curb, I went flying off my bike. I heard a pop in my knee. I felt it, too. I hit the ground and thought: I’m not going to be doing my morning jogs for a while.

In an ambulance being rushed to the hospital? Don’t forget to take a selfie.

After examining my x-rays, the doctor told me nothing was broken. I’d be fine if I got some rest and kept pressure off my left leg for a while. “And stay on the bike path,” she said. With that, I hobbled out of the emergency room, the mid-summer early morning light splashing me on the face.

Now that my knee is healed and I’m back on the Purple One, I ride slower. I cross the street at intersections. I even “respect ze light.” Well, most of the time.

And, because you never know where you’ll end up. I never forget to put on underwear.

I moved here because I was attracted to the energy of the city; to the youthful anybody-can-be-anyone-they-want sort of spirit. I wanted to indulge in that.

 I did. And I ended up becoming a Berliner for a while. Just not the one I was expecting.