Love Letter to Berlin

Soap bubbles and children in Potsdammerplatz during the Berlin Festival of Lights ©Michael Hodgson

Love Le er to Berlin

By Michael Hodgson

Berlin, I can't get enough of you, even though I know you are not mine alone. Like most everyone who meets you, feels you, breathes in your scent–I have fallen in love. It is your way.

On every street corner, in every café, you invite me to spend time thinking about your past, present and future. I love that you are political, democratic, and an activist. Protests for you are a way of expressing your love for all that is happening around you and caring enough to try to inspire change. And I love that you are not afraid to be loud about it.

Anything but Normal

You are sophisticated, worldly, and yet distinctly bohemian in your ways. You encourage people from all walks of life and from all over the world to move here, live here, travel here, just to be close to your heart. Beatniks, politicians, nomads, misfits, free spirits, musicians, investors, artists, authors, entrepreneurs--all find, as I have, that they become lost in your embrace, your charms. With you, following the norm--it's just not normal.

You encourage all your lovers to express themselves, on the street, in exhibition spaces, in parks, in theaters, in clubs, and on the walls of new and abandoned buildings. You cultivate chaos and inspire universes to collide, harmoniously. Like in Mauer Park where somehow street artists, musicians, students, drug dealers, and parents playing with toddlers all manage to coexist.

Seasons of Love

Yes, I know that to love you is to understand that sometimes you can be cold and distant. I've felt the chill from your icy moods more than once. And yet, just as

Photos, Clockwise from top left: Cafe am Englebecken ©Michael Hodgson; ooking out from inside the glass dome at sunset in the Reichstag. ©Michael Hodgson; Street art covers a building in Blozplatz ©Michael Hodgson; The Humboldt Forum ©Michael Hodgson; Dei Welt balloon over Berlin at sunset. Photo taken from the top of the Berliner Dom. ©Michael Hodgson; Musicians in Mauer Park ©Michael Hodgson; The TV Tower and Berlin lights. ©Michael Hodgson I’m wondering why I am still in love with you, the season changes and you reach out to caress my skin, as if saying you are sorry for the winter.

The warmth of your touch in the spring and summer is intoxicating. Almost overnight, your streets fill with children devouring ice-cream, cafes spill onto sidewalks, parks fill with barbecue smoke, and I fall in love with you all over again. You never seem to sleep.

Night and day blend seamlessly as you tease your lovers to keep moving, breathing, feeling, tasting. The smells of food that permeate from the U-bahn, train stations, and open cafes are distinctly you. Music and warm breezes rustle the leaves of your green spaces as you dance from one night to the next. I've spent endless days laying in your embrace alongside the Spree River as music and your warm breath flow over my skin.

Berlin's Many Sides

Not so long ago, I was sitting in a beer garden, not far from Treptower Park, enjoying a warm summer evening while wrapped in your arms. Sipping a beer, I found myself gazing out at former East German buildings that were built in a time you were very troubled. Sitting there, I pondered the many sides of you that are both mystifying and alluring.

You are gritty streets and abandoned spaces, Sunday flea markets, and street food adventures. You are illuminated beer gardens and cozy neighborhood cafes. You are a symbol of freedom, and a reminder of what it is to be oppressed. You are a single street performer belting out a song that everyone passing by find themselves stopping and listening to, and then suddenly singing along and smiling.

Berlin, the more I am with you, the deeper I fall in love. Whenever I am away, the more my heart yearns for you.