Lifting the Berlin fog
You can’t say you’ve truly visited somewhere if you’ve only been there in the summer or only in the winter. The empty, scorching streets of Milan on a mid-August afternoon have nothing in common with the buzzing rush-hour of a Monday morning in February. And no, you also can’t ask me for recommendations on where to stay, what to do, and where to eat if it’s been ten years since I last visited. That trip to Berlin in 2014 wasn’t an ordinary trip. It was the one that followed our high school graduation, a rite of passage that usually sees teenagers off to Thailand, not wandering the DDR Museum in Berlin. But I wasn’t your ordinary teenager, and neither were the friends who came with me.
Minus one degree Celsius isn’t my favourite temperature for anything, and definitely not a temperature I would willingly walk 30,000 steps a day in. I had convinced myself I’d be fine, wrapped up in my thick Oliver Bonas scarf and my oversized puffy jacket that I’d bought on sale months ago, but that had always felt too warm for Manchester. “No need for thermals, I live in England,” I told myself before leaving the warmth of the hotel lobby and stepping out into the Berlin cold. But it wasn’t just cold—it was freezing. A type of freezing we rarely get in the UK, a far cry from the summer heatwave Berlin experienced over a decade ago, when it first welcomed me. Back then, we had to melt ice cubes on our faces to fight the heat, the water slowly trickling down our cheeks as we waited in line to take a selfie with that famous East Side Gallery kiss mural.
That’s exactly why you can’t claim to know—or better yet, love—a city if you only see it in one season. And a city like Berlin is the perfect example of a place that has reinvented itself multiple times over the decades, so how could I expect it to look exactly as it did the last time I saw it? It’s not just about the differences in weather or the number of tourists flocking to Museum Island, though the seasons are an integral part of how a city looks. Because nature plays a big role—with its blossoming flowers in spring, the chirping of birds perched on buildings in summer, the crackling of fallen leaves in autumn, and the thick blanket of fog gently covering everything, from parked cars to the Alexanderplatz tower.
And to winter in Berlin, and to the thick white fog, I return. Because how fitting is a heavy layer of fog when it comes to exploring and walking around a city? The walk started in Alexanderplatz, with its iconic tower still hidden in the white mist, turning onto the seemingly endless Karl-Marx-Allee towards East Berlin. “It wasn’t like this when I visited last, or maybe I just don’t remember,” I kept saying, unable to accept the present experience at face value, especially since it didn’t match my memories and therefore my expectations. It’s not always easy to recognise that your memory isn’t infallible, and that what you think you saw might not always line up with what you’re seeing now.
So we walked alongside towering and spooky concrete buildings, 10-storey apartment blocks, Soviet-looking abandoned shops, and more modern but abandoned ones. All we could hear were our hurried steps trying to walk fast to beat the cold which was already seeping into our poorly chosen clothes. The street was immaculate, had it not been for the random empty bottle of liquor abandoned in an equally empty fountain, or the dirty-looking abandoned cafes, untouched if not for some loose tiles ruining the facade, still proudly spelling out “Moscow” on their signs. The fog added to the unease of the place, making it feel almost deserted, except for the few apartments here and there with lights on, faintly visible through the mist on that early Saturday morning.
So what happens if the fog ruins your photogenic, Instagrammable shots? Surely it would be such a pity not to have some pictures of us smiling, laughing at the rain we’d left behind in England. But how is it that the fog helped us appreciate the moment of discovery, untainted by any need to show anyone anything? A couple of hours later, the fog nearly lifted, leaving behind only the memory of having stepped into a place that felt both outwardly and timelessly different, the light and the fresh air on our faces, which were becoming redder and redder due to the weather. And then there was the inability to see more than a hundred metres in front of us—just like in life, when we’re often stuck waiting for that big reveal, day after day, hoping to shed all our convictions at once.
