The Gradual Coalescing into One

witnessed by a pair of eyes from Hong Kong

All of a sudden, she finds herself standing at the juncture of the East and West - the boulevard she has long been thinking of wandering on the Lonely Planet map - the once ramshackle but now glittering Friedrichstrasse.

Glancing through the names of the boutiques and restaurants, trying to locate herself whilst pretending to be walking on purpose, that extraordinarily confident and calm looking face when feeling lost in a foreign city, she manages to silently take a u-turn back to the correct direction, as if nothing has gone wrong. Warm welcomed by the unexpectedly glowing sun, with its molten-gold beams splashing onto the hair of the pedestrians, everything on the street seems normal and all right until a skinhead middle-aged man, with rouged cheeks and his crimsoned lips pursed, wearing a coral ladies blazer and a mauve pleated skirt abruptly appears in the scene. However, much to her surprise, he seems to have only startled her. Other Berliners - the professionally looking men in suits are, as usual, heading their way either to Deutsche Bank or Sparkasse with their unreadable emotionless faces; that ragged beggar with greasy beard, palely sitting next to the entrance of the station, is still desperate for every penny; and those Turkish men, hoping someone to buy their döner kebabs, are still constantly giving out their big smiles, as if nothing in this city is truly normal or abnormal, only acceptable.

For the first time in her life, she smells a hint of nicotine in the air, the increasingly elating and addictive Berlin air.

Hopping on the S-bahn heading to the East, nobody is gazing at the little gleaming screens. The once sealed-off bridges, squares, streets, S- and U-bahn stations, though having to coexist with the unfamiliar names of their recovered Eastern halves, are now reconciled again, with older Berliners trying to wistfully conjure up the sunken island of their nostalgic GDR (former German Democratic Republic), as if the train has penetrated through the time-tunnel, guiding every passenger to be wall jumpers and goggle at the peculiar view of the still existing grim prefabricated concrete blocks that sprawl all over the ex-communist landscape. These monotonously looking ‘Plattenbauten’, contrasting to the architectures in any other neighboring capital, are absolutely rough and anti-romantic. But like how the city is once described, ‘Berlin neither wants to be, nor for the time being will it be, a proper capital.’ (Schneider, 2014, P.16) Imperfect and undesirable as they may seem from the outside, at a distance, these eyesores, resembling their tenants - most of whom are designers, engineers and entrepreneurs of all sorts of start-up businesses, are the most saturated and bountiful on the inside - to have managed to survive from the stereotypes of inferiority and thrive as the new chic Berlin. Yes. This city is beautiful in its own ugly way.

But just a few blocks away from those gigantic plattenbauten, while she is on her own going on a random visit to the Panorama Punkt before the sun goes down, mind-blowing surroundings of the multifaceted city, once again, never fail to strike her - the cosmopolitan Leipziger Platz; the forever sparkling Deutsche Bahn skyscraper; and probably the most cutting-edge of all, the avant-garde Sony Centre, how does this city blend all of its diverse faces so well into one? She wonders. She used to believe there were various identities dwelling inside her body, and the difficulty to pull all of them back into one has been one of her quandaries in her late teenage years, with some of them being so at odds with each other that she almost diagnosed herself with multiple personality disorder. But now, the city shows her the manifestation of how self-actualised it can be when it never pursues a seeming perfection in disguise that fits in everyone’s expectation of a European capital. The feeling of elation and freedom in the air awakens what is left of her curiosity of her own identity. She comes to realise - it is never a fault to stop and think which way to go; it is never a guilt to be a hundred percent of her own self, however blemished it is.

Again, she is strolling on Friedrichstrasse. Today the sky has ceased to shine, but like normal days, covered with wispy haze. For fear that the miscellaneous fragments on her own Google map in mind will be lost forever, she no longer dares to glimpse through the scenes, but try to record every single moment of these moving pictures, as if she was already reminiscing the shadows she has once laid. But then, how can someone cover up the genuine feelings when standing in front of the never feigned and disguised Berlin? From the bottom of her heart, her ultimate fear is unveiled - the anxiety of failing to safeguard her newly discovered selves from being smothered, when she will be once again surrounded by the same people and the same environment.

However unwilling and anxious is she, every adventure, including hers, comes to an end. Now she finds herself celebrating Chinese New Year with her close family, and, again, being asked the yearly routine questions that are often followed with dramatic responses " ‘What are you doing after graduation?’ ‘I want to study.’ ‘WHAT?’, he glared. ‘Are you gonna study forever?’ Probably, she has now become the abnormal in their eyes. But at heart she clearly knows, weird and clumsy as it may seem, like Berlin, she is now gradually coalescing into one.

 

Reference

Peter, S. (2014). Berlin Now: The Rise of the City and the Fall of the Wall. Germany: Penguin Viking.