Category Archives: Cities

Personal Journal: Homeless in Berlin

Elliott at Hotel Ibis Styles, Berlin. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Elliott at Hotel Ibis Styles, Berlin. Photo by Scarlett Messenger

Arrived in Berlin after almost 20 hours of travel, only to find we had a miscommunication with our landlord and he was not at the apartment to meet us. After completely losing my mind at what I was going to do with 150lbs of luggage and nowhere to go we discovered a hotel across the street and checked in. 20 minutes later and with the help of my husband, we tracked down the landlord and sorted things out, but stayed at the hotel anyway, as we won’t have internet at the apartment for almost a week. Elliott fetched us some bacon cheeseburgers from the restaurant across the street and we sat and watched unsettling German children’s television before passing out in exhaustion. As much as this was a nefarious start to our trip, I can honestly say I won’t soon forget the few hours I was homeless in Berlin, thousands of miles from home, with no way of contacting anyone for help and barely speaking the language.

Personal Journal: Checkpoint Charlie

My husband is watching MacGyver, who just escaped East Berlin in a coffin that turned into a jet ski… or something. It’s weird for me to think that I will be living in an apartment in what used to be East Berlin, and that for the first 20 years of my life I couldn’t have set foot on that street. If I walk 1.8 Km SW of my apartment, I can walk right past Checkpoint Charlie and go to McDonalds (which I wouldn’t, cuz ew. And how hilariously tacky is it that they built a McDonalds at Checkpoint Charlie?) So much history, and so much of it awkward or sad.