Return — Pace of a Straw

25/05/2026 7.41AM TO AND FROM SHOULD NOT BE THIS CLOSE

My stay in Berlin is running towards the end and I take a walk through Mitte, starting at Rosenthaler Platz, where my hostel is. After-sun, the sky is swept and flushed and lets air rose-blue. I wait at a crossing. On the other side of the street, a young woman, wearing an apron over a stripy shirt, her hair tied in a ponytail, carries a black sandwich board, chalk smudging over her hip. She pushes a coffee shop door open with her upper arm, a bell rings as the door falls behind her. Blind at the door, already lowered, waves stiffly. This is where I have been taking my morning coffee and the woman’s name is Luiza. First time, I thought she was beautiful, the second time, I read her name off the brass plate pinned to her apron and said, Thank you Luiza, then blushed. I was a regular once in my life. Tomorrow I’m leaving so it doesn’t matter.

I continue, further down Torstraße and turn left into the narrower streets. They are of cobble and between each stone fringes trampled grass and bittercress. Patches of ivy-leaved toadflax grow by the tenement buildings. It is one of those buildings that I lift my face to and cherubs peer down at me. One of them holds a bunch of grapes larger than his round chest. There are stucco daffodils too, and lilies. A couple of tall windows open to balconies so narrow, that two people could only fit standing and watching the street. It’s my last evening in Berlin and I’ve been here long enough to feel familiar & ask myself, could we live here, could this be our balcony overlooking a football pitch? The door to the building is green and heavily carved. At the intercom, steel framed, are two rows of labels, narrow like bookmarks and of a pearl glow. Would we open the door for one another, knowing so well we were coming home, without having heard the voice of another, but a buzz of an intercom and a thumbprint pressed to it’s silver bead and fitting? Wouldn’t it get too loud with the football pitch, and the bar on the right, the bar with pallet seats, cushions and lanterns in simple colours? I wouldn’t mind the noise, I think, if you played each night, and if, upon coming home, you’d throw a wet shirt at the wooden floorboards, no, I wouldn’t mind that either. You’d have a shower, and maybe I’d even roll my eyes a little less for that you don’t dry yourself and lie on the sheets with a towel around your waist. We might have made love then. Head to the bar, where I’d say I didn’t want chips but then ate yours and looked at the lanterns.

I often think like so, when I travel. Could my life be changed by this place, is there another timeline where I stay here? Could being here be the moment I slip forward into something else? The thing is, even before I arrived in Berlin, I had already bought a return ticket and received multiple emails reminding me of my journey with Flixbus. Now I can’t believe it upcoming. How is it possible for me to return if I feel so moved now, by this city?

This is very easy, comes tomorrow. Early on a Sunday morning, in a dorm room, where a snore comes from one bed and a steady hum of TikTok from another, I wish zipping up my bags made less noise. I have gathered all that I brought with me. Everything fits in the same suitcase, the same buckles hold it. I haven’t made any lists and haven’t searched for anything, unlike at home. Only have I left a towel, damp over a bunk bed ladder, that I rented from reception for 5 euros on my first day. Tomorrow, I put my coat and shoes on, I do a final sweep - empty drawers say enough - I have not forgotten anything.

—

There are moments when travel feels like forgetting an Apple Watch when you count your steps. Travel that, when it comes to an end, it feels like checking a timer and realising you have not pressed start. Disappointing, sobering and irrelevant. Travel that is just an interval, or worse than, because you don’t come out to a new opening on another side. Instead, you come back where you started & to an aftermath of your absence: an inflated cardboard of curdled milk, musty sheets, outdated job listings that you’ve circled, a bucketful of dirty washing, heaped taller after the travel.

At first, the travel is a dream that you wake up from convinced it meant something. You might even paint it and write of it. Even if it helps you remember, everything around you seems to remind you the opposite: that, actually, the dream meant very little. Even your friend, a very good friend, shows only little interest and fills the gaps of what you’ve missed. You say she reminds you of the young woman - what was her name - from the coffeeshop. ‘Oh, really?’ and her ponytail sways dully as she tilts her head. Few days elsewhere fold into an anecdote, you’re not sure when it happened or whose story it was. You can’t even laugh and say ‘Remember that time we went to Berlin?’, because you went alone. The same friend, offers you a tissue when you say I’m not sure if it will last and you don’t even know if you’re talking about your relationship or something else entirely, yet you press the white square where a tear is sliding. You arrived to from where you set off. To and from should not be this close. You doubt if it mattered at all. Maybe it meant nothing.

Yet, you went. You went to Berlin and took a walk that didn’t count and at an unmeasurable pace. How did you feel then? When you saw a facet of a building and fell in love, how you noticed each, shoe-sole rubbed cobblestone like luck, how the night called upon you and you stayed up late dragging your feet. Do you remember how you forgave the weather for raining too hard, how it didn’t stop you, how you forgave yourself indulging on a croissant and hot milk, how you hoped?