There’s a place I didn’t want to be, better, to end up to.
It all happened this Summer I still can’t figure out a concrete explanation: there’s no reason, guilt or moral sentence to understand what happened, so I am just going to put some words down and you will find your own meaning, ok?
Well, I’ve been having a crappy year so far: fired, dumped, disappointed by many. Travelling is my way to breathe, so in July, moved by another very sad I’m-not-going-to-tell-here episode, I decided to find the best way to visit a city that in the past year played a significant role in my life: Copenhagen.
Like in many movies this city leads to a love story, wait, maybe kind of modern love story: girl meets guy in Berlin, girl adores guy, guy likes girl, guy decides to look for a job in Copenhagen moving with another girl he likes more.
I let you imagine which one of the girls I am. And I reckon it’s a love story only in my imagination. I guess it was the best I could get from my travelling existence: a big heavy heart to carry along with my bones in a big hit-and-run city like Berlin.
So Copenhagen. It took me months to actually put in real a trip that in my mind I had organized almost every night. A part of me wanted to see and understand his choice, the other dreamy one was hoping to bump into each other: and here is the image of me, walking in a light rain along the center, looking at the buildings and people and meeting his eyes. Again, I reckon I do work a bit too much with my imagination and the irony was I wasn’t even sure he was there at the time. Chance to meet him: 13 to 17%, bad luck included.
In the end this dream was urging enough: I guess sometimes we just have to chase a night dream to see it minimised in the daylight.
With the best disposition I bought a guide, look at the walking tours, bought the cheapest bus ticket, the lamest hostel bed, then organized my two days, like the famous brewery, the Castle, Christiania: I did everything a human being can possibly do to organise a trip, reading the guide so many times I thought I wrote it. That day I left my flat 2 hours in advance, despite the fact that the website of public transports stated the journey was less than 35 min, one metro then one bus. Easy peasy. But you never know with transports, right? Exactly. The bus didn’t show up, neither the following threes. Something was wrong and so I tried my luck with the metro again, ending in a big station with all the screens saying: all the trains are momentary cancelled due to a central marathon (oh yes, the worldwide famous marathon in Berlin, known by... nevermind). I started saying to myself “Please wait for me, bus”. I really had to catch that bus so I run out looking for a taxi, bike, divine intervention, aliens, teleport. I wasn’t picky at all.
Long story short: I ended up late in Bismarckstraße, Berlin, less than 2 km away from the bus station, with my bag full of hopes and the damn tourist guide. I cried a river in Bismarckstrasse, and I hated everything of it: emptiness, lack of people, inexistence of taxis, just lots of trees and parked cars. This is the place I didn’t want to be, while I was looking for a little redemption or a huge explanation. I had to let my romantic dream leave without me, 2 km away from it, on the pavement of a big West-Berlin street, where the lights of a car shop enlightened my copious tears. I guess it was the wrong trip, even if I really deserved it.
This silly thing called destiny. I guess I’ll never try again to visit Cop.
Just kidding, give me the chance and I’ll do it again, bar the drama queen moment on that street. The place I didn’t want to be could be the starting line. You never know.
V Anzolin
