I guess it’s over

It’s difficult to believe that my time in Berlin has come to an end.

Germany is a surprisingly difficult place to get out of, and not just because I still like Berlin so much.

We had to give three months notice on our flat, and there were varying periods of advance notice to get out of just about everything else. Even so, some of those bureaucrats just didn’t want to let me go. The all-powerful deregistration certificate (Abmeldung) is the only thing that’ll get the health insurance, German pension, mobile phone, tax office (Finanzamt) and bloody TV Tax bureaucrats off my back and out of my bank account, and I could only apply for that seven days before vacating our flat.

I started the process of thinning out my library late last year. I managed to let go of nearly 400 books, but we still shipped 69 boxes total, of which 36 were books and assorted notebooks, papers and drafts. I don’t know what the other stuff was. All my clothes seemed to fit in two suitcases.

Emptying our flat was another challenge. What’s the last possible day you can do without a piece of furniture, a kitchen item or a bed? I chipped away at it for two months, selling things on Kleinenzeigen — including all our appliances — and giving away a lot for free. That and filling screw holes in the walls and touching them up with a little paint. My desk was the last to go; I wanted to work right until the end. We were down to a mattress topper on the floor for the last three nights.

Somehow we got it all cleared out two days early, while working throughout. And then we moved to an Air BnB flat a few U-bahn stops away and handed over our keys a day early.

We took one last look through the flat, and one last walk around our neighbourhood — including Jungfernheide Park, where my wife did so much marathon training and where I trained for my Pyrenees traverse.

And then we trudged down the steps of the U7, knowing we would probably never see those streets again.

We found ourselves in a weird in between space. We were staying in an Air BnB apartment, so inside that flat it felt like we were traveling, with all the usual ‘living out of a suitcase’ routines. But step outside the door and we were in Berlin, a city I know so well.

We spent those last few days revisiting favourite places.

So many of my favourites are summer places, so we couldn’t go there: biking up and down the runways at Tempelhofer Feld followed by the biergarten, the Prater Garten in Prenzlauer Berg, reading on the grass of the Tiergarten, or sipping beers under the elevated line at Gleisdreieck, and picnics there with friends. There was nothing better on a summer day than biking around this city that is so big but so flat and bike-able.

Other Berlin memories are seasonal, like screenings and red carpet premiers at the Berlinale, and those are gone forever.

Others are still accessible, even in the depths of winter.

We walked through Gendarmenmarkt, surely Berlin’s most beautiful square, and continued on to Bebelplatz, the big square next to Humboldt University library where the Nazis burned books in 1933. I always stop to pay my respects at the empty library monument when I’m in the area. It’s one of my favourite places in Berlin.

We also went to Zwiebelfisch, our favourite bar, for one last beer, and talked about all the friends and visitors we took there over the years.

Chinese food at Aroma was also on the list. We’ve been going there since our first visit to Berlin in 2013.

A walk down Auguststrasse remembering all those years of galleries, openings and Berlin Art Week.

KaDeWe for champagne and oysters.

And a walk through our old neighbourhood of Bergmannkiez, where we spent our first four Berlin years. We were over there this summer with Paul and Sheila Theroux, but when you’ve got a couple days left, it’s those old places you always want to see.

The highlight for me was catching one last midnight screening of Casablanca at the little 32-seat Lichtblick Kino. They’ve been showing it every Saturday night at midnight for years.

And now I have to cut this short, just like my nine years in Berlin. It’s time to go to the airport. There’s only a couple hours left.

It’s strange to think we’ll probably never see these places again.