If there’s one thing that travel has taught me, it is that experiencing a new city or country will always rest on where you are in life. How old you are. How much of this life have you seen. Whether or not you are in a good place, heart and head wise. And if health is on your side. These are small things but you carry them with you everywhere you go. They are permanent baggage, heavy and weightless at the same time
I had a very different idea of Berlin in my head. I’d say to my friends that if I ever were to kiss another woman, I’d do it in Berlin. I am not sure why, but to me, the city was always this lit-up, hip, graffiti-laced place that stood out in the books for its most dramatic and consequential historical events from a past not very long ago. It was (and maybe it is), in my head, a city that’d allow me to be a different version of me. But minus the walls that gleefully exhibited art in all its forms, Berlin turned out to be aloof and uninhibited. Which is not a bad thing, just different from what I’d expected it to be.
I arrived in Berlin in the fall of 2025 on a bus from Prague – sun shining, wind blowing, trees with leaves transitioning from green into October orange. From the terminal, I booked a Bolt to get to my Airbnb in Kreuzberg, the quintessential Turkish neighbourhood. My cab driver, also coincidentally a Turkish gentleman who had migrated to the city 25 years ago, was warm and welcoming; he spoke very little English and used Google Translate to inform me that he was now a German citizen. He greeted me goodbye and drove away while I stood staring at my phone, trying to match the address of my Airbnb to a mammoth iron gate coloured with chaotic scribbles of colour (in other words, graffiti art).
Caroline, my host’s instructions to self-check-in to the apartment were crystal clear. I unlocked a total of FOUR doors to get inside my one-bedroom studio apartment in the backyard of an old building: a roomy and neatly done-up studio space with tall windows for views and a rusty old bicycle mounted on one of the walls for aesthetics. You see, art in this city isn’t just limited to the outdoor walls and I was just beginning to get a taste of its nonchalant swagger.
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If there’s one thing that travel has taught me, it is that experiencing a new city or country will always rest on where you are in life. How old you are. How much of this life have you seen. Whether or not you are in a good place, heart and head wise. And if health is on your side. These are small things but you carry them with you everywhere you go. They are permanent baggage, heavy and weightless at the same time.
Two days had passed and I’d navigated, quite stressfully I must admit, multiple U-Bahns and S-Bahns (Germany’s lifelines, quite literally), tried the OG döner kebab that the Turkish diaspora brought with them during the Gastarbeiter era back in the 1970s, stuffed my face with multiple varieties of the Berliner (the jelly-filled doughnut), and successfully completed a 3.5 hour long walking tour with a bunch of tourists and an overexcited but politically correct guide. Not to mention, spending an hour and a half going up and down Hauptbahnhof—Berlin’s main railway station—tirelessly trying to find the right train home, or ending up in Mauerstraße 77 (where the flea market is) instead of Manteuffelstraße 77 (where the Airbnb is) because after 16,000 steps, who can blame me for blind spotting the similar sounding and looking neighbourhoods. To me, these are activities that must count as local adventures.
Back in my Airbnb after playing tourist all day I’d wonder what it was like to travel solo in my twenties as compared to my late thirties. Those days I’d stuff everything inside a backpack and be on my way. For longer trips, I’d accommodate the whole lot in a cabin-sized suitcase to avoid check-in baggage queues. There were no skincare essentials or extra pairs of socks and towels. Now, as I am about to turn forty in less than two months, the most important thing in my luggage is a big pouch of medication for some chronic ailments and another small carry-on purse containing SOS pills — painkillers, antacids, SSRIs, and such.
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Last year, I visited Kashmir on a whim. Life wasn’t perfect but I was in a state of mind to get away from home. More importantly, I was consciously taking care of my physical and mental health — regular yoga, strength training, therapy — I was doing everything one must do in their late thirties. I travelled nonstop for eight days, barely got any sleep, and yet, not a muscle in my body ached. I know now that it was a rewarding experience because I remember every minute of it vividly: the night sky in Gurez, the breeze on my face in Tulail, and the exhilarating shared cab drive all the way from Bandipore. It evokes in my heart happy memories, ones that are born and stay when you’re at your best.
Berlin may not have lived up to my (standard) expectations — whatever they were — but trotting about solo in a European city whose language I don’t speak or understand, has had its impact. I realise now, more than ever, the inevitability of good health, especially when you can control it. It is an essential part of your baggage, invisible but looms heavy.
I’d be damned if I said I didn’t enjoy my time in Berlin. I’ve carried back so many sights, sounds and senses of the city with me back home. The 8 am walks to Concierge, the cosiest little coffee shop around the corner, where I’d get my cortado from. Goldies, the smashburger joint that no matter night or day, had its own fan following of guests who’d queue up and make it almost impossible for the staff to take a break or breath. The neighbourhood Netto where I’d buy my croissants and bananas from. She Said, Berlin’s only bookstore that sells fiery feminist books and fluffy cardamom cakes. The Turkish bar at the end of my Airbnb’s street, which after dusk resembles a dubious nook frequented by semi-drunk middle-aged men, but in morning light, is a catch-up corner for local women in hijab. All this amidst the most beautiful fall in its golden glory.
Arunima Mazumdar is a Delhi-based independent journalist, writer and literary critic. She is also the founder of Dokusha Book Club, India's first book community dedicated to reading Japanese literature.
