Heimliche Gedächtnise

It's strange how memories come back to us, always when you least expect them. A small gesture or something that you see with the corner of your eye may bring back thoughts of other times that were kept within the subconscious.

This happened to me this morning as I was locking my bicycle and I held my scarf back to stop it from getting full of oil. This simple gesture, which is by now quite automatic, made me think of a different city and a different time. For a second, I was back in Berlin, locking a different bike (mine was green then) and holding back a different scarf (a very long white one that easily got dirty). Berlin, one city that's actually still two, with its small quasi Victorian buildings in the west, the huge blocks of anonymous apartments in the east and its completely out of scale monuments, scarcely thought for humans. A city so different to all the ones I know.

It's strange how I now miss the streets that were already dark at 3 pm in the winter and empty of people by 6; but then again, a city is not only the buildings, but the moments lived within it. It is so, that, when I recall the huge, impersonal German capital, always fond memories spring to mind. The butcher shop round the corner, Lietzensee park, Straße des 17. Juni, die Weinerei, Unter den Linden, Adlershof, Sophienstraße... all islands within the city which I will always remember as they were 3 years ago, no matter how much they change.

I don't know what's got into me, maybe it's the influence of the books I've been reading (I've just finished The Quiet American and Understanding Power and have started O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis). As H says, I'm only reading sad or melancholic books lately. Perhaps that's the reason why I felt this nostalgia today which made me think of other places.