Recently, I went to Berlin for the second time. The first time I went was two years ago. At the time, I was in a weird state of mind and needed a change in my life. Berlin proved to be the trip I needed – it forced me out of my comfort zone in a variety of ways and inspired me to try new things back home that helped me form a new social group and laid the foundations for my current life. I have very positive memories of that trip (I’ve written about it here a bit, so to avoid sounding like a broken record, you can read more here and here if you please).
So, when I saw flights to Berlin for $270 roundtrip pop up on google flights, I decided to do something that I’ve always wanted to do, but never done – take an overseas trip just for a weekend.
Years ago, my best friend and I used to peruse google flights on the phone together (he lived in Texas at the time) We’d spend hours looking at the open-ended map (the greatest hack) to see where we could get deals and where our next trip would take us. I distinctly recall, one night, seeing weekend trips to Shanghai direct from New York for Thanksgiving weekend for somewhere in the $300 range. We laughed and joked about how funny it would be to fly all the way to Shanghai for a weekend, and nearly pulled the trigger just because it was so cheap and why not.
But we never did, and it’s perhaps the most discussed item in our pantheon of travel regrets. Of course, it would have been ridiculous to fly all the way to China just for a weekend. But it also would have been a great story, a silly experience, something to do in this strange world before we die.
When I booked the second Berlin trip, I had the missed weekend in Shanghai very much in mind. Here was my chance, I thought, to do something (almost) as silly as that. Aside from the fact that the flight was half as long, it was still a 5 hour trip from Philly to JFK and then an 8 hour ride from JFK to Berlin. And a 9 hour ride back (plus the trip back to Philly after). I landed at 4PM on Friday and left at 7PM Sunday. I barely had a complete day on the ground, and was asleep for a decent portion of the trip due to being hungover on Saturday.
But another part of the reason why I booked the trip was because I wanted to revisit an international destination, something I’ve never done before. I also wanted to see how it would feel to be there again in a totally different mindset – feeling less foreign and, more importantly, being in a less dire state.
There was much less at stake on this trip than the first trip. I’m in a more comfortable place in life right now. My life is stable and hasn’t suffered any major setbacks or changes in the last year or so. Things have been steady and, frankly, a little boring. So, I wanted to see how I fared in Berlin if I was bored, having built it up in my head as such an important place in my life the past few years.
And the answer was: just fine. I had no personal revelations on this trip, I had no intense feelings of loneliness. I met random people and felt right at home in many ways. The city was familiar to me – I even revisited some places I had been the first time around and stayed in one of the same hostels that I stayed in the first time.
It felt good to be in a place that I was familiar with and had deeply sentimental associations with. When I got off the S Bahn from the airport and stepped out into the cold, already dark night air on the first night, I felt a sense of calm. I grinned like an idiot to myself, put my hands in my pockets and started off in the direction of the hostel to drop off my bags. Everything felt right. I was happy to be back.
I met a bevy of friendly people who made me feel at home. The people I met this time around were more welcoming than the last time I was there. I ended up drinking quite a lot in the excitement, topping off my night, as is customary, with a 6AM kebab.
When I awoke a few hours later, my head was throbbing. I was not in the best shape. I spent the day intermittently leaving the hostel and coming back to nap, until finally later in the evening, as dusk was settling, I went for a long walk. I put my headphones on and turned on a playlist that I had made for the trip and walked for a few hours, in a serpentine route weaving back and forth across the eastern and western halves of the city. By the end, I was cold and tired, so I crossed the river and got a final Berliner Weisse at a beer bar with a particularly angry bartender and went back to my room to sleep.
The next day, I got some breakfast at the German equivalent of Panera and went to a club for some morning techno until my flight left. I was dead sober, which was fine for a little while. But after wandering around in the dark red light as the music pounded out its endless beats, I decided I would have a beer. One turned into four and before I knew it, I had to leave to get back to the airport.
When I landed back home, and finally got into my house by 1:30AM on Monday morning, I fell straight to sleep. My sleep schedule was perfectly fine because I was there for such a short amount of time that I didn’t even adjust to the local time. I woke up at 8, went to work and carried right on with my week as if I’d never been there at all.
Since I got back, people have asked me if I’d do it again. The answer is simple: I already did.