Switches · Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin
I have done this in three countries and this is the easiest and loneliest
Pinned as three_countries
- Wants
- one close thing rather than a wide and pleasant acquaintance
- Rope so far
- Eighteen years across three countries, six of them here.
- Around
- Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin
I have done this in three countries. In the first it was secretive and small and everybody was in everybody's business. In the second it was formal and organised and you had to be introduced. Here it is easier than either, and nobody blinks at anything, and I have never been lonelier inside it.
I think the two facts are connected. Where it is difficult, people hold on to each other. Where it is easy, everyone is pleasant to everyone and nothing costs anything, and it is entirely possible to spend four years being warmly greeted by two hundred people and known by none.
Forty three, Prenzlauer Berg, eighteen years in this and six here. I switch, and have done since my twenties.
So what I am after is one close thing. Not a circle, which I have and which is lovely and thin. One person who knows what my week has actually been like, over years.
Not looking for anybody who wants to expand their social life, since I have more acquaintances than I can keep up with. Not looking for something occasional. And not looking to compare countries at length, which is the conversation I get offered whenever I mention any of this and which I now regret raising here.