Welcome to Berlin...

‘Tourists fuck off,’ says a 4m long banner hanging outside a squat in Mitte. I’m in Berlin, looking for somewhere to stay. I’m not a tourist, I tell myself; I was born in Germany. So it’s hard to explain why this sign makes me feel mildly offended, unwelcome even.

Perhaps it’s because the day has been full of similar messages. While looking for a place to live, I meet a 37 year old woman in Prenzlauer Berg who has a bedroom to let in her large, stylish flat. We chat in English and I tell her I like Berlin. She shrugs. ‘It was a better place before so many foreigners came here,’ she says. Over breakfast, a friend tells me Berlin is ‘lucky not to have the same problems with immigration that London has’.

The attitude that foreigners are a problem perplexes me. Berlin has aspirations to be a global city; achieving that without welcoming citizens from around the world seems implausible.

Tourists are annoying, it’s true. They walk too slowly and stop suddenly causing human pileups on the pavements; they huddle in the middle of the U-bahn exit consulting maps and blocking everyone’s path; they can’t speak the language and, if they’re English speakers, probably assume you can speak theirs. They moan about how much things cost, they ask predictably stupid questions (‘is this the old East or the old West?’) and they love all that is naff and unfashionable (Checkpoint Charlie stamp in the passport anyone?).

But, they bring a host of benefits too. Tourists help fund Berlin’s museums and galleries, they keep a swathe of cafes, restaurants and hotels in business; they add verve and buzz to the bars and clubs and they help pay the rent on expensive Prenzlauer Berg apartments.

Immigrants bring even more. Look at any global city and you’ll see how immigrants have helped it prosper, from Jewish filmmakers in Los Angeles, to Melbourne’s Greek population, which transformed Australian eating habits within a generation. In London, where a curry is now the national dish, everything from Bangla music to literature, art and film are testament to Asian immigrants’ talents.

The way foreigners are encouraged to interact with and influence a city is a key differentiator between global capitals and their parochial cousins. New York is a vibrant melting pot of many nationalities. In contrast those places that cling too hard to traditions, places that are frightened of change, come to feel as though they have been dipped in aspic, forever looking back to a past that was more glorious than the future (places like Rome, like Vienna, like Zurich).

Berlin has a strong culture and a distinct identity and there is much that makes the city unique: the creativity, the spirit of rebellion and the straight talking nature of its people; the Brutalist beauty of the city’s buildings; the history that’s visible in public places and in private corners; the enormous Fruhstucks that you can eat till 5pm in the evening, the worship of the curry wurst to name just a few.

But these traits can live side by side with a multi-national population. I see that in evidence later the same day. I’m at the Mauerfall celebrations by Brandenburg Tor. As I listen to the conversations taking place around me it feels as though the whole world has turned out to help Berlin celebrate. Alongside Berliners are Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French, Japanese, Scottish, English, American and Australian visitors. Despite the rain that falls all evening there’s a sense of celebration, of joy and of excitement at being part of a city that is making its mark on the world. And I think that surely there are very few who would prefer that this party was exclusively German.

Going home...

The next leg of my journey is more personal. When I was seven years old my family emigrated from Germany to Australia. My dad is German, my mother Australian. Dad had gone to Australia in 1960 to make some money and have an adventure. He met, fell in love with and married my mum in a wild outback town that she was only visiting on a working holiday after finishing university.

It was spontaneous and unplanned; two strangers they dragged in off the street were the only witnesses to their wedding. They spent their earnings on a flight to Germany to meet my father’s family and discovered something else unplanned: my mother was pregnant with me. They stayed, my brother was born, time passed and my mother’s holiday turned into an eight year sentence.

Eventually she’d had enough. ‘We’re going home to Australia,’ she announced, and that was that. My brother and I nodded and then promptly forgot all about it. We were going to Australia, it might have been to moon for all it meant to us. If I thought about it at all I thought that we would go for a visit and then, naturally, come back to our home in a village outside Frankfurt.

For, whatever Mum might say, this was home. Our friends were here, our school was here, my grandparents and aunts were here, the garden, the rabbit, the streets where we rode our bikes after school it was all here. To leave it forever was unimaginable.
But on a cool May morning, a pale grey overcast spring day, we do leave. We catch a train that speeds us south. We pass the Alps where my brother and I crane our necks and push our faces against the window to try to see the impossibly high peaks, snow covered and awesome.

We arrive in Genoa, alien and exciting. A vast harbour is filled with huge ships. We take a ride on a row boat with an Italian guide and this time crane our necks to see vast walls of steel as huge cargo ships tower above us, dwarfing our tiny boat with their grey, blue and red sides. We walk through narrow alleys, with houses that rise high above us on both sides, the sky almost hidden by washing strung between them. We crane our necks again for glimpses of blue among the heavy flapping wings of white sheets. We eat unbelievably crisp rolls that crumble when you bite into them, filled with ham and pungent, veiny blue cheese. We soak up the hot sun and the incessant tooting of scooters, cars and trucks on the roads and roundabouts by the hotel.

One afternoon, my father takes our cases and we all follow him up a shifting gangway on board one of the metal behemoths that squat in the harbour. We run squealing down corridors, identical and endless, deeper and deeper till we find our cabin: two bunk beds, one for Mum and Dad, one for us, in a tiny windowless room. Then with the sound of a deep blasting horn that makes the steel walls of the ship tremble, we hurry up and to the rear of the ship.

There we throw streamers of paper to a crowd of people gathered on the wharf. We don’t know any of them but it feels as if they are here for us. They catch the streamers and wave as they holding on to them. It’s like a carnival and I’m smiling. It takes a while to realise the ship is moving.

Slowly, inch by inch, it draws away from the land and slowly, inch by inch, the streamers break and we lose our connection to Europe. We stand there for a long time, long after everyone else has gone. We stand and watch the land, slowly, inch by inch, fade into the horizon. I’m still clutching my end of the paper streamer, my hand is pale green where the dye has run and it dawns on me, slowly, inch by inch, that this is it. We are leaving. We’re not going back home.

Standing there, watching the land slip away, I make a promise to myself: I am coming back. I’m filled with rage and sadness and powerlessness so I say it again. ‘I’m coming back Europa. Wait for me. I’m coming back.’

I carry that promise with me over the next 16 years in Australia, through good times and bad, and when I’m 23 I pack my bags and I come back. I live in England, some reason I can’t explain keeps me away from Germany.

But now, 35 years later, I’m finally coming back. I’m moving to Berlin for four months to find out a little bit more about the German side of me and to see if Germany can still feel like home.