Failure, Flight, and Freedom
While you’re reading this, I’m sitting on a plane from Tokyo to Abu Dhabi to Düsseldorf—on my way back to Berlin. Barely two months after I had loudly boasted that I was moving to the Japanese capital for a year—no, what am I saying, forever. I had insulted Berlin as a city of stagnation, as a metropolis of frozen creativity, as a place inhabited by a rotting collective of copies, of stereotypes, of people who might already be dead without knowing it. And now I’m crawling back, mangy, broken—but happy.
I love Tokyo. You have to know that. It’s a constantly reinventing experience like no other. Colorful, lively, modern, traditional, perverse. On every corner you can feel how much energy this melting pot of otherness gives you with every second of your presence. You’re constantly swaying between explosive excitement and infinite calm—two extremes only a few steps apart.
Marcel, Tokyo was always your dream! So why are you coming back now? Even though you had a damn long visa?!
Because I realized that this place, as great and inspiring as it may be, doesn’t work if you can’t dive into it together with people who truly matter to you. As one of our readers once wrote very accurately: Home is where your friends are.
Well.
Strangely enough, that didn’t bother me last summer, when I ended up spending three months in Tokyo. I soaked everything in and tuned the rest out. But this time I constantly had the feeling I was missing so much back home. I suddenly missed things that had previously annoyed and bored me. Parties thrown by random PR agencies. Concerts by some Swedish run-of-the-mill indie bands in run-down Kreuzberg venues. The startup snobs with their MacBooks, café lattes, and ridiculous nerd glasses. In other words, all the things I had actually fled from.
Like a little child who always wants whatever it doesn’t currently have, I realized that Berlin is still the stage for an emerging analog and digital revolution. An open, filthy, bubbling mass full of people I love and people I hate—people who, together with me, define who I am. And when. And how. And everything else. And I want to be there—no, right in the middle of it—when it happens!
My time there felt like a golden cage. Every street, every efficient improvement to daily life, every damn cherry blossom drifting playfully across the nearby park—I stored them deep inside my otherwise shattered heart. But the fact that I couldn’t spontaneously get drunk with the idiots I’ve grown fond of in Görli while the sun shines and a few drugged-up Jonathans throw their own little rave in the background drove me insane night after night. Thanks, Facebook, for constantly showing me all the great things everyone else was doing. You stupid asshole. The same goes for Twitter. And Instagram.
Tokyo may be my future—but right now it was the wrong time in the right place. I’ll travel there again. And again. And again. But next time in a more compressed way—and just for fun. So I can dive into the city without having to worry about everyday life. Because otherwise, life there is like anywhere else.
Long story short: if this plane—or one of the next ones—doesn’t happen to crash and I end up in the local newspaper as a casualty (German porn blogger scattered to the winds!
), then I’ll already be back in Berlin tomorrow. And you’re welcome to greet me with bouquets of flowers and nude photos of your much prettier older sister.
One thing is certain though: I won’t be leaving again anytime soon—unless I suddenly feel like becoming part of that cute little travel-incest troupe that keeps hopping around the Maldives. And Ming Lee, you still owe me a cheeseburger! Alright, I’m out—see you in a few hours over a beer.