When the Friend Dies
Summer ends in Berlin and nobody pretends it’s anything but a death. The sun tries—I’ll give it that—but the air thins when you’re moving fast through these streets. Leaves go yellow when they lose the fight with time. Your heart gets harder when that’s exactly when you need it to be soft.
Berlin in autumn is like watching a good friend disappear. You start thinking harder about what you actually want, why you’re even here. You stop going out. You work instead, anything to stay busy, to avoid the question, because what else makes a life worth remembering?
When the trees go bare and the streets turn gray, the city’s ugliness surfaces. The ugliness that hides under the summer noise, the laughter, the parties—it’s always there but only shows itself when there’s nothing else to look at.
I walk the same streets. Same broken buildings and spray-painted walls. Same gray sky pressing down. Every autumn the life evacuates. The pulse gets quieter. The adrenaline dies. The nights stretch on forever.
The music goes underground. The people who came here to escape, to disappear, they find the dark season comforting now. Not partying anymore—just surviving. Autumn is their enemy.
Everyone feels it. You belong here or you’re just passing through, doesn’t matter. When summer leaves for somewhere else, it takes one thing with it: that feeling from the first week you arrived. The feeling that your whole life was starting over right then. The certainty that lasted about three months.
Winter at least has the decency of honesty. It’s what it is. But autumn plays games—I reach for it like a kid, no please, don’t go, you can’t leave, keep this feeling here—and it just looks back at me cold and does its cycle again. I can’t stop any of that.
Berlin in autumn is like standing next to a good friend who’s dying. All I can do is say goodbye quietly and promise I’ll live well without him. That I’ll actually earn the memories I let slip by. The hand goes cold. Then it’s not there anymore.
Outside, trees are cold, streets are blank. No laughter, no music, no pulse. Bodies in black coats move past, and I watch them. The fact that these same people were dancing on some beach three months ago, naked and high and with someone they actually loved—they’ve already forgotten. Not just the nights are getting colder.
My doubts get louder in the fall. Was it actually wise to burn my old life to the ground to start here? Was Berlin even the right choice? Am I doing anything now that’ll matter in a year, five years, ever?
Summer’s the distraction. Autumn’s the mirror. A mirror I can’t turn away from. I see myself, nobody else, and every year it asks the same thing: Did I actually do anything with this time or did I just let the city swallow me?
I sit and watch the dark-dressed people around me. Their lives seem to revolve around answering that question. And I think: okay, maybe the heat dying doesn’t mean I die. Maybe I can do more than promise myself next summer will be better.
More parties, more drugs, more sex, more love, more money, more success. Whatever this summer couldn’t give me—for whatever reason I’m telling myself—the next one will. Except it won’t. I’m the reason all those hot days and humid nights didn’t become the kind of memories that matter. Nobody else is responsible for that but me.
I waste so much. Not just food, not just resources, but time—actual time that I could’ve lived in instead of just waiting. I know it’ll all flash past at the end, and right now there’s barely anything there worth remembering.
Berlin in autumn is like a good friend saying goodbye. Before he goes, he makes me promise: don’t just wait for him to come back. Don’t let the blank months become nothing. The trees will be bare, the streets will be colorless. But he wants an answer. Every year, he wants an answer.