Let’s get this out of the way.

If you’re looking for the top 10 Instagram-able places…this is not where you’ll find it.

If you’re looking for the best places to visit, I’ll post some of my most favorite links below for you to check out.

I’m no photographer…so my photos are like what anyone with a smart phone clicks. Some are good. Some…uhhh…not so much.

So…if the above are what you’re looking for in my Travelogue section – honestly, you won’t find them here.

What I have are stories – most of them are directly connected to the places I visit and the people I meet. Some aren’t. Most stories are about good and happy experiences. A very few…not so much. I’ll be honest about all my experiences – with humor and no malice.

These are stories that have affected and changed me. I hope you like them as much as I’ve enjoyed experiencing them. Enjoy!!

Heartbreaking Berlin – Where I Found Myself Again

by the messy optimist

Dun. Dun. Dun. Heartbreaking Berlin. Where I found myself again! You’re thinking – and, maybe, rightfully – how dramatic, Roopa! Like just…come on, now!

SO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS IN THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH, Y’ALL!

But really. Berlin is where I kinda found myself again. That teenager who was always an outsider finally made her way to Berlin and found a piece of her past that has probably been missing.

But, before I get to all that – Berlin – it’s where the past and present collide. It really is. You can just see it, can’t you? It’s either like the opening credits of a movie or like the climax – what happens when the past (woooo!) and the present (yikes!) come together? What if Jennifer Aniston (past) and Angelina Jolie (present) came together? PHEW! Or imagine if Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy had met each other? (Or maybe they did, I’m not sure). Berlin is all that and some more.

And guess what? My story may not have a Brad Pitt or a John F. Kennedy and I am definitely no Jolie or Aniston (oh, the tears of laughter that is just rolling down my friend’s eyes even as she is standing over my left shoulder and reading this as I type it) or Marilyn Monroe or Jackie Kennedy but trust me when I say – my story has all it takes for you to go, Awww! I promise. It has drama, intrigue, mean girls, poor sad and pathetic girl (me) and then said poor pathetic me has a moment (you know…’finding myself and all that jazz?) under the Berlin Wall – trust me, it’s got all that and more.

So, yeah…you should continue reading this saga of mine!

But before we get to MY saga – let’s get to THE saga. The saga of Berlin itself.

I mean – if there is one city where the past and the present genuinely collide – it’s Berlin, Germany. There is just so much history here that I didn’t even realize that Berlin was in my bucket list for all of the usual reasons – beautiful city, so much history, breathtaking street art, culture and so much more.

So even as I discovered all the bravura sights and sounds of Berlin itself, this city and what it did for me was more than just me being a tourist in awe of this amazeballs place. The collision of the past and present for me was intensely personal.

But before I get to that – what about Berlin, the city, itself?

So – If you ask someone who’s visited Berlin what they think of the city – this is what they’d probably say.

They’d say that Berlin is a complete marvel. And they’d be right! Circa 2020 – there is probably no city in the world that is at once modern and traditional. That is at once futuristic (from its architecture to music to its politics) but one that has so much palpable and throbbing live history within a few square miles.

Berlin Attractions

The mind and eyes boggle as you go from one historical sight to another – from the Brandenburg Gate to the Reichstag Building.

From the Berlin Wall Memorial to the East Side Gallery.

From Checkpoint Charlie to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe to resting in the lush Tiergarten in the heart of downtown West Berlin.

From traveling from what was West Berlin then to East Berlin. From the clear changes in mood and the art and the architecture – Berlin is an incredibly vibrant, pulsating, artistic and a wonderfully heartwarming city that loves its visitors from all parts of the world.

It was ALL of the above for me as well.

But for me – Berlin was so much more.

Getting to Berlin was the culmination of a whole life’s journey – of dreams, ambitions and promises – and one that started many, many years back.

Back in the past…Berlin – A Piece of the Wall. A Piece of my Heart.

Thinking about how Berlin was where my own personal past and personal collided – I had to go back in time to when I was in high school and college.

So – I was raised in Mumbai. Initially, I lived in a somewhat upper-middle class western suburb of the city and then moved to the central suburbs (considered more downmarket than the rest of the city) and finished my Mumbai school journey.

After I finished my 10^th grade at a school in a central suburb – I decided I wanted to see how the other half lived – basically, I wanted to know about life in South Bombay (the toniest and most definitive upper class area in Mumbai) and decided to study at one of the upper crust and snooty colleges there. I spent five years of my very formative years within the walls of said snob-crusted college.

Those solid and very life-changing years were when I truly learned adulting.

If you’re wondering how an out-of-place a kid from the wrong side of the tracks felt in the toniest of colleges in Mumbai and whether there were issues – you aren’t wrong. Oh, there were issues. So many of them. Of course, I did not fit in. At all. Back then – my only foreign sojourn was to Nepal but I was surrounded by kids who talked about Antwerp and Los Angeles and New York and Paris like it was their backyard. Because it WAS their backyard.

I don’t mind admitting – it was tough.

It was tough when you were ignored by classmates only because you didn’t go to their schools or live in their neighborhoods. It was rough when – at the age of 18, 19 – these ridiculous things magnify themselves in your head and heart and you make it a bigger deal than it is. Mean girls are a real thing, you guys. And it was pretty real for me as well.

BUT – I probably did not appreciate it when (and as) it happened but fact is that those five years also toughened the shit out of me.

And now in the present…

And it was THAT life – those life-changing five years that I remembered when I finally made it to one of my most favorite cities on this planet – Berlin. And it was when I found myself in Berlin that my past and present truly collided.

So, having gotten a Doctorate in International Relations – Berlin is the closest I can come to being in a historical city with so much immediate history. So many life-changing moments had happened in Berlin and it had happened in the past 30 years. Apart from the sheer beauty of a city – Berlin also appealed to the scholar in me.

I took in every sight in the city with more excitement than I have ever felt anywhere in a loooong time. And when I finally made it to the most incredibly significant place – the sight of the Berlin Wall – I was verklempt. I stood there and gawked and gaped for over five hours. I just stared and read the history behind the incredible events that had happened in 1989.

And then I bought a piece of the Berlin Wall from a souvenir shop near Checkpoint Charlie.

When the past and present collide

And that’s when I remembered my days back in college.

So – if this seems a bit like an episode of Gossip Girl and I sound like Dan or Vanessa from said show – you aren’t too wrong. It kinda is. So back in that tony college I mentioned – this extremely snooty classmate of mine invited me to a house party. She was friendly…ish – like she invited me to her parties but it was more like I was the token representation of how she did not ‘see’ any differences between people – but she also, very subtly, made it clear that we were worlds apart. And we were. No arguments there. It was when she acted friendly on the surface but was mean underneath…geesh!

That’s a whole different story and it’s for another day.

So, anyhoo, back to the party to which poor-ol-me was invited to. My snotty-ass friend gave me the veritable South Bombay tour of her duplex Cuffe Parade apartment. Even as I tried to act all cool and nonchalant on the outside – I was going nuts on the inside. Her house was one step close to being a bona fide museum. From artworks to sketches to sculptures – that was one helluva pad. And I was deeply impressed with all of it. But it was when my ‘friend’ showed a piece of stone that was set very separately from everything else on her living room display wall that my heart felt like it would burst out of my chest.

That little piece of rock was a part of the Berlin Wall.

Like an actual handpicked piece of the Berlin Wall from when the Wall came down. She was a baby when her parents took her there…like, they were literally in Berlin as modern history unfolded in real time and the actual wall between East and West Berlin came down in an act of solidarity and unification. And they, literally, handpicked a piece of the Berlin Wall and brought it back with them.

I tried not to but I was awestruck when I heard that story. Like I said before – until then, my one foreign sojourn was to Nepal. So to see modern recent history in front of my eyes was just too much and I was overwhelmed.

And it was then I made a promise to myself.

Berlin, then, was just a place on a map but I told myself that one day – some day – I’d make my way to the site of the Berlin Wall and I would bring back a piece of it.

It took many, many, many years after that incident but I finally did.

Sure. I bought a piece of the wall from a souvenir shop but the fact that I was even able to get there was such a very big deal.

To everyone else – it’s history and a piece of THE Berlin Wall. And it was/is to me as well.

But it’s so much more to me.

I did find myself – again – in Berlin that day. Holding that piece of rock mounted inside a cheap plastic maybe just another cheap souvenir for others. But for me – it was a moment where I reclaimed myself. In 2021 – with the relentless pandemic upon us for 18 months and counting and after being through one of the BIGGEST personal tragedies of my life in December 2020 – all of which have changed me profoundly – that moment when I held that piece of rock – which for all practical purposes could’ve come from the street of present day Berlin – I did feel like I’d achieved the Oscar or something. It was that profound an experience and that profound a journey for me.

Even as Berlin is all things history and historical and modern and artistic – to me, it represents the strides I’ve made in my life. While it took me 30 years to accomplish what my snooty friend had done as a kid – I know that I’m the architect of this story.

And I’m damn proud of it.