Years ago I found a discarded pregnancy test on the stairs to the S-Bahn platform. At that time I laughed at the cliché: In the Mami-Kiez Prenzlauer Berg, women apparently have to check their hCG value at the train station. Meanwhile, I am one of the local mothers myself.
When I came to Berlin by car in 2009 as a freshly qualified media scientist on the A24, the journey ended in Schönhauser Allee, near the underground and S-Bahn stations. I had already been to Berlin before, had visited exhibitions, ran through the clubs and met the most interesting people in the strangest places. Now I wanted to stay. It was already dark and wet and cold in late winter. The subway ran upstairs, the S-Bahn below, and life bustled on the street and sidewalk. Something was shining everywhere.
I stood in front of the Colosseum cinema with its curved green lettering and dreamed of the cultural abundance of the big city. Across the street I discovered a video library that sorted its films by director. I went through the shelves, convinced that I had landed in paradise.
While Berlin, the city in constant change, changed continuously in the following years and my professional life took its humanities-related detours, Schönhauser Allee remained constant as my home station.
When the announcement on the train rattled its name, I soon felt a faint sense of home. No matter how tired I was, I never missed getting off at my bus stop. Every now and then I shuffled over to the Colosseum in sweatpants and indulged myself in films on the big screen as if I were in a second living room.
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The cinema is now closed and the video library no longer existed soon after I moved. But I always liked the outskirts of this main thoroughfare, where the trams that go in all directions open up so many paths. In a few minutes you can be out of Berlin – or right in the middle of it. At the same time, the area always seems a little slowed down. Here people live primarily and not dance, there is hardly anything for tourists to see.
Instead, in the middle of what was once the most child-rich district of Berlin, you can enjoy a multitude of playgrounds. Still, it’s not boring. One encounters – typically Berlin – enough idiosyncratic or quirky characters, such as the mob from the corner or the elderly gentleman who usually walks in a hurry on the sidewalk, greets them in a friendly way and says: ‘Nice, nice! “
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