Me, My Backpack, and Berlin

“What can I get for you?” the barista of Mein Haus am See, Berlin’s trendiest coffee shop, asked me as I put my overstuffed backpack down on the couch.

“Um,” I said, realizing that it’d been over twenty-four hours since I'd heard English. “Coffee?”

He smiled and walked away.

As I was sitting alone in Berlin, a city that I knew almost nothing about, it didn’t escape me that only a month prior I was lying in bed in Oklahoma City, working a minimum wage job and living in a cookie-cutter neighborhood.

That’s when the idea for a spontaneous trip to Germany popped into my head.

I never Googled any images of Berlin or looked up the top things to do. I never bought a book of German phrases, nor did I know anyone in the city.

It was just me, my backpack, and Berlin.

In hindsight, I should have learned how to say, “Where am I?” or “Could you please direct me to…” or “Could you tell me which train I’m supposed to be on?”

Yeah. I missed my first train to Berlin. I got to the station thirty minutes early, watched it arrive, close its doors, and chug away. Luckily, a sympathetic Deutsche Bahn employee guided me onto the next train.

Berlin, when I arrived, was a blank canvas to me. I had no expectations. As I walked the pavement, I got to see Berlin create itself before my eyes.

And I learned that I was a blank canvas myself.

It felt like I had suddenly, radically strayed from the path set for me in life, and the people I met were so absolutely, awkwardly new that I began to wonder if they knew we actually weren’t supposed to be meeting.

But I’m glad I met them.

Berlin itself actually isn’t such a pretty place. It’s industrial, with cranes poking up out of the skyline and graffiti all over the walls. But I liked that. It was perfect for wandering.

And wander I did. I followed an exposed pink pipe through the city where it began sticking out of a building and ended in the ground by a park. I stumbled on the trendy party of town with boutiques and novelty shops.

If I thought I’d gone wandering before, I was wrong. Because this, this was wandering: Aimless, accidental, unsure.

It was easy to compare it to what I was doing with my life since graduation. That’s what I thought of as I made my way through the winding streets where I happened upon Mein Haus am See.

“Where are you from?” the barista asked when he returned.

“Oklahoma,” I said.

“Oklahoma?” he said as he put my coffee down. “Very nice. What brings you?”

I smiled at him.

“I have no idea.”