There is a church across the road from the apartment, chiming its bells in exact time with the ticking clock in the kitchen where I sit. At night the arched window facing the street is lit up with a nightclub-neon blue, streaked by yellow and green. Rumour is it’s a convent, attended by women in pale blue, though I haven’t seen signs of life other than the ringing bells and the bright blue nightlight. The bells have stopped now and the clock, freed from competition, tocks all the louder.

Berlin… in any city there is simply too much, and here there is even more. I have a good feeling about you, Berlin, although caution warns me it is far too early to tell.

I walked around after arriving, initially trying to make it to a free walking tour that I was woefully late for and so missed.

While walking to the meeting point at the Brandenburg gate I passed something I didn’t understand at first, though it didn’t take me long to figure it was a memorial. I went back after deciding I’d missed the tour entirely, and walked in. The rising blocks are unsettling, children scampered between the gaps, appearing and gone like waifs in the wood, like faeries, like ghosts. It was cold, and the wind rustled tissues and dead leaves over the cobblestones, but the sky was bright and blue and felt ever further away as I walked in.

There are no signposts, and no emblazoned descriptions of what you should think, feel, or read into the piece. If you find it, there is a guarded staircase leading to an exhibition underneath that I have not yet made it to, but which tells sounds of the stories of the people and families, the lives lost.

I went on, wandering.

Eventually, making it home to the apartment, I was greeted by the cousin I came here to see and we went out, picking up a beer to drink along the way (apparently it is quite legal here), to the East Gallery. I didn’t take any pictures then, in the gathering dark, of the murals and graffiti that cover the remaining wall, but it is not something easily forgotten, I think. There is a strong feeling residing there, a reminder, an uneasiness to think of walking along a wall intended to keep you out, or keep others in.

It was thinner than I expected. Today, without the guards, the floodlights, the second wall behind… ah, but still it stands there so much taller than you, and stretching ahead for as far as light reaches in the evening.