06.04.2016

Admittedly my mind was not with my body in Berlin during this tour because I had just found out the night before that my mother was in the hospital in California, so the majority of my thoughts were on how much it would cost to buy a ticket back to the states in less than 24 hours as opposed to the extensive history of the city of Berlin that was being presented to me. While my brain was tethered to the streets of my hometown, I occasionally let it meander through the miniature streets of the expansive 3D model of Berlin, brushing past the identical artificial trees and windowless buildings that towered above my tiny imaginary self. The differentiation between new and old-standing buildings as white plastic and light brown wood pulled the leash around my heart even closer to Los Angeles, wondering which buildings I could even place as having been built before 2000. My internal comparison of these two metropolises that have incited such different emotions in my being has prompted daily restructures of my understanding of Berlin as a city of “becoming”.