It's 3am and I'm half-way through an essay about the reasons for the fall in the birthrate in Italy which is asking me to relate to my own experiences in the country. Stuck for inspiration (surprise surprise - the Italian department is known for often providing inspiring essay topics such as whether or not a pope should be allowed to go on big brother), I decided to look over my blog posts of what is now a distant experience in order to try and trigger a sudden 600-word surge of genius.
And here we are. I've now re-read the majority of my blog posts, corrected a couple typos and decided I need to write at least a monthly post. Not ideal timing considering an unbelievable amount of deadlines and exams looming which now feel like the be all and end all but which, undoubtedly, in a couple years times will feel as distant as the butterflies I felt when embarking on my Erasmus adventure.
For lack of recent adventures to talk about (unless you count an exciting weekend away in Leicester) I must resort to talking about thinking about past adventures - but fear not...fingers crossed I will find myself in Berlin and Cologne in a few weeks time so the next blog post will actually be about a Russian abroad.
I did come to my senses and get to back work after this brief transgression so I'm now finishing writing this post while on the 7 hour bus ride from Berlin to Cologne.
I recently read an article on The Guardian online entitled 'Why we travel'. Following a relatively recent trend in travel articles highlighting the importance of experiencing other cultures and societies, it highlighted a couple aspects of traveling which I had never thought of before. Although we already know the growing importance of multi-cultural understanding, what this means practicality is less often noted. It creates an invaluable open-mindedness; an open-mindedness to ambiguities and multiple meanings actions and objects can have. This in turn all comes down to a change in the way we think.
Jonah Lehrer (the writer) interestingly points out our 'basic human desire' to travel as a migratory species. It seems that the importance does not lie in our final destination or the type of holiday we opt for but the mere fact of putting distance between ourselves and where we live. He elaborates on this idea by explaining a change in the way we think about things to seem further away. Further away from the problem and we can think further outside the box and our imagination is less constricted by the confines by associations which surround us in a familiar environment. Especially useful when solving particular problems, this also allows to exercise our brains in a different way meaning we return with a refreshed cognition and less restricted imagination. He comments that, ironically, though people go on holiday to 'escape' troubles and stresses at home, they should actually be using the distance to focus on them, taking advantage of the change in our thinking process that we experience.
Relating to this more personally (and from an artistic point of view), I do undoubtedly become mentally stuck when I've stayed in one place for an over-extended period of time. This does not mean I'm one to go swanning off on city breaks and beach holidays at every opportunity - even an overnight trip to Birmingham would do the trick - but it does mean a constant need for varying stimuli in my surrounding environment. Even after a few days in Berlin I have found a whole new array of sources of inspiration musically and feel a renewed sense of energy, motivation and determination.
I would say that coming to Berlin was a particularly challenging experience given that I haven't been to a country where I don't actually speak the language (apart from vague remnants from GCSE) in a while and I've only been to Germany once as a child so it's a culture and society relatively foreign to me. I weirdly felt slightly nervous trying to find the train which would take me from the airport into the city, although I do appreciate that nearly everyone speaks English to some degree so is was by no means the same feeling as arriving in China on my own last year! The main aspect for me is figuring out the new way that people relate to each other - every society is different and I would never want to comes across as rude or ignorant.
Though I was only there for three whole days with lots of university work and a couple administrative things to do in Berlin, I was still hugely touched by the sense of need for creativity and openness - a quality that Berlin is known for and attracts thousands of twenty-somethings to the city every year. While Bristol is arguably the most culturally stimulating and progressive british city I still find it, at times, slightly conservative in terms of a certain style of being culturally progressive being the one deemed to be the most interesting one. The 'berliners' seem much more open-minded and it really is a case of anything goes. Yet, this doesn't necessarily mean actual talent is sacrificed. The concentration of musical talent is extraordinary and the willingness to collaborate with fellow musicians in order to develop as a musician individually is strongly rooted in the culture. Sundays at Mauerpark was a wonderful experience with countless buskers sharing a variety of music. Friends were explaining how musicians will get there at 7 in order to secure the best busking spot for the day and sums in the region of 400 - 500 € can be earned in just one day!
I found it interesting that a capital city of such a prosperous country is actually one of the cheaper places to live in Germany and also isn't a city that would immediately come to mind when thinking about the most beautiful cities in Europe. The most characteristic element of Berlin's skyline is a tower similar to the radio tower in Shanghai. The beauty reveals itself in a different form and much closer to the ground in the art and music which lines the streets and fill the buildings of the city. East side gallery and multiple legal and illegal graffiti spots accompanied by people bringing amps, microphones and guitars with them for an afternoon in the park depicts a less commonly found beauty. It will be interesting to see how Cologne, the 4th largest city in Berlin, compares...
Vielen Dank for reading,
xx
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| 'French Dom' |
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| Obligatory Brandenburg Gate Picture |
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| East Side Gallery |
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| Music in the park |
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