Issues when coming back.

Dear all, as you already noticed due to my last post, I am back. I have met a few of you, other meetings are set up already. It is good to be back, though I am still a bit sad. It seems as if I am not ready to finish my final welthaus report, yet, because I keep me busy: running around, running after flat offers and job opportunities. I have to move out of my parent's house and find a place on my own, something that is not too far away from the inner city (40km is just too much), but not too close, either. A certain distance seems the right thing to choose. As so often.

Arrival.

Dissolve Fear. Honor Differences. Face Anger. Opt to listen. 

I am back. What more can I say?
Since last Saturday I arrived with my London airplane at Berlin-Tegel, was welcomed warm-heartily by my family, spent hours of talking and listening. This Wednesday is one of the first days to settle down a bit, to get to grips with another application for the Berlin labour market so that I am enabled to find a place on my own. I checked out flats already, have been booked for upcoming 'public viewings' for some flats and realised how ridiculous it is to see those flat without the option of actually renting one of them because I am not yet working.

I see friends and cycle through Berlin in order to get used to this city again.

I see polished façades, a level of cleanness which bothers me, few, few people, except in those place where tourists walk around, see myself in a mirror in those shopwindows which have all the goods you need to have and everything repelled me in the beginning, now I am starting to become a mite more relaxed.

Is this the adaptational phase, in which I process my 'grievy' feelings, getting angry about all the wealth and exclusiveness here, directing my anger towards those who can afford to be in this place? EU Politicians would say, the strict border rules are necessary to protect what is there, but I tend to say, tear them down, those borders, invite instead of reject, share, share even all the problems which are coming, embrace them, accept the risk a society is for itself, accept the differences, honour the strange.
Maybe I am just missing the strange for myself, the multiple voices and sounds which are not common here. I even practice click sounds on the streets, just to have imported moments of familiarity from my last twelve months. Where is this all?

I see people from African descent and smile at them, because I am happy to find brothers and sisters of mine - terms which are uncommon to the ear of a German. I see them in those very same shops where I found them also in Joburg, in hospice and charity shops, in front of some cafés, in shops which have the label to be truly 'African'.

I think I must keep a few things from Jozi, I cannot help it. I need multicultural environments, I need a certain degree of untidyness, maybe even unhidden poverty.