For a long time, I wanted to live in Berlin. I pictured living in a 19th-century building on the capitalist side of the Glienicker Brücke. My building would have illegal rooftop access, if you were willing to jump over the windowsill. On the rooftop, I would place two wooden chairs with butt-shaped seats and oval backrests, and a small wooden table with metal legs between them. Everything would stand next to an unused chimney, overlooking other 19th-century buildings and a park underneath. Every morning, I would bring a cup of coffee and a croissant purchased at the neighborhood’s Bäckerei, eat my breakfast, jump back over the windowsill, and walk to a U-Bahn station (which, if I remember correctly, isn’t anywhere nearby that bridge) to get to a startup office near Oranienburger Strasse. I think I saw that scene in a spy movie. But I never moved to Berlin, and I probably never will. Somehow, I visit only when I attend tech conferences.
This time, when self-doubt hit, I wrote five emails canceling my talk at Berlin Buzzwords. I sent none of them. And I ended up in a hotel at Alexanderplatz. The view out the window (24th floor) was the worst thing I had seen in a long time. Berlin is a place where you can find some beauty at the street level. It may be a narrow street full of trees, plants, and hipster coffee shops. It may be a group of teenagers in extravagant outfits. It may be a graffiti or a palimpsest of stickers on the wall. At around 60 m, Berlin looks as if someone forgot crayons and had to draw everything with a B2 graphite pencil.
I can still find things I loved about this place, but less and less. They closed K-17 years ago, so I can’t even pretend I would like it more if I could go to a music venue where they play metal (they had a single floor dedicated to metal, with a dance floor smaller than my living room, toilets where you could catch an STD just by standing in the doorframe and looking inside, and a staircase that was saying “If a fire breaks out, you will die here”).
I had one day between my arrival and my presentation. I managed to find a place making “soul food,” which looked as if arancino had an unwanted child with sushi, but tasted surprisingly average. I managed to write a new version of my presentation slides. Twice. I came late to the presentation I wanted to attend on the first day, because I found an old tower in a park in Pankow and had to take pictures. But then, I attended enough other presentations to realize that, if I manage to remember the text (spoiler: I did), I would be somewhere in the middle of the pack. Not the worst. Not the best.
And I spent enough time observing speakers and participants to notice behavior I started calling “performative coding.” It’s when a person sits in a conference room with their laptop open, pretending to listen to the presentation. Whoever has more tabs open, more charts, and more colorful terminal wins. I saw a guy who was doing the same motion of switching between code, dashboard, home page of some startup (maybe his) several times in a loop. Either he was very stuck on a problem or very desperate to be asked what he was working on.
The night before the talk, I couldn’t sleep, either because of Club Mate or stress, or both. At 6:30 in the morning, I took a single piece of paper from an A5 notebook and wrote speaker notes (I had them lying on my laptop keyboard during the talk).
I watched a RavenPack talk that reminded me what conference talks should be, then went next door to give mine. I sat in the room and spent 40 minutes pretending to listen to the talk before mine, wondering if I was going to faint right now or when I walked onto the stage, my heart thumping. I tried breathing exercises. Breathe in for 4 seconds. Hold for 4 seconds. Breathe out for 4 seconds. Wait 4 seconds. I didn’t feel any difference. Maybe I wasn’t doing it for long enough, or it was already too late. The talk ended. The 15 people in the room started moving. 5 stayed. I walked to the stage. I got the microphone, connected the computer, and waited. People started coming into the room. I sent my wife several messages with count updates. 6. 9. 22. 23. I stopped counting.
The talk began. My heart slowed down, calmed. I started by explaining that I would need only 20 minutes and that they would have a better starting position for lunch. People laughed. I talked. I forgot one or two of my stories. Didn’t matter. I got to the point when I had to stand in silence for a while. I joked that we would sit looking at the screen until it got as uncomfortable as sitting in the old, wooden chairs they put in that conference room. They laughed. I finished the talk. No questions. I said I would take a picture to prove people still care about MLOps. They laughed. That’s when I noticed how many people came. At first glance, the room looked full. I counted the people in the photo later: around 40, half the room. And I think I saw the people who, in my opinion, gave the best talks in my room (hard to tell for sure, since I could only see half a face in the photo).
One person came to me after the talk. I wasn’t the best conversation partner at that time because the stress was leaving my body and I wasn’t even paying attention. (Sorry!) I think I didn’t solve his problem. Well, I didn’t even understand his problem at that time. (Sorry again!)
I decided to check the panels in the East Side Gallery. I hopped on the U-Bahn to Alexanderplatz, changed to the S-Bahn, and got off at Warschauer Strasse. I walked along the wall gallery. The painting of Leonid Brezhnev kissing Erich Honecker was still there. The panel with the text “Many small people who in many small places do many small things that can alter the face of the world” was there, too. So were many others, but I came only for those two. Then I realized I had never been to the Glienicker Brücke in person. I ignored the urge. Honestly, a daily Glienicker Brücke-Oranienburger Strasse commute would be hell.
All my dreams of ever living here are dead already. If I ended up living here now, I would be mildly annoyed, as even the tech scene has matured. Fewer hipster/punk startups, more corporations.
I got to the Ostbahnhof station 2.5 h before the train. I ate a Schinkenpretzel, drank McDonald’s coffee, went to the end of platform 1, and sat on a bench. Years ago, I sat on that bench and took a picture of an “I love you” graffiti with the Alexanderplatz tower in the background. I posted it online with a subtitle “Berlin loves you.” The washed-out graffiti is still there, but a new building obstructs the view, and the tower isn’t visible anymore.
The post-conference survey came in. Among other things, they asked if I would consider sending a talk proposal next year. I said yes. It’s not binding. And I still have my five unsent cancellation emails. Apparently, that’s how my relationship with Berlin will look. Visit once a year, go to a restaurant in Pankow, breathe in the vestiges of the city I once fell in love with.