Day 69-77: Eternal memory or ..?

Eternal memory or who has advice on how to remember it all?

This blog will be a good reminder of what I was doing while living in Berlin and traveling, but how can I make my brain remember every single minute of this journey ? I’ve met some great people, I’ve done some cool stuff, experienced some awesome things, hung out in some mindblowing places, barhopped like crazy every once in a while and had a good time overall. And how can I guarantee that I remember every single interesting conversation that I had or every interesting thing that I saw? I sort of don’t want to let go of anything I’ve done so far.

Nan Goldin, whose exhibition I visited recently at the Berlinische Galerie says she was taking so many pictures of people and events because she was obsessed with remembering everything and not losing people (funnily enough, she also adds that these photos now remind her how

much she lost...). If I want to remember every precious moment of the good times in my life, I have to carry a notepad for writing things down, voice recorder for some pleasant conversations, camera for all the beautiful things, have a Google Calendar to track all the meet-ups and events (actually I do/have all that, except for the recorder), but if I devote so much time to tracking my experiences, there will be no actual experiences.

Even now I mostly only remember the really vivid stuff, like

• International Christmas dinner in Milan
• First falafel in Cologne
• A walk in the snowy Englisch Garten in Munich
• New Year’s Eve with friends in Karlsruhe
• Also seeing the Czychis again in Karlsruhe
• Arriving and finding the way to my Berlin home
• Getting to know my flatmates, establishing a relationship with vegan food
• First non-stop party weekend (Russian Christmas at Judith’s, CS party and Russendisko)
• Discovering that some people don’t even own corkscrews (for wine) in Berlin, starting to drink beer (and never stopping)
• Getting to know Agata, hanging out on a regular basis, cooking (!), discovering Berlin together
• Meeting CS Rinse in Stockholm and finally understanding what the term “to hit off right away” means exactly. Soulmate stuff.
• Going off to Oslo (seeing Rinse there again!), Paris (don’t buy those I love Paris condoms…), Barcelona (warm, cheap coffee, endless walks, realizing the Vicky Christina Barcelona is just a movie), Porto (ocean! Portuguese beer, rockband)
• Sleeping on the floor in the world’s worst airport (after all Russian airports of course), Bergamo
• Discovering Neukölln, Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, Schöneberg, Mitte, Kreuzberg, Charlottenburg, more or less falling in love with all of them
• Pretzels!
• Berlinale, goddamnit! Going to Berlinale Nighttalk almost every night. Seeing and listening to a lot of film industry people discuss issues I love (e.g. films). Having what I like to think of as intense eye contact with actress Juliane Köhler and developing a crush of sorts, watching scenes from Aimee & Jaguar over and over again
• Seeing some weird and/or good films at Berlinale
• Realizing that I love German radio and that you can have a great pizza almost anywhere in Berlin
• Meeting and hanging out with great people – Bernardo, Shiv, Erik, Yolanda, Mandy, Christine, Martina, Nicole, Markus, Maeve, Sabine, Caio
• My first borsch
• CS party at Damian’s and Soul disco
• Being sad about Agata leaving (for a while)
• Being torn about going or not going to Lithuania and Latvia and finally staying in Berlin to party hard and have the time of my life
• Discovering Schwuz
• Drinking Polish vodka with a Brazilian dude at Alexanderplatz
• …
• …

(Damn, am I overwhelmed now or what?)

But what about the rest? It was a bit less vivid, but in no way worse… Sigh. If anyone has a pill for ever lasting memory, hit me up.

More on Nan Goldin:

I'll Be Your Mirror Documentary - Part One

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency

Nan Goldin-- Photography and Love