Berlin schließt leise

Tomorrow morning at six I get up, take the M29 to the Hauptbahnhof, then onwards to TXL. Frankfurt-stop at ten forty-five, then twelve hours into Osaka. So today is the last Berlin day for a while. A closing Sunday.

I started at Mauerpark, Wedding side, the row where the serious sellers set up. Bought nothing. Stood for forty minutes at the stall of a guy named Felix who folds denim like a tailor — corner first, then the side-seam aligned, then the inseam pinched into the centerline. That is not a flea-market fold. He used to work at Berlin Studio Mode until they cut the Junior-Designer roles in 2019. Now he resells only what he himself once cut or wore. There was a 2017 BSM coat on his stall that he had cut by his own hand. I asked him about it. He said die einzige Sammler-Linie die ich habe.

Then U2 to Naturkundemuseum, then over to Hamburger Bahnhof. Petrit Halilaj's An Opera Out of Time closed today. I went in for the last hour. The big light-hall with the cathedral roof was almost empty by then. One of the Aufseherinnen — mid-fifties, grey-streak hair pulled back tight — stood off to the side and watched the last visitors thin out. She has been in that room for fifteen years she told me later. Tonight when she leaves work the Halilaj is over. Tomorrow someone disassembles the brass birds.

Then Berghain for the Sunday-Mittag-Closing shift, where the bartender on duty had been there since noon and would be there until six. Saturday's people still drifting through.

I got home to Reichenberger at half past seven. Made coffee. Wrote this. Berlin is good at closing-Sundays — they have a specific light, a specific tempo, an old-world weekend-ending that I will miss next week in Osaka. Osaka has its own Sundays, I know. But this one was mine.

Bis dann, Berlin.