November is Berlin’s harshest month, the first of five full months without sun

Journalist Jana Antonsen and author/theatre director Julie Kaffmeyer take turns talking about life.

As soon as I got off the train, the icy cold air mercilessly hit me in the face as a welcome greeting. Not wanting to lug my suitcase up all those stairs from the bottom of the massive glass-and-steel Hauptbahnhof, I took the elevator. A man carrying a heavy, low backpack and an older lady with a large camera around her neck entered the cabin behind me. Instead of lifting us, the elevator sank deeper into the station and then got stuck right in front of the parking garage.

The man let out a frustrated sigh. I raised the corners of my mouth slightly; After all, we were in the same boat. But that only made him angrier. He knocked on the elevator doors, which were now shaking, and shouted Chessie. The lady looked at him with a mixture of fear and wonder; It’s a bit like looking at a strange predator in a zoo behind a very low wall. “Berlin is impatient” She was whispering to me.

November is the harshest month here, the first of five full months without sun; From the thick darkness of four-thirty and the damp cold that settles in your bones; From numb fingers and cold hearts.

The first friend I met had relationship problems, like the hanging sky of Berlin, that couldn’t be resolved. The next person wasn’t in a relationship yet, but he was already suffering from severe winter depression. A third were unable to find an affordable home. A fourth had just decided to return to his homeland, after seven years here, the party had gone on long enough.

The only person who was actually doing well was a friend who had seen her extra income skyrocket; An artist sells travel medicine to make ends meet. The more gray it is outside, the greater the need to find light inside. This financial prosperity wasn’t the only reason things were going so well, no, she was still enjoying the DMT trip herself. DMT is one of the most powerful hallucinogens out there. In a few minutes, you’ll be so transported that the trip is often described as a near-death experience.

She didn’t find it scary. “All kinds of friendly entities have shown me that what we are experiencing here and now is just a simulation. It’s a very cynical game, just turn on the news for that, but it’s a game.”

Before I could say that the victims of all raging wars had little to gain from this opinion, she continued again: “Look, DMT is a substance that occurs naturally in the body. My Bavarian grandmother also had a good trip on her deathbed. She kept talking about the man.” Who is behind the computer? Grandma didn’t read Plato or Descartes Matrix She had never heard of it before and did not have a computer. My friend saw in it evidence of the existence of physical simulation; Shadow world. The devil is in the controls. She found this thought comforting, it helped her endure the darkness.

At the end of every tunnel there is light. Spring will be here again soon.

Just don’t become impatient.