The Brown Leather Sofa

It began with carrying a dark brown leather sofa up to the third floor, one Sunday morning in spring, 2012. I’d found it right outside my flat, and my two flatmates didn’t mind, and even helped me carry it up. In Berlin, seeing furniture left out on the street is a daily occurrence, as is seeing an impressive array of it being transported by foot or bike. I’ve seen a man carrying a bed frame across the huge park that used to be the city airport, and people cycling while balancing bookcases, chairs, lamps, and alarmingly large suitcases.

Of course, most people have carried furniture through the streets at some point, marking the phase when you don’t have enough money or stuff to warrant paying someone with a van. As a Ph.D. student, I’d wheeled a blue sofa through Cambridge, but that was when I was living in University accommodation, and nothing was permanent. Perhaps that should have been over by my late-20s, but after moving countries, I found myself doing the same thing again. When I first arrived in Berlin in the fall of 2010, I came with just a suitcase and a big backpack. It was only when I lugged the brown sofa up the stairs that I finally started an uncertain momentum towards a fragile sense of belonging.

I’m looking at the sofa now, crumpled creases shining in the late-afternoon light as I sit in a black leather and metal chair that one of those flatmates didn’t want anymore. We all moved out in the summer, and I managed to get a lease on my own place for the first time. I’m not sure where he is now, but the chair squats low and wide, with narrow armrests, and is possibly quite ugly, but it’s half-covered in a blanket. That came from a bodywork studio I worked in here a few years ago, and is one of the ones we covered clients with when they’d rest after sessions. I wonder if it’s creepy to have brought the blanket home after we closed that studio, but it’s a lovely, soft, blueish green.

I had come to Berlin for a one-year history research position, but then made the leap of beginning a course in somatic therapy. The training lasted almost four years, during which I slowly set myself up, working with people on their anxieties and stresses. It’s a fulfilling job once they find their way to me, but establishing your own client-based business in a new city as a fairly introverted and not very business-savvy person is a mammoth task. I joined the ranks of the precarious freelancers and part-timers that fill Berlin.

It’s never been clear how long I was going to stay here. Berlin is full of people finding their own paths and doing things differently, and I guess I was the same. There’s another chair opposite me, a strange construction that would probably identify itself as a desk chair, but is actually much too uncomfortable to sit on for very long. It came from a feminist NGO that I volunteered with here for a year. I’m not surprised they wanted rid of it; the NGO operated with a flat democratic structure, which involved hours of discussions, fueled by crisps and chocolate, and tinged with frustration and passive aggression, and for that you really need comfortable chairs. It’s quite striking, its pale, wicker-effect back panel framed in black wood with rounded edges, but it doesn’t really fit next to the table.

With its thin, spindly legs and deep red wood, the table is not robust enough to feel like a desk, but is too narrow for a dining table. It came from one of the flea markets here that are jammed full of people on Sundays. In my early years, I developed a fetish for the delicate, old teacups that I found there, and now have a proud collection of azure blue, poppy red, grass green and lemon yellow, each one patterned with gold. They make a delightful way to drink the morning espresso that I transferred to from my English filter coffee.

As I gradually collected objects, I didn’t imagine I’d leave, but then I didn’t imagine far ahead at all, even though the few friends I made in my first years kept leaving. To my left, now, is the red chest of drawers that used to belong to a friend from my research institute before he moved away. After the fourth friend packed up, I started to feel more wary about who I’d become close to, but you never really know. People try things out here.

On my right side is a huge white bookcase that made its way here via another freelancer friend, who stayed at my flat for nine months while contemplating where he’d like to live, and while I tried out living in a communal house with my then-girlfriend. When that all ended and I came back, I got the bookcase. It’s the kind that no-one would actually find pleasing to look at, but which holds so much stuff that it can mostly get away unnoticed. The house was one of Berlin’s “project houses”, effectively collectively owned by the sixty-odd people who lived in it, who made all of the decisions about it together. Like the NGO, this involved long discussions, inside and outside of meetings. There was always a conflict or problem to be picked apart, and most people seemed to exist within a blend of feeling tired and annoyed, but resolved to carry on.

I’ve been determined about something during my time in Berlin, pressing ahead as if I needed to prove something. I’m not really cut out for freelance life, but I stubbornly pushed forwards, focused on keeping my head above water. I tried immersing myself in a football team and a touch rugby team, I explored the queer scene, and I dived into the world of spoken word, finding my feet and my voice on stage. Whatever I did, it came with a kind of urgency, as if I needed to find my place. I’m an expert at feeling like I’m not quite good enough, and don’t quite belong, and as though I need to try very hard to keep everything together.

Looking back at all this feels like having stepped off a football pitch after the end of a tough game. Sometimes after a match, I can’t really remember what happened at all. I’ve been so focused on running, on watching the ball and people’s movements, and anticipating where they will go next, and afterwards it all seems like one big blur. Except that I’m still here, on the pitch, looking around at the jumbled furniture that has clustered around me. By now, I don’t feel so much like I need to prove anything. I feel comfortable. I do fit in. Now that I’ve realized those things, I’m free to leave.

As I sit in my flat, I’m surrounded by my little world of familiar objects, but they make a strange mixture. It’s the first time I’ve owned all of the objects in a place, but they seem as if they’ve blown in with the wind. The sofa was the start of my first attempt at my own home, and I am thankful for it, but I’ll finally be leaving Berlin soon, and I’ll probably leave all of it for some other people to collect on their journeys. I’ll just be taking my colorful teacups, and making a different attempt at belonging.