I was born in Berlin.

Back then, Berlin was a strange city with many creepy corners. It was cold and grey and sad, with a wall right through the middle.

When you’re born in a divided city, you don’t know what that means until a wall gets in your way. And at some point, you wonder how it's even possible to lock half the people behind a wall.

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And while the people of my generation all know where they were when the Wall came down, the new generations don't even know that Berlin was cut in two.

Even ten or fifteen years ago, people would systematically ask me which side I lived on. That is becoming increasingly rare.

No wall, no sides, I guess.

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Personally, I hated Berlin and counted the days to finally get away.

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I was 16 when the Wall came down and we were all there, my whole math’s class, my whole school, the entire neighborhood, and when we got near the Brandenburg Gate, all of Berlin was on the Wall! A moment of freedom, the most powerful I was ever allowed to experience.

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Still, I left in 1993.

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Bordeaux, Paris, Marrakesh, Montreal, a dream came true. 

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It took my family 21 years to bring me back to my hometown. The children and my Spanish husband wanted it so badly, they loved this Berlin so much, where historic winds were blowing in the rain-soaked streets.

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But before, there was Morocco and there was Canada, across the ocean. Montreal was like Berlin, big, green, relaxed, but without the Wall, without the Sides and also without the (European) History. Anything was possible in Montreal, with an idea you could move mountains. With a dollar in your pocket, you were rich!

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2010, back on the old continent, Paris, the infinite universe of all the arts, and then, more than twenty years after I left, Berlin.

A circle had closed.

The Berlin of 2014 was no longer the Berlin of 1989. English ruled the city and small shops gave way to Starbucks, the rents skyrocketed and so did the prices of ice cream, but it was still a special city.

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Nowadays, I share my time between Berlin and the Mediterranean side of France and Spain.

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But Berlin has become the magnet I've always tried to avoid - despite myself, it seems.