New York City, September 6, 2025  Berlin to New York City, September 6, 2025

I'm not from Berlin, I'm from the Harz Mountains. I moved to Berlin because Berlin isn't Germany. I flew to New York for the first time because I had never been to the US, but New York City is New York City and not the US. That was last year, when I visited for the first time in my life the country that people used to talk about when they meant freedom, and that people still talk about today, only different people. A different world, back then.

Even in September 2024 - as I too was able to reassure myself during hours of walking through Manhattan: This really exists, and that too, wow, and that… also - it was still a different world, and I'm certain it won't be long before this world I'm writing from will have vanished or at least disappeared. Many so-called turning points lately, no certainties anymore, and war in Europe again.

Now it's September again and I'm flying back to New York. But this time, I will see the United States. Will the country I don't know still be the way I think I know it? And how is New York doing? I've missed New York. The people I met and had such great conversations with, who think admirably fast, speak even faster, and whose small talk choreography swings between drama and entertainment. Always a punchline, always a joke, an invitation to laugh together. Because: We are in this together.

In September 2024, I approached a colleague, I'm a journalist, in front of a New York courthouse and asked what they were reporting on. Very quickly, the conversation turned to how they were even still able to report at all. We have a man with a gun, looking out for us, the colleague told me. I remember waving to him, the gunman, and he laughed. My colleague then introduced me to one of his coworkers. “He’s an idiot,” he said, because the man was a Republican. But that colleague would’ve called him an idiot in return. Both men wished me well as we parted ways. I remember thinking, as I walked away, that they meant completely different things by that - because they had fundamentally different ideas about how the world should be.

That's basically politics. And chit-chat, communication, it’s basically just a survival strategy. People who talk to each other don't hurt each other.

Now I’m sitting on the plane, the flight is long, but time passes, and I’m curious to see what kind of world I’ll be landing in.