Trainspotting Berlin: Near, Far, Wherever You Are…

Collecting small anecdotes of transitory moments.

The underground is full of myths. A place that we share with so many others, yet hardly experience together.

A place where collective memory resides; and although mostly not crossing over the borders of personal experience, some moments transcend into the wider consciousness of the masses.

She was one of them.

Just a mystical rumor at first—captured in shaky Instagram videos and hollow voice messages—spreading along the U8 like a wildfire on a dry day in late August.

“Have you seen her yet?”

Her appearances always followed the same pattern, leaving the very same traces in people’s memories, sensitizing the cities mind to her extraordinary abilities—a strategic icon of collective consciousness.

“She came into my car today. It really was her!”

A woman of subtle magic; pleated skirt, short haircut, and nickel glasses, well aware that her talent is in no need of colorfully glittering accessories—just her, an old microphone, and that familiar melancholic melody out of small, portable plastic speakers.

 

 

“And this voice. Just wow!”

She became a collective moment of joy in everyday monotony, a shared memory of togetherness in otherwise cold anonymity.

Yet, I never met her.

Until one night, when I jumped into the shutting doors of the U8 underneath a flickering red light.

Pantingly I sat down on one of the colorful hard-shell seats, as the familiar piano melody started playing in the next car…

“Eeevery night in my dreams, I seee you, I feeeel…”

The doors closed; a fleeting moment of joy, then her graceful voice drowned in the merciless rattle of the starting train.

Already at the next station, she had disappeared, her voice only echoing in my head.

And so my search went on; until I’ll find you—Titanic Lady.

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<a href="https://www.iheartberlin.de/author/andy/" target="_self">Andy</a>

Andy

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