Neighborhood

The entrance is ordinary, there are millions of them in Germany. Where the apartments are a bit cheaper – and that is in this area – the names on the tiles next to the bell button are not meticulously uniform, as in buildings with more expensive square footage. They are usually pasted over several times. New tenants would simply cover the old names with a piece of paper with their name on it. Some would go to the trouble of printing clear, serious letters on plastic-coated paper. Some would just write their name with a ballpoint pen on plain paper, torn from a child's school notebook. The new tenant would cut out a piece of paper the size of the tile with scissors and stick their handiwork next to the bell with duct tape. After a while, the rain and wind would take their toll, the new piece of paper would develop ears, then, peeled off on one side, it would float in the wind for a while, until it fell off completely. When the tenant noticed this, he would stick a new piece of paper with his name on it. Not for a sense of order, but so that food delivery or Amazon packages would know where to ring.

Among those names is mine. I chose the cardboard found in clothing packages, as a keeper of their shape. I measured the surface area available to me. I cut out a rectangular tile. With a blue felt-tip pen, as neatly as I could, I printed the surname originating from Polimlje. I used glue that sets quickly. I barely washed my fingers afterwards. But the name is still there next to the bell. Brano, a general technical education teacher at my elementary school, would give me an A for this.

I live on the third floor of a four-story building that was quickly built in bomb-ravaged Cologne after World War II. That means the walls are thin. The building is right next to the one on the corner where there is a bicycle repair shop on the ground floor and an Italian pizzeria on the other side of the street.

The thirty-first address in my life. I enter a narrow and dark hallway. The light switch is almost my age, a button that has to be pushed deeply into its socket for the light to click. There is enough light to make out the stairs, but it is so dim that I cannot make out the sender's address on the letter I take out of the mailbox, located in a vertical row, to the right of the entrance.

On one side, stairs lead down into the basement darkness, which is of the mysterious kind that scares children. But there are no children here. In front of the basement boxes, there is always a folded orthopedic walker. A sure sign that someone in the entrance has aged along with the building.

There are stairs waiting for me, 37 of them. What really pleased me from the start, and I wasn't fully aware of it, is the pattern on those stairs. Antique terrazzo. It's not some mosaic gem. They're pebbles. Some black, some ochre, with some reddish in the texture of the glazed concrete. That's what the stairs were like in my childhood. Climbing them every day, sometimes multiple times, is a good workout, especially when I'm carrying a large water bottle and a bag from the supermarket.

I've met my neighbors mostly when we pick up each other's packages that are delivered daily by DHL, Hermes, or some other delivery service. Consumerist solidarity overcomes alienation.

The first apartment on the right, Mr. S. is Rhineland-style friendly and cheerful. On the left is a young couple, I can't tell if they are students or working. In front of their door is often a box of fresh vegetables from a company that guarantees that it doesn't use pesticides. Above them lives a lady wearing Rip Kirby glasses with an icy gaze lurking behind them. On the next floor – that's below me – live a mother and son. She is hysterical, and he is a drug addict. The entrance often echoes with their loud arguments. Across from them is a girl with a ringed nose, always smiling and kind. The closer I get to my floor, the stronger the smell of marijuana fills my nostrils.

The guy to my right – a nice Latino guy – is apparently constantly rolling thick joints. Sometimes he has a girlfriend who comes to visit. They laugh together for hours. Since weed was decriminalized in Germany, it's a normal occurrence on every other corner in the neighborhood. On my long walks, I inhale that smell casually, at least four or five times.

BALCONY LANDSCAPE

The view of the inner courtyard from the balcony has something of a Dekirkian, desolate melancholy. The Turkish neighbor from the building on the left sometimes lets his boy kick a ball against the garage wall for hours. A large blonde woman sits on the concrete in nice weather while her yapping little dog runs around her. Behind the wall, a car mechanic sometimes revs cars. Sometimes he plays trashy music in an unknown language.

But it's mostly peaceful.

The large tree crown in the neighboring yard has already started to shed its leaves. The capricious April is not letting it spread its wings. As soon as the weather improves, the crown will become the queen of this yard.

I'll probably never have coffee or brandy with my neighbors. Not at their place, not at mine. We're too diverse a community, bound only by the situational interest of living as undisturbed as possible within our own four walls.

Here, as in Serbia, postmen, gas fitters, garbage collectors, Jehovah's Witnesses ring your doorbell. At first I opened the door for everyone, now I only open it when I'm expecting someone. Since I don't have an intercom, I go outside the door and say a sharp "please, you rang my doorbell."

NOMEN EST OMEN

I know that many people never ask the question of who the man was who named the street they live in. I'm too curious, so I always ask.

My street names were sometimes colorful. Especially in the south of Germany. In the town of Wangen, it was a street To the bathtub – To the trough. In Regensburg I lived for a while in the heart of the old town, in the White Rooster Alley. Medieval buildings did not have numbers or street names. But they often had emblems on the facades that then served as a sign of recognition. A wealthy house near the Danube was called “At the White Rooster” after the crest-bearer with a crest on the facade. Later, the street was also named after that.

In Berlin, I lived near Alexanderplatz, on a street that the East German authorities named in 1969 after the Berlin greengrocer and one of the pioneers of the 19th-century workers' and communist movements, Josef Moll. Moll fled to London for political work, returned to revolutionary Germany in 1848, and fell as a republican soldier in the Baden Uprising. And in Cologne, in the former Belgian barracks in the Osendorf district, I lived for a long time on a street named after the cigar factory worker and labor leader Peter Rezer, who was imprisoned for his early communist ideas in the 19th century.

As soon as I moved to Kalk, I immediately wondered who the man whose name was on every letter I received was. This time I was honored to live on a street named after Johan Klassen, a Cologne industrialist and liberal politician from the same era in which both Rezer and Mol were killed. The Prussian authorities wanted to imprison him too, but he escaped in time to the Belgian town of Verviers.

I conclude that in German addresses I am accompanied by the bizarre Middle Ages and political repression of the 19th century.

ENDLESS WALKS

There are no breathtaking parks here, but there are beautiful streets, interesting restaurants, a swimming pool, and a whole bunch of shops that emphasize the origin of the owner as a comparative advantage. Syrian, Bulgarian, Polish, Turkish, and Italian specialties. But there is also a Balkan bakery and a kebab shop. In a former classic German tavern with brown wooden tables, Asian cuisine has settled. On a completely quiet street, there is an inconspicuous Ethiopian restaurant. In fact, one of the best in the city. There is also unbeatable Lebanese grilled chicken.

And behind a railway overpass, in a street of cheap shops, there is a Turkish restaurant where they grill fish. I sometimes stop by. Ever since I ate fish in Izmir, I have come to trust the Turkish art of preparing this type of food. The woman who cooks the fish barely speaks German, but she is brilliant in the kitchen.

Once upon a time, the cafes with the best cappuccino in the area were in the hands of German bakeries and Italian bars. Times change. I sometimes sit in a Turkish place that is modern in the best sense of the word and has great coffee.

I remember once, while the guests were talking quietly, a completely dressed-up guy with a glassy look burst through the door. He walked straight to the restroom and locked himself inside while the waitress and owner managed to find their way. The landlady called her husband. He came about fifteen minutes later. He banged on the door for a long time. The dressed-up guy opened it – with his pants down. The owner convinced him to get dressed and go out. Afterwards, the owner sat down at my table to eat. He knows the guy. He goes around the surrounding bars in the morning and if he gets his hands on the restroom – he doesn't come out.

And that's this neighborhood. Homeless people, alcoholics and drug addicts are also part of the neighborhood. I see them during long walks on park benches, in front of supermarkets begging or simply frozen on the sidewalk, talking to themselves. The closer you get to the main street or the subway stations, the more of them there are. Some of them fix their fixed gaze on a point, invisible to ordinary mortals. I don't think they sold their souls to the devil, as angry citizens superficially conclude. They are just being ridden by demons. They see them, and we don't.

TENT OF GOD

There are some things I fell in love with at first sight. A park that was built on a former cemetery. A woman on a bench reading a book. She thinks she's alone, but she's surrounded by so many dead people.

The nearby former monastery has been converted into a settlement for refugees, people with special needs and citizens. The monastery church is a cultural center.

Life wills it that way.

The Poor Clares, the female counterpart to the male Franciscan order, were at home here. But the nuns are no more. Above the portal of the monastery church stands a Latin inscription: Behold the tabernacle of God. Here is God's tabernacle. Revelation says that the New Jerusalem will be the eternal home of God's people. A heavenly tabernacle in eternity. I love the biblical promise that He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither will there be any more pain, for the former things have passed away.

So, on my walks in the countryside, metaphysical thoughts come to me, as I read the Latin names on the abandoned monastery churches. So I move on.

Opposite the Baobab African Association, an expensive Georgian restaurant. In the Orient Café – people of oriental appearance. Across the street, in the Humbolt Café, people I would swear were Germans. Passive peaceful coexistence.

If I take a walk the other way, to the north, then to the west, I see former factories, converted into halls for various events, from climbing walls to flea markets. This area was once an industrial anthill. All that remains is a few lonely chimneys. The last upright symbols of a world that has already passed away.

The surrounding streets used to be dominated by Turkish and Italian shops. Now Arab barbershops have sprung up like mushrooms after the rain. They are always full of people. It reminds me of my Bosnian childhood. At Nemanja's barbershop, people happily waited their turn, chatting about anything and everything. It helps me now understand the culture of local Arab barbershops. Unlike regular hair salons, only men go to barbershops.

MUSTAFA KNOWS BELGRADE

My hairdresser is called Mustafa. He spent 12 days in Belgrade in 2015. He is not from Syria, but he joined the Arab wave. He says he is from the Emirates. He liked Belgrade. But it was expensive. And there was no work. As Mustafa tells his story, a pleasant voice pours out of the barbershop's loudspeakers – a melodious recitation of Quranic verses. The barber has been in Germany for ten years. He doesn't speak German very fluently. But he can cut hair.

Musti, as his friends call him, is one of many who have started a new life in this historic working-class neighborhood.

In the last elections in this part of town, every third person voted for the Left. And only every tenth voted for the AfD. Left-wing parties have two-thirds of the support. There's not much room here for capitalizing on hatred.

I always return from my walk by a different route. I've seen all sorts of people along the way. A girl in a hijab on a scooter – riding and humming. An old woman with a heavy gaze trying to reach a juice on the top shelf of a supermarket. A young man with hundreds of tattoos on his arms, neck and face. People at a kiosk in T-shirts and tracksuits on a chilly day, swaying to the rhythm of Turkish turbo folk. A black woman who uses her baby stroller as a combat vehicle to get through the crowd. A punk girl who works as a cashier in a grocery store. People who talk loudly in a hiccup language, talking on the phone with their family while walking, somewhere on another continent.

The smells of marijuana, garlic in olive oil, bristles and cologne, the smell of spring in my neighborhood.

I finally climb those 37 steps and go out onto the balcony. I wish the treetops, which are slowly merging with the dusk, good night. She whispers something gently to me in one of the hundred or so languages ​​in the neighborhood. I don't understand her, but I understand what she's trying to say.