We left Berlin early, the S-Bahn platforms still half asleep and the sky that particular grey that never quite decides what it wants to do. The train slid west and the city thinned out almost without my noticing: warehouses, allotments, then fields, then low hills. At some point the graffiti gave way to vineyards and windbreaks, and I realised I hadn’t checked my phone in an hour. The distance between Berlin and here isn’t huge on a map, but it felt longer with every tunnel and valley, as if the city were being gently folded away behind us.
Out here in Rheinland-Pfalz, close to the French border, our days settled quickly into a quiet pattern. We woke to mist sitting low over the fields, pulled on the same walking clothes, and followed forest paths that smelt of damp earth and pine. Villages appeared and disappeared: a handful of houses, a bakery with two tables, shutters half closed in the afternoon. Walking all day feels different from wandering a city park; there are no sirens edging the silence, no distant bass line, just the occasional car on a lane and the rustle of something small deciding we are not a threat.
After a couple of days I started to notice which parts of Berlin I missed and which I didn’t. I missed the easy promise of a late coffee, U-Bahn rumble underfoot, the sense that there is always one more corner to explore. I did not miss the constant calculation of time and distance, the low-level pressure to be somewhere else. Here, the only decisions were which path to take and whether to turn back before the rain. The absence of choice is its own kind of luxury, even if I found myself mentally mapping the Ringbahn onto these forest tracks out of habit.
We head back to Berlin tomorrow. I’m already picturing the familiar clatter of the tram and the particular way Karl-Marx-Allee holds the evening light, but I can feel something quieter under that anticipation. A small recalibration. A reminder that there are lanes where nothing much happens, and that this is a feature, not a flaw. I don’t imagine I’ll keep the countryside’s stillness intact for long once I’m back in the city, but for now it’s there, like a stone in my pocket, solid and reassuring, something I can reach for when the next week starts to speed up.
daily musings 