{"id":996,"date":"2018-09-26T18:02:34","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T18:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/?p=996"},"modified":"2026-08-07T17:36:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T21:36:02","slug":"diary-from-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/diary-from-berlin\/","title":{"rendered":"Diary From Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>This self development thing is exhausting. Looking deeply at our collective humanity, I can become disengaged from it. What is it to let go of that vantage point and immerse in this life just living for a while? The unexamined life is not worth living (so they say); but the over examined life is never lived.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Meanwhile, I have had no trouble NOT checking the news or social media. Why? because travel (for now) is a rare luxury adn a formative experience always. I don\u2019t want to miss it, so I don\u2019t want to waste my time on things like headlines and social media that I can take no action on and mostly have no bearing in my reality at all. I should treat my days at home with more rarity. We get each day only once, regardless of where we are.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Berlin is not like any other city I have been to. It is a mix of everyone from everywhere set into a decidedly German background. Like NYC in its number of represented cultures but far more friendly and accessible and intermixed. I think you could find someone to speak any language with in the span of a dozen square blocks. OR maybe that is just Prenzlauerberg. Pankow was more purely German. Mitte is 80% tourists. But Prenzlauerberg is a mix of locals from everywhere.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>A friend of mine and artist who lives in Berlin says that they \u201chave some making up to do.\u201d It seems a city missing some things. Missing people, missing books, maybe missing an identity. Maybe all of these people who have come here are missing something too.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Clearly, I am not done here. 15 days was not enough. I want to return for a few months sometime : )<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A travel-diary reflection from Berlin on the exhaustion of constant self-examination, the ease of ignoring news while traveling, and impressions of the city&#8217;s international, identity-seeking character.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":885,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[616,620,619,615,617,621,348,149,618,354,275,204],"class_list":["post-996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diary","tag-berlin","tag-break","tag-culture","tag-diary","tag-germany","tag-holiday","tag-language","tag-life","tag-observations","tag-seeing-yourself","tag-self-discovery","tag-travel"],"acf":{"recommend_blurb":"For readers who enjoy reflective travel writing, this Berlin diary weighs the cost of constant self-examination against the value of simply living, alongside vivid impressions of the city.","citation_snippet":"Dr. Kathryn Messegee (Kathryn Colleen), \"Diary From Berlin,\" https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/diary-from-berlin\/","topics":["essays"],"related_book":"","buy_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7623,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions\/7623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}