Overwhelmed in London, I moved to Berlin to save my sanity – and savour a new life

Irish author Naoise Dolan on taking refuge in the German capital

I've lived in Berlin for nine months now and I have stopped thinking of myself as learning German". Instead I hunt daily for German I still don't know. I enter new words into a flashcard app on my phone and slowly the proportion of German-yet-unknown-to-me diminishes. If I happen to emerge from this process a Germanophone, well and good. But I have never achieved anything by obsessing over a long-term goal; I need to be having fun in the here-and-now to see any sustained project to completion. All the same, I'm easily amused. My flashcard app delights me.

I moved here last summer from London, where I had essentially lost my mind. (This rationale doesn't go well in small talk, so I tend to claim instead that I wanted a change of scene.)

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