Berlin and the Outsider Identity

The other night, I found myself at a salon in someone's apartment in Berlin. There were performances, conversations, and a steady stream of people arriving throughout the evening. As the apartment filled, it quickly moved beyond my comfort level. Since my brain injury, I have a much lower threshold for stimulation, and after a while, I needed to step outside.

What happened next became more interesting than the event itself.

A small group formed on the sidewalk. Maybe ten people. I knew only one person—the friend who invited me. I had briefly met one of the performers, but everyone else was a stranger. We sat in a circle rather than splintering into separate conversations. It felt easy. People introduced themselves. They talked about where they came from and how they ended up in Berlin.

What struck me wasn't how much people talked about Berlin. It was how much they talked about the places they had left. Again and again, I heard variations of the same story. People described feeling out of place in their hometowns, countries, communities, or families. Some felt misunderstood. Some felt constrained. Some felt unsafe. Others simply felt like they could not become who they wanted to be where they were.

The common thread was not that Berlin was wonderful. The common thread was that elsewhere had not worked.

Listening to everyone, I found myself wondering whether Berlin is, in some ways, a city of outsiders. Not outsiders in a negative sense, but outsiders in the sense of people who have spent much of their lives feeling slightly disconnected from the places they came from. That thought stayed with me because I recognize it in myself.

Even while running a community space in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and spending years building relationships through art and cultural organizing, I often felt on the periphery. Part of that may have come from not following a traditional path into the art world. Part of it may have come from having little interest in playing the game that often accompanies artistic careers. I spent much of my life traveling, moving between communities, and being invited into spaces that were not quite my own. In some ways, that felt safer. If I were already an outsider, being on the edge was to be expected. There was something comforting about choosing that role rather than having it chosen for me.

But sitting outside that apartment in Berlin, I started wondering about something else. What happens when a city becomes a gathering place for people who identify as outsiders? Do we eventually move beyond that identity, or do we simply become outsiders together?

Berlin has long been imagined as a place of liberation—a city where people come to reinvent themselves, experiment, live differently, and find the freedom they couldn't find elsewhere. But I wonder whether liberation can also become another way of avoiding discomfort. Berlin's culture has long been associated with nightlife, clubs, experimentation, and altered states.

Those spaces can absolutely be places of healing, joy, creativity, and transformation. But I also wonder whether they can sometimes become ways of moving around discomfort rather than through it.

Lately, I've been wondering if community is built differently than we imagine. Maybe gathering people who all identify as outsiders isn't enough. Maybe sharing the same wound doesn't automatically give us the capacity to build intimacy. Perhaps belonging isn't created by finding people who are just like us. Perhaps it begins when we become willing to remain present with one another in our discomfort instead of trying to escape it.

These thoughts have led me to other questions. What happens when a city that once welcomed outsiders becomes increasingly shaped by rising costs, bureaucracy, and the pressures of capitalism? What happens when the refuge itself begins demanding that we adapt to systems that many of us came here hoping to leave behind? How does that affect our sense of self? How does it affect our creativity? How does it affect the soul of a person who has spent a lifetime searching for a place where they could finally exhale?

And what happens if Berlin no longer feels like an easy refuge? Around the world, we are watching political climates become more conservative and, for many people, less safe. What happens when it feels like there isn't another place to go? If the identity of being an outsider no longer rests on choosing Berlin, what does it become?

I also find myself wondering about social media. We have never had easier access to one another. We can find people who share our interests, identities, politics, and experiences within seconds. Yet many of us report feeling lonelier than ever. Has the ease of connection altered our understanding of what connection actually is? Has it made us less willing to sit with the slow, awkward, sometimes uncomfortable work of building relationships? If belonging requires vulnerability, patience, conflict, and discomfort, what happens when we become accustomed to forms of connection that ask so little of us?

I don't have answers to these questions. They are simply the questions I am carrying. I'd love to hear what others think.

This is the first essay in an ongoing series exploring belonging, outsider identity, and community in Berlin. Over the coming months, I hope to speak with artists, immigrants, longtime Berliners, newcomers, and others whose experiences complicate or challenge my own. I don't expect to arrive at one answer. I'm more interested in asking better questions. If this essay resonates with you, I'd love to hear your story, send an email to laura.arena@mac.com