This September marks fifteen years since I moved to Berlin.
Among the city’s residents there is a popular saying: only after living here for ten years do you „earn the right“ to say John F. Kennedy’s famous phrase Ich bin ein Berliner (I am a Berliner). Kennedy first spoke those words in West Berlin in 1963, two years after the Wall was built, at the height of the Cold War. Today, the phrase is not used with that historical weight but more lightly — often in casual introductions when people exchange names, professions, and origins.
Even so, the phrase captures something essential about Berlin: „integration“ here is not theory but everyday experience. What matters is not place of birth or native language, but that those who choose to live here share, beyond a common reality, core values of openness — despite the contradictions that come with every metropolis.
Berlin has always attracted a particular kind of crowd: not people who came only for career or money, but those who wanted to become part of this distinct local culture. That’s why ten years are seen as enough time to truly get to know the city and, in your own way, become „local.“
My own beginning was not easy. In September 2010 Greece had just entered its financial crisis. Here in Germany, I was confronted daily with the Greek-German hostility of that period, fueled by the Bild Zeitung and other mainstream media. And as beautiful as Berlin might look to a five-day tourist, it can feel harsh and unwelcoming to someone taking their first steps, especially without speaking German in that charged atmosphere.
The tool that helped me to connect with the city was its architecture and history. On aimless walks I sought out buildings I knew from my studies — a familiar habit for architects. One of them was the Turbine Factory (Turbinenhalle) of AEG in Moabit, designed by Peter Behrens in 1909. It is considered a landmark of the industrial era and a forerunner of modern architecture.
Behrens, who also designed the two buildings framing Alexanderplatz, was the first to lay the foundations of what would later be called „corporate identity“. His office was an early workshop of modernism, where young architects like Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier worked together — the three „giants“ who would later define 20th-century modern architecture. Just a few years later, Gropius and Mies would become central to the Bauhaus, and all together they would go on to shape the architectural legacy of the 20th century.
I still remember the moment I stood in front of that building. It wasn’t only its architectural value or the physical sensation of being face to face with such an icon. It was above all the abstract promise I felt from Berlin — a city-symbol of 20th-century Europe — that by staying here I would discover many more such buildings over time. That first encounter with the Turbine Factory became my first step of familiarity with the city, and that promise the „fuel“ to carry on despite the difficulties of the early days.
After fifteen years, I now know Berlin in depth and have also earned the right to say „ich bin ein Berliner“. Yet this does not erase my Athenian identity — on the contrary. As an old German saying attributed to Goethe puts it, „by knowing a foreign language, you understand your own better.“ The same applies to cities: by understanding a new city — in my case, Berlin — you also come to understand your own — Athens — more deeply.
And in the end, cities don’t ask us to give up one identity for another. They allow us to build new ones, where each enriches the other. That double perspective — seeing the world through more than one lens — is the greatest gift of my years here.