City B's winter

Berlin is snowing. It's my third day in Wedding. I'm sitting against the heater by the studio's big window, watching people pass by on the street. Across from me, a towering red-brick church stands in contrast to the pale, bright snow. Its color is deepened by the cold.

The studio faces the street like a shopfront, and people are always passing by. I found it interesting to see nobody is wandering or strolling. You can sense the determination in their steps. Each move pulled forward by the sheer will to arrive.

And then the snow comes, making people more aware of their movements. Some slow down, careful with each step, or stop to take in the fresh view of white-covered streets with phones. Others walk even faster, as if trying to outrun the cold.

I was telling my friends that Berlin feels so much livelier than The Netherlands. There's a restless energy here, something absorbing, and I feel myself being drawn into it.

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I'm staying in an old, grand building, its thick walls that hold the weight of time. But the soundproofing is thin. Every morning, I wake up to the sound of my neighbors' footsteps (I'm so used to living in quiet rooms!). But in a way, it's good that I got forced to sync with the city's rhythm, letting my body adjust to its pulse.

Inside, the studio is full of textures. Mottled concrete walls, peeling plaster. An old Persian carpet, so large it almost swallows the floor. Vintage wooden tables, their surfaces traced with the rings of past cups and dishes. I love how the space is furnished—each piece seems carefully chosen from flea markets, mismatched yet harmonious, carrying fragments of different times.

There's something intimate about living in a place so meticulously arranged, yet inherently transient. This is an atelier, a temporary stop for visitors to the city. People come and go, but the furniture is so old, its surface so worn, that all imprints blend into time itself—you can hardly tell which are recent and which have been left behind by past visitors. I love interacting with these traces, just by sitting, observing, probing the details, waiting to uncover something interesting. It feels like walking through an exhibition, one not curated to be seen, but shaped by the quiet preferences of those who have lived here. The presence of past inhabitants lingers in the worn furniture, in the way things are arranged and rearranged, tickling my imagination.

I think that's what makes doing a residency special. It creates fleeting, anonymous connections between temporary inhabitants, stitched together by time and place. And there's something beautiful in that impermanence, in knowing that I, too, will leave a trace before I go.

My playlist shuffles to a song “A都市の秋” (City A's autumn) by a Japanese band named Lamp. What does “A” stand for? Amsterdam? And now, here we are in, City B's winter.