I was eight years old when my parents bought me a bicycle in East Berlin. It was blue and foldable; we took it with us on the train to Czechoslovakia. It’s still in my grandfather’s house – he was half German, which I didn’t know at the time. He never spoke German to me (though that doesn’t mean I never heard him speak it).
Later, I went to Berlin as a journalist and lived there for a year. It was thanks to Berlin that I found the courage to ask my father and uncle about things that were otherwise kept quiet. My uncle fetched an old album from its hiding place and, for the first time, I saw photos of my grandfather from his youth. In the pictures where he was wearing a uniform, the Wehrmacht insignia had been cut out. Years of research and questions began. All of this eventually culminated in Geteiltes Haus.
And now, suddenly, I’m back here in Berlin – neither as a child nor as a journalist. In the mornings, in the LCB kitchen, I bump into writers from all over the world. Still half-asleep (some of us still in our pyjamas), we rush to the coffee machine and gently chat about our work. We don’t want to make a big fuss of it. Are you writing at the moment? Or aren’t you? Do you have a room with a view of the lake – or of the park?
I look out at the lake. The wind is picking up; a storm is brewing. I’m having second thoughts. I’m writing. Yesterday, when I wasn’t feeling well, a hooded crow flew up to me. It was the first time she’d discovered my room; until then, I’d always fed her down in the park (they say these birds have an excellent memory for faces).
It cawed and demanded peanuts. Usually it cracks them open straight away and eats them on the spot; but this time it stuffed the uncracked nuts into its beak and strutted across the balcony like a ballerina. I sat down at the table again and wrote all afternoon. The doubts were gone.
Alice Horáčková, Berlin-Wannsee, May 2026
The article originally appeared in the Berliner Zeitung.