Greetings From The Sky

I have just left Doha Airpot and on the way to Capetown. A 9.5 hour flight, that is completely full, almost 95% of the passengers are white.
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Yesterday was my last day as a resident of Berlin. I’ve just given up my apartment and handed off the keys before heading to the airport to catch my flight to Cape Town.

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Here are some pictures from the final days in the apartment.

I’ve sold the living shit out of my apartment. Literally everything went. The things I couldn’t sell, I either put out on the street—which is like throwing things into a black hole; everything disappears within 15 minutes—or I just threw them away.

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It was emotionally quite hard to reduce my life to five boxes and a backpack. It raised the question: is a person defined by the stuff they own? For me, the answer was clearly yes. All the things we put in our homes are reflections of our personalities. We want to show them to others, talk about what drove us to buy this or that, tell stories through them. Selling most of my things—and realizing how emotionally draining it was—made me understand how comforting it is to be attached to physical objects. Sitting on the couch I bought, looking at a poster I personally picked, sleeping on my own bed—these gave me the feeling that I belonged. But then I realized: this is a fragile way of living.

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How am I supposed to feel peace inside if it depends on having my stuff around me?

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There’s a book called Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It summarizes this perfectly. Our inner peace should come from within, not from physical objects that, at the end of the day, are just a pile of sand. That inner peace is built by investing in ourselves—through deep social connections, by listening to our own soul, by discovering what the world wants from us, what is waiting to be accomplished through us.

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One thought keeps coming back to my mind, a sentence I read in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book Be Useful:

“You can’t do it on your own.”

And that couldn’t be more true. Having people around you, listening to your story, giving you feedback, meeting for a coffee, asking how you’re doing—those were the most valuable things for me. It completely fulfilled Arnold’s prophecy: you can’t do it on your own.

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So to all those who were there for me—many of you are reading this newsletter—thank you. You are the best.

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There are two more topics I want to talk about: painting and troubleshooting during travels.

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Painting:

I painted three of my walls navy blue after moving into the apartment. That was a stupid decision. I did it in a moment of euphoria—finally having my own place and being free to make my own decisions without asking for anyone’s opinion. One of those decisions was painting several walls navy blue. Doing that in an already dark, ground-floor apartment where the sun only shines on the terrace (and never enters the apartment) was… not bright. It became even more stupid when I had to paint everything white again before handing over the apartment, because the new tenant (understandably) didn’t like the navy blue. It took a whole week to paint the walls back to white. Here are some pictures of the before and after:

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look at that..can you imagine this was navy blue before

Troubleshooting during travels:

In my baggage, I basically have a small pharmacy. I’m not looking forward to going through customs, because I’ve got a lot of medication with me. That’s part of being a doctor—and losing the power I had in Europe, where I could get what I wanted without being questioned. Every doctor has a worst-case scenario in mind when traveling. For some, it’s a heart attack. For me, it’s an anaphylactic shock. So I’ve got prednisolone, cetirizine, and an adrenaline pen with me—just in case. I also packed minoxidil, antibiotics (azithromycin and doxycycline), ibuprofen, and Aspirin Complex. I feel pretty covered for most things. I even have a customs certificate for the meds—but still, I’m not sure how they’ll react when they see how much I’m carrying.

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I’m arriving tomorrow morning in Cape Town, so I’ll keep you posted in the next newsletter.

16.04.2025