September 16, 2025
The last twenty-four or so hours have been a total mess. I’m walking around downtown Cologne, exhausted from only five hours of sleep. My legs are heavy, the sky is gray, and it’s a warmish autumn day but the breeze is biting at my skin. I stroll into a REWE to get something to eat, but when I look at the shelves all I see is a jumble of colors. I walk in circles through the aisle but somehow make it out with a sandwich in my hand, headed to R’s apartment.
I finally have my Fiktionsbescheinigung. I can travel and work.
The immigration office sent me a vague and unhelpful email yesterday morning, saying I should come in at 10 AM the next day (today). I was still in the south of the country with my boyfriend and his family, and ended up deciding to take a last-minute train back to Cologne. The signs flashing past became more and more familiar and suddenly I was back home, walking through the door of my apartment, confusing my roommates.
Seeing Thing 1 and Thing 2 again made me smile and giggle and I decided: No, I won’t move out! The email from the immigration office, for various indirect financial reasons, incited a deep and painful existential crisis in me and I started to question how sustainable it really is to keep living in Germany. But I looked at some different futures, and I liked what I saw. And I looked back at the past and I saw that a lot of the stuff that is causing me pain and choking me is, unfortunately, my own fault.
Dəž dəž dəž, the trains are rattling in and out of Stuttgart Central Station. I’m standing with my boyfriend on the platform waiting for the regional which will lead us to his beautiful crooked half-timbered hometown.
TIGERLILY: I realized why I’ve been so moody this morning…
TEENEY: Oh?
TIGERLILY: I forgot to pack something and it’s been really messing with me subconsciously [starts to smirk]
TEENEY: What did you forget, was it important?
TIGERLILY: Yes, very... I forgot my laugh glasses! [brings his hands in two O-shapes up to his eyes and looks through them] Ahahahahahaha! Ahahaha! Ahahahahahahahaha! Ahahahaha!
“Hellooo! It’s me again, and now I’d like to show you all the next laugh exercise, namely: When the world just seems so, so, uh, gray and nothing feels nice anymore, you can just put on a pair of laugh glasses, and you’ll always have them with you, and then you can just start laughing. [hahaha] And it also comes as a monocle. [hahaha] And as a telescope! [hahaha] Doesn’t the world look so much nicer? Have fun!”
What serendipity! Since I had to go back to Cologne I could bring my laugh glasses with me to the Alps after all. I showed my pair to Thing 1 and Thing 2 and found out that they had their own pairs! We all stood there in the hallway giggling with our laugh glasses on. That was when I decided not to move out. Through my extra-strength lenses the whole situation looked a little different. There was a bit of clarity. I connected the moment several hours earlier where I hid in a closet and called my brother & confidant asking for life advice to my general state when I’m with You, which is hiding in some sort of closet. There are lots of closets, even if the main one isn’t around any more.
But I digress. I love You a lot. I believe that You are beautiful and meaningful and a worthy companion. Successfully moving to Germany after years of planning was, in the end and as I always expected, one of the best things I could have done for our relationship. I want to be Here, but for every good week we spend together there is another where I walk into Monday feeling like I have been pummeled with a baseball bat. How do I get it to stop? My gut is telling me exactly what the right next steps are, how do I take them? How do I carry my weight here?
***
The next morning I woke up like a disgusting bachelor. Minutes until you have to leave the house, brush yer teeth and put on yesterday’s clothes and grab a croissant on the way to the bus stop. The way to the immigration office is almost exactly the way to the public library. But Tuesday morning, none of the shops are open and no one’s on the street.
I walked into the immigration office, which was not an ominous looming castle on a cliff surrounded by lightning and screeching bats, but mostly just an ugly-ass office building. The security people gave me a number, I went up to the fourth floor, the next security person led me through the ugly office hallways, the next security person led me through more hallways, and so on and so on and at some point they led me to my case worker, Frau Wolke, who I only knew from a signature on an email. She said “Hello” as I came in and I said it back, but she was still arguing with another student. So I had to wait some more. But then I was back in the office, finally, finally, finally.
She said “Hello,” and I said “Hello again,” and she said “Herr Tigerlily, your appointment was at 10 AM, and now it’s almost eleven, do you want to explain what’s going on here?” She had a friendly tone and a smile on her face but the look in her eyes was vicious. The facial expression I made in response was mostly one of disbelief and confusion, but I think it might have come across as genuine hurt. I explained that I arrived quite early, actually, and the security led me to the waiting room, also that nowhere in the email she sent me did it say that I have an actual face-to-face appointment, and what’s more I’ve never even been in the Cologne immigration office before. It’s Tuesday morning and the sun is shining and I’ve been trying to get this piece of paper for three months, Frau Wolke, you’re not getting my ass today. She seemed to genuinely feel bad and apologized for the miscommunication. The rest of the appointment went just fine and I was able to leave with a Fiktionsbescheinigung in my hand, with the box checked saying that I’m allowed to leave and re-enter the country, and an extra comment saying that I’m allowed to work.
Now, after my appointment, wandering around the city, I feel so exhausted. I feel similarly to the formerly possessed right after an exorcism, I think. There is hardly a soul in my body, it feels like my eyes are going to close at any moment and I’ll start sleepwalking. I stroll into a REWE to get something to eat, but when I look at the shelves all I see is a jumble of colors. I look at some sort of milk and it reminds me of the white sweater Frau Wolke had on. We live in the same city! She had Cologne paraphernalia all around her office. What do I do if I see her in the club?!
***
Cologne is a village, as they say. When R and I pick up a shelf from eBay later that day, it’s a university acquaintance who opens the door. We walk down the street back to the north of Ehrenfeld until we reach the Portuguese café. I hold open the door for R, who strolls on in carrying the (massive) wooden shelf over her shoulder. She says, “hello,” and the barista looks at the two of us and looks up and down at the shelf before saying hi back.
EHRENFELD,
the northwestern borough of Cologne.
Vibe: gentrification, street art; the place to be
Prime destination to eat lentil soup or hang out in a bar wearing hipster clothes.
When the barista comes into the back of the café to bring us our pastéis de nata, she asks, “So what even is that?” “It’s a shelf!” we explain. The barista nods. “It’s cute!”
R must be my closest friend in Cologne. She teaches me a lot about life, usually indirectly, just by existing, or carrying a big wooden shelf into the café you're patronizing. Sometimes you just meet friends of friends who become best friends. No one is trying to do anything or befriend anyone, it just works out perfectly that way. What joy! We talk about our life and worries and hopes and what our next steps are, for R in general, and for me once I’m back from vacation. When we go back to the GHH [R’s apartment] S and T are both there. S is enthused that we both have buzz cuts now, T is a bit horrified when I mention to him that I’m taking a ten-hour train ride tomorrow to join up with boyfriend & co. on vacation. I, however, am just excited to look out the window.
I eat falafel for dinner so as not to buy new groceries that will rot for two weeks while I’m gone. I spend way too much money on food for the aforementioned ten-hour train ride tomorrow. I read and call my family and kill time before I have to go to bed and wake up very, very early. Certainly am I playing with fire and definitely does my life hang in a very delicate cohesion which could unravel at any moment if I make a stupid decision. Or, more likely, if I keep not making smart decisions. But a main problem has been solved, a thorn in my side & ass gently removed. I have the motivation to keep moving forward but for now I will take another moment to do my best to breathe.
---
September 15, 2025 :: 22:24:39 ::
I am sitting in the intercity train back from Baden-Württemberg i.e. Swabia. The place names on the station signs flashing passed have become more and more familiar. In a quarter hour now we’ll be in Bonn (derived from the Latin word for “good,” it is a good city, where I first really lived in Germany, and I still miss it). It gets dark at 8 PM again, I can’t even look out the window and watch the landscape drift by. Everything is a bundle of shadows.
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September 9, 2025 :: 13:57:04 ::
It’s September Ninth of the year Two Thousand Twenty-Five.
The days are getting shorter,
the air is cooling down,
the sun is losing strength,
the plants are letting out their last seeds and the baby birds are all grown up.
When I finally finished my term paper from hell, I opened my window and stuck my head out into the air. I listened to the breeze mix with the trains rattling across the embankment and the soccer teams grunting in the distance. I felt like a sponge, soaking up the world that I had blocked out for the last six weeks. Everything felt possible again.
My phone is 100% fried. In the last five years of using it I thought quite often about backing up my data, but it never happened. The idea had come to me to finally get around to it after turning in the paper, but I don’t think that was actually realistic.
Life surviving with my boyfriend’s old phone without any social media has taught me a lot. In the last days of editing my paper, I would put my phone to the side and tell myself I could only check it after proofreading two or three or however many more pages. When I held myself to it and pulled my phone back out I always expected some sort of message or notification to entertain me, but there was nothing. In many ways life seems to be a sort of machine I have to put tokens in to get things back out, but I have the time and energy to do that again.
I have the time and energy to do many things, but rotting is not one of them. Or mostly I just don’t have the patience. I still have no documentation to prove my legal residence in Germany, which sounds scary, and I’m phrasing it in a slightly dramatic way so that you’ll have sympathy with me, but actually this kind of situation is not urgent and not uncommon in Germany nowadays. I’m allowed to stay in Germany because I’ve already applied to extend my student visa, but if I leave the country that means there’s a very large chance I won’t be able to get back in. I’m supposed to go on a cross-Europe roadtrip vacation with my boyfriend and his (our) other friends this coming Monday. But it’s not likely that that’s actually going to happen. This temporary document I’m waiting on could come tomorrow, or the next day, or the Friday before we take our trip down to the south. Or it could just never come, or it comes a bit late and I crowdfund an eight-hour train ticket down to the Julian Alps.
I cannot tell you how many times a lovely memory with friends, a weekend trip, or an adventure planned months in advance, has been chewed out of my life by the slow gnawing teeth of German bureaucracy. Obviously there are more important things than vacation, like working to get an income and support myself, which I also can’t do because I don’t have any documents and therefore no legal permission to. But there are two things that comfort me:
(1) Even if I don’t see my boyfriend for two weeks, we spent a lovely weekend together for his birthday. I made him two T-shirts and a crossword puzzle and baked caramel almond muffins (or cupcakes, depending on how you look at it). All of his friends were in town and we spent a lot of wonderful time together, walking through parks in the south of the city and celebrating at a joint birthday party with another friend. These are the friends I was supposed to see for the next two-ish weeks. If (when) it doesn’t work out, I know I’ll at least see them in November, or maybe sooner if we plan some other visit before then. And I’m spending time with my boyfriend in the days before the trip anyway.
(2) If I’m left alone in the city with nothing to do, I already know exactly what I want to do and explore. I can volunteer, finally set up language exchanges, keep working on the other papers I have to add to my portfolio and get ready for my thesis in advance. My degree is almost done and the world is mine(?). Applying for internships without the ability to actually work might be kind of weird, but I can still make some progress there, too.
This is not the first time I’ve been stranded in this country without proper documentation. I’m just glad I have friends and a support system this time around.
***
Yesterday I saw Q and R again. We met up in one of the nice neighborhoods in Kalk. I got to take the S-Bahn and watch the city fly by in the dusk (the sun is already setting at 8 PM again). This was the first time I’ve been in a big regional train in a while and I noticed (a) they go way faster than the metro cars! (b) the voices announcing the stations in English have changed to an American accent. I got out at the grimy grimy grimy station that I know and love.
KALK,
the eastern borough of Cologne.
Vibe: multicultural post-industry land
Prime destination to eat msemmen or suffer the Ausl*nderamt (pardon my language).
But today I’m doing neither of those things, I’m walking down the lovely, tree-lined street that I associate with the protests I’ve walked with before until I find the right house. When I’m reunited with Q and R we talk and giggle and talk about important life stuff. Art project of the day: painting black shirts with bleach. It works pretty well and astonishingly fast. My shirt has the logo of an imaginary band named SUTURE. The other side (not pictured) is full of my bleach “calligraphy.”
I stayed there so late I didn’t realize I might not make the last train home, so I ran out of Q’s apartment and caught the bus that led me to the metro stop where I waited outside in the drizzling rain for twenty minutes. I sincerely missed those nighttime city moments, just me alone with the buzzing lights and dark buildings on the horizon.