When I arrived in Berlin seven days earlier, I couldn’t have predicted how this trip would unfold. I came to Germany with Sam, meeting friends in a city I as not particularly curious about. I left having fallen in love.
This wasn’t just a vacation—it became a meditation on 25 years of living as an openly gay man. Without planning it, we stumbled into gay coffee shops like Romeo und Romeo, reminders of spaces that used to exist in cities across the US but have largely disappeared. We visited the Memorial to the First Homosexual Emancipation Movement, honoring Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneer I first learned about in college from a friend’s history newsletter. We toured Sanssouci Palace, home of Frederick the Great—a place so gloriously queer that I kept thinking, “this guy is such a queen.” We stood before the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism. We drank at Woof, partied at Prinzknecht and Laboratory, and had quiet cocktails at Hafen.
Each moment offered an unexpected lens to reflect on my own journey—the friends and lovers, the history we share, the spaces we’ve lost and the ones we’ve fought to keep. By pure coincidence, this trip bracketed the 25th anniversary of my coming out. Germany gave me the gift of perspective on that quarter century.
This trip was also about discovering that Berlin is a city that works—where public transit works well, where bakers are good at their craft and affordable to most, where people are genuinely kind. It was about walking through the manicured trails of Tiergarten, floating down the Spree River, and climbing the Reichstag dome with its brilliant mirrored cone directing light into the chamber below.
And yes, I loved the food. I loved currywurst—Witty’s was excellent, Tom’s was even better. I ate exceptionally well for seven straight days. But what truly blew me away was the wine. Those German Rieslings and the thoughtful pairings at Landwert? Extraordinary. The Michelin-starred meal at Bieberbau, the simple perfection of eggs on incredible German bread at Neumanns, the homey warmth of Elefant in our gay neighborhood—every meal was memorable.
What made this trip truly special was experiencing all of it with my husband of 14 years. We bakery-hopped on our last morning. We shared currywurst and döner kebabs. We stood together at memorials honoring our history. We parties at bars and clubs.
Berlin exceeded every expectation I didn’t have. And at 25 years out, standing in a city that holds so much of our shared queer history, I’m grateful for the unexpected journey that brought me there.