it's a city, but it still gets dark at night

that's something I miss from Berlin. It's funny - I was actually a little tentative sometimes riding from Friedrichshain to Neukolln in the middle of the night ... down Schlesiche Str. past Treptower Park* and down Elsen Str. turning into Inn Str. and onto Stuttgarter Str... through the deserted streets and carrying my heavy bike over a tiny footbridge above the canal with scant, dim lighting obscured by endless bushes. And, of course, some people told me not to ride alongside the strange, still pool in Gorlitzer Park at night.

But now I am back in Manhattan, midtown Manhattan, and I long for respite from the neon, the ads, the unrelenting street lamps, the light when I am riding home at night.

I am very fortunate and eternally grateful for the circumstances that have led to my living in midtown, but especially after the summer in beautiful Berlin. I am quite ready to move to somewhere in Brooklyn where a tree grows and someone remembers to flip the switch at night.

*I just googled Treptower Park and found this fascinating Wikipedia entry on the Soviet War Memorial in the Park (something I don't believe I've ever seen because it was almost always nighttime when I rode past the park and I never explored the park itself during the day).

"Women of the (East) German wartime generation still refer to [the memorial] as the "tomb of the unknown rapist" due to the mass rapes by Red Army soldiers in the years following 1945."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_War_Memorial_(Treptower_Park)