Linden-Limmer - Hannover (Niedersachsen, Germany)
Why is it so ugly here? Or to put it differently: Why do I perceive it as so ugly? It's not just a question of aesthetics or perception – there's also something dreamlike in it. A longing for a world full of beauty that doesn't exist this way. Not here, at least. I need light and colors, nature around me. I need peace. What I get is gray.
Gray facades. Gray streets. Gray souls. People who don't smile, who ignore you. The gray even lies on the meadows and leaves of trees and shrubs. It hangs in the sky and floats through the air. "But this tree is green," she says. Yet I don't see it. It's as if I were blind to the colors of the world. No, the world here is without colors. Only gray remains.
It doesn't take long, not even a day, for me to realize – this area here, this city will definitely not become our home. It begins with the arrival, which dampens any positive feelings because it's as unpleasant this time as it rarely is. We stand in front of the door and don't know what to do. No one is there to receive us, to open the door for us, to show us the way. After a phone call follows long waiting. Time stretches to 90 minutes before we're finally allowed inside.
But inside, no welcome awaits us either. A refrigerator filled to capacity, missing towels and bed linens. Here something that sticks to the floor, there furniture with stains and dust. The first warning signs of gray that – no matter how much you scrub with a cloth – remains and penetrates unnoticed into the soul, where it settles over it like a greasy film. Then the muffled banging from the apartment above and an invisible stench of cigarettes that drifts in through the open window. Even more gray.
In this city, gray is more present than all other colors. And this despite the fact that hardly a wall is spared from graffiti. These colors are just variants of gray. My soul aches, it screams, because I didn't expect the beginning of a 28-day cycle like this. But I have to endure it somehow. But how? How can I possibly find a way to survive this?
Why is it so ugly here? Or to put it differently: Why do I perceive it as so ugly? It's not just a question of aesthetics or perception – there's also something dreamlike in it. A longing for a world full of beauty that doesn't exist this way. Not here, at least. I need light and colors, nature around me. I need peace. What I get is gray.
Gray facades. Gray streets. Gray souls. People who don't smile, who ignore you. The gray even lies on the meadows and leaves of trees and shrubs. It hangs in the sky and floats through the air. "But this tree is green," she says. Yet I don't see it. It's as if I were blind to the colors of the world. No, the world here is without colors. Only gray remains.
It doesn't take long, not even a day, for me to realize – this area here, this city will definitely not become our home. It begins with the arrival, which dampens any positive feelings because it's as unpleasant this time as it rarely is. We stand in front of the door and don't know what to do. No one is there to receive us, to open the door for us, to show us the way. After a phone call follows long waiting. Time stretches to 90 minutes before we're finally allowed inside.
But inside, no welcome awaits us either. A refrigerator filled to capacity, missing towels and bed linens. Here something that sticks to the floor, there furniture with stains and dust. The first warning signs of gray that – no matter how much you scrub with a cloth – remains and penetrates unnoticed into the soul, where it settles over it like a greasy film. Then the muffled banging from the apartment above and an invisible stench of cigarettes that drifts in through the open window. Even more gray.
In this city, gray is more present than all other colors. And this despite the fact that hardly a wall is spared from graffiti. These colors are just variants of gray. My soul aches, it screams, because I didn't expect the beginning of a 28-day cycle like this. But I have to endure it somehow. But how? How can I possibly find a way to survive this?