"The field recording of a pedestrian crossing signal at Savignyplatz, Berlin, triggered immediately the memory of myself, in my twenties, living not far from Savignyplatz, learning to ride a bike as an adult. Terrified. Because I never had a bike as a child, my parents couldn’t afford one and where I grew up, bikes were for boys anyway."
Translation of the text in the piece:
Leaving the house, on Niebuhrstrasse, I turn right. I cross Leibnitz, Wieland and Schlüter. I reach Bleitreustrasse, turn left and keep going.
I've repeated the route to myself several times. Not to learn the names of the streets that cross mine, but to keep my mind occupied. And not to think about the atavistic fear that makes me feel a hole in my stomach and makes me tremble all over.
Because learning to ride a bike as an adult, at 25, is a frightening thing.
Once you're moving it's almost easy. But there's the beginning and the end, and there are the cars and the car doors, and the dogs and the children and the stones and the pavements and the traffic lights.
From Niebuhrstrasse to Savignyplatz. I just need to get to Savignyplatz, then I can get off and walk home, it's close, not even 500 metres.
Learning to ride a bike as an adult.
Because as a child I never had a bike. My parents wouldn't have had the money to buy me one, even if I'd asked. And a bike is something for boys anyway.
And then an aunt of mine, who worked as a housemaid, had brought along an old broken bike that her employers' children had thrown away. My father took it to the workshop where he worked, welded the fork and the bike was as good as new.
Boy's thing, that's just how it was. So: the bike belonged to my brother.
I used it only once, in the lane near the house, to try it out on my own. But then Giuseppe had come along, a couple of years older than me, and had told me not to be afraid and had held the saddle to help me keep my balance.
Two hours aren't enough to learn to ride a bike. But two hours are too many to spend alone with Giuseppe, and so when my mother found out she was very angry with me.
That was the first and only time I tried to ride a bicycle.
Now, many years later, I live in a city far from all the things that kept me bound.
Now I have my own bike and nobody can tell me what to do anymore.
But it's hard to learn to ride a bike at 25, when there's no one there to hold the saddle and tell you not to be afraid.
I just need to make it to Savignyplatz. Then I'll get off and push.
Pedestrian crossing in Savignyplatz, Berlin reimagined by Cristina Marras.
UK