This is the fourth apartment I have lived in since moving to Berlin in September. It might not be my last before I leave for the summer on June 21st.

You will recall that I had two more apartments to my name before I even landed in Berlin. You will recall that in December I moved to a bigger, prettier, more affordable place, which I shared with my classmate and friend.

In late April, just a few weeks before I was due to move out, we woke up to raw sewage in the bathtub and ominous gurgling from the drains. Soaring right over all the gory details, we lived without a functional bathroom for three days before the plumber came and “solved the problem.”

Three weeks later, the day I had originally planned to move out, it happened again. This time, it was much, much worse, the contents of every toilet in the building repeatedly gushing out over our bathroom floor and into the hallway, and even through the floor into the high-end lycra bike apparel store below. When the emergency plumber arrived at 11pm that night, he took one look at the bathroom and said, and I quote,

“Scheiße. Scheiße! Fuck. Scheiße!”

When the regularly-scheduled plumber came the next morning, he said the same thing. Word for word.

I moved out.

I moved into the apartment of some friends who are out of town for a couple of months. As I followed the drama and clean-up of the old apartment via the text thread, I reveled in my luxurious access to a clean and working bathroom.

Then I did a load of laundry.

The shower and bathtub filled slowly with dingy water as the machine spun.

The plumber who came to address this problem did not curse, but he did lie down on his stomach to peer into dark holes and snake cameras down drains and mutter Germanly before telling the landlords, on video at 2am their time in order to translate for us, that to fix the problem they’d have to drill a hole in the bathroom wall.

I bought €5 flip flops and started showering at the studio.

The bathroom at the old place flooded a third time.

The management company at the new apartment declined to send someone to drill into the wall until my friends return in late June. I sent periodic photos of the slowly-rising and increasingly scummy water in the shower and tub. I did a load of laundry at the thrice-flooded, thrice-fixed old apartment.

I noticed that the kitchen sink had started to smell like the pond in the shower. I stopped using the kitchen. My friends, in response to their attempts to get a plumber to address the situation before it turned into a building-wide crisis, received a threatening email, apparently inspired by the perception that I was illegally subletting. In fear for their own housing security, they asked me to move out.

While my second-year classmates shared their thesis projects, while my cohort and I rehearsed and refined our piece, I scrambled to find a new place to stay—ideally one that wouldn’t cost me thousands of Euros or take me too far off a transit line that could get me with relative ease to my German intensive (starting tomorrow). I found one and packed, trying to sort what I would need for two more weeks here from what I will need over the summer from what I will not need until fall, and trying to figure out how to store it all.

Friday morning, the last day of my first year of graduate school and the night after our final performance, I moved. Friday night, as we sat at the biergarten, together like this for the last time, the dryness in the back of my throat turned into dizzying exhaustion. I got sick—a sinus infection that has left my skull burning and laid me flat out for the last three days.

My former professor who lent me her place gets back June 16th. Her flatmate, who has been incredibly kind, may lend me his room for my last few days here. A move across the hall, at this moment, sounds like a dream. Anything to keep the same transit pattern. To avoid another cab ride with a box of groceries and another of toiletries and an overstuffed suitcase and an Ikea bag with three odd objects crackling around in the bottom. But—I may have to move one more time.

It’s a strange thing, to have lived here for nine months and to leave like this, hop-scotching bed to bed and Ubahn station to Sbahn stop. I feel like a ghost, dragging my feet ineffectually across this storied city.

It also feels like a rite of passage. If I stay, I will eventually find stable housing, a place I can root in and rely on and welcome people into, where all of Germany’s strong tenant protections will apply. This chaos will become a part of my origin story as a Berliner.

But for now I write across the pavement with my ethereal finger, “I was here.”