Berlin, S1 to Oranienburg. I’m looking at the German family, an older couple and their daughter in her 30s sitting opposite me.

They are talking about their daughter’s studies, psychology of marketing, and their friend’s vacation on the Baltic Sea.

It is all looking the same.

Except, I look at them and ask myself: will you vote for the AfD, the party that wants me, as a foreigner, out of the country?

Or are you one of the good ones?

I then open my Telegram. Full of chats with my dearest friends, written in German, supporting me through my recent breakup and offering help.

I remember that I only have a German passport. That I’ve been here for 16 years. And that I’ve experienced all kinds of meanness and discrimination, from the openly hostile to the less obvious ones, like when I’m called a “good integrated foreigner”, unlike the others.

And I chose to stay in Berlin because of all the wonderful people, opportunities and weirdness this place has to offer.

So I sit there, eavesdropping, thinking: how the hell did 43,8 % of voters in Sachsen Anhalt decide that the AfD is the party for them?

I then go to my bakery and joke around with the baker lady. She likes me and knows I’m here to pick up the bread with Too Good To Go.

I talk on the phone with the Finanzamt guy, whose name is Latin, but he speaks native German. And he helps me fix my mistakes, and he is kind.

And I wonder: do they want me out? They just can’t say so because discrimination, if reported, would cost them their job?

And then I go back to reality.

Which is the streets of Prenzlberg full of English speaking people from all over the world.

My German friends who are appalled by the elections in Sachsen Anhalt.

My own life, the one of a foreigner here, that I’ve decided to build here.

And I will not let any dickhead whose heart is filled with something different than love make me think less of my home and feel paranoid.

Not today, Satan. Not today.