Getting Settled

Leaving bonn, Nietzsche returned to Naumburg, where he spent the rest of August, 1865, recovering from the ailments that afflicted his last weeks in the Rhineland. This was followed by two happy weeks staying with the Mushacke family in Berlin and seeing the sights. He got on so well with Hermann's father, Eduard, that the latter, in spite of the age difference, proposed they should address each other with the familiar du. And then the two friends travelled to Leipzig, where they arrived at the Berlin railway station on October 17. ‘First of all’, Nietzsche recalls,

After a depressing afternoon traipsing up and down smelly staircases to view far from ‘elegant’ rooms, they found their way into a secluded side street, the Blumengasse (now Scherlstrasse), within easy walking distance of the university. Here Nietzsche found a room at number 4 above an antiquarian bookshop owned by his landlord, Herr Rohn, while Mushacke found lodgings next door. (In April of the following year Nietzsche moved to 7 Elisenstrasse, driven out by the noise of children.