Berlin

You know how when you play a video game and then you stop, you can sometimes see it in your head when you try to go to sleep? That's how I feel except that whenever I'm someplace quiet, I hear French and German voices banging around in my head. Except that I don't think they're actually saying anything because I don't know French or German.

It's humbling, by the way, to be out with a group of people who speak a combined total of probably 87 languages but they're all speaking English, which isn't their first language or probably even their favorite, just so that you can understand what everyone's ordering for dinner. Maybe humbling isn't the right word. Maybe it's embarassing.

On my way to Berlin, I spent the first two hours thinking that I was on the wrong train or that I had the wrong ticket and I started imagining how, when they threw me off the train, I might have to live out the rest of my days in the Dutch countryside, foraging for food and sleeping in windmills. When the man finally came and checked my ticket, he just smiled and handed it back to me and moved on. I was almost disappointed.

Here are a few things that I can tell you about Berlin:

First, it is nothing like Amsterdam. Amsterdam is cozy and sweet and Berlin is neither of those things, although not necessarily in a bad way.

Secondly, it is nothing like New York. Berlin has almost no car traffic at all and seems to be almost entirely made of grass. New York is neither of those things, although not necessarily in a bad way.

Thirdly, anything and everything in Berlin can be and is a discotheque. This includes drugstores, power plants, and a fast food restaurant called The Flying Sausage. I told Ben that this would be my angle for this blog post but that's actually all I have to say about it.

Today we bought vegetarian chicken cordon blue from a farmer's market.

Ben's roommate and friends are all alarmingly nice and funny and smart and I've spent a lot of time feeling dumb and self-conscious. I'm hoping this trip will be a Defining Experience that makes me finally, after twenty-five years of abject laziness (note that I've managed to use the word 'abject' in two blog posts in a row and this time I'm using it incorrectly), to finally learn a language besides English. French seems like a good place to start since a lot of people speak it and it's kind of like English and then maybe next time a cute French guy asks me 'Parlez-vous francais?', I can say 'Oui'.