Answer: The 2010 World Cup (from here on out called WM, which stands for Weltmeisterschaft, as it known to the rest of Germany).

Four years ago, in the summer of 2006, I had just broken up with my first boyfriend and was feeling pretty low about life in general. The only thing to do, as I sat at home for a good portion of the summer feeling sorry for myself, was to watch the WM (at that point known to me only as the World Cup as I had never been to Germany). Suddenly, the WM was more exhilarating than any mini-series of TV show on DVD my friends had recommended to get my mind off the break up. I put the entirety of my fried heart and battered soul into those games, and it got so serious that, when I finally went back to the office I had been working at earlier that year as a summer job, my boss often walked past my computer screen to find me frantically clicking refresh on the New York Times blog and the Google scoring window in order to see the results of the games in real time. I was a veritable football fanatic, and it almost cost me my job.

Flash-forward to 2010: I now live in a country where the words “football fanatic” describe everyone in the general population (especially during those very special Junes and Julys spaced every four years apart) and many businesses actually close early in order to allow its employees sufficient time to watch the games. Although we were lucky with the time difference this year (since the WM took place in South Africa, this meant that games were actually in the early-and mid-afternoons and then evenings, instead of at inconveniently early breakfasts and lunch times, as they were four years ago with the time difference when the WM actually took place in Germany but I was still in New York). So getting off work at 3 meant rushing to meet friends to see a game by 4. Dinners suddenly became harried affairs, as everyone struggled to eat quickly enough to find a seat for the 8:30 games.

Many of the central things I have learned about my adopted country I have learned by doing, and the WM taught me a few. Apparently before the games took place in Germany four years ago, the mood about the Germany team and the games in general was somewhat more subdued than it is now. Even nearly 60 years after the war, the Germans were overly cautious about exhibiting any amount of national pride, no matter if it was only connected to football. In 2006, with the games in Germany, that all changed. Spontaneous displays of patriotism and flag waving were acceptable and even encouraged, and watching the games turned into a raucous and joyful community activity: everyone, even those who might have had televisions at home, turned up at pubs, restaurants, beer gardens, and beach bars to watch the games and cheer on the teams in big groups. Coming from a country where football means men in tight pants with helmets and ridiculous shoulder pads diving on top of each other in an effort to get their hands on a strangely shaped object (not really a sport so much as a laughing stock), I embraced this atmosphere wholeheartedly. My first game may have been between the age-old rivals England and America, but really, the German team was my team.

Now with the 2010 WM coming to its inevitable close, I have learned the names and faces of each team member by heart, and I remember when they made their goals, and each embarrassing error they may have committed. Four nights ago, after a marathon run in which they beat nearly all of their opponents and in some cases got four spectacular goals to their opponents’ zero (“vier zu null!!!!”) the finally lost in the half final against Spain. Then they played proudly and successfully against Uruguay in the game I had always thought would be the most pointless and humiliating for a team: the match for the two losers of the half final, to determine who would come in third. I went around the city, and in some cases even outside of it, to watch these games. I met friends, drank and ate with them, helped organize a grill party for the occasion and was also invited to one. I saw places I would have never seen before, and watched with people I would never have sat down with otherwise, and at the end of it all, found even I had become a veritable football fanatic. Even my boyfriend, who grew up in this country where football matters, was amazed by my zealousness. On one occasion we practically got into a fight in the car, after starting out late to drive to the place where we would watch the game: the Germans made an early goal against Argentina four minutes in, and I was positively livid that instead of seeing it, I had had to sit in the car, merely hearing of it on the radio.

There is no better way to describe my experience of watching the WM in Germany than to list every single German game I saw, along with the details of where I watched it and what it was like.

June 13 – Germany vs. Australia @ Washingtonplatz, Hauptbahnhof
This one got off to a late start, as we were having dinner with in our garden when the game started. All the same, we are in the middle of Mitte enough that we were able to hear every shout, cheer, or explosion of fireworks every time the German team did something brilliant. We started off about halfway through the match on our way, we thought, to Haus der Kulturen der Welt, a cultural center on the banks of the Spree that was hosting every single game, when we heard the shouts and saw the crowds in front of a comparatively small, boxy café/bar on the river side of Hauptbahnhof. The crowd was massive and the screen was small, but we somehow managed to wend our way through the hordes of people to a patch of grass directly in front of the game. Vuvuzelas blared, the German flags flew high, and every kick or move of the ball was greeted with either breathless enthusiasm or awed silence followed by shouts. When the Germans won the game 4-0, we were swept up in throngs of people heading to and through Hauptbahnhof, making as much noise as possible and starting a huge celebration that continued on the train. When the Germans win a World Cup game, make sure to be in Germany.

June 18 – Germany vs. Serbia @ Tentstation
This game was a last-minute surprise, as I was coming from work in the morning and heading to Prague by train in the early evening, but I managed to leave work just a half hour before the game was starting, and was met at Hauptbahnhof by the boyfriend, bearing a salad and a few drinks he had brought from home. This time, though, the crowd in front of the train station was irritating instead of exhilarating, and we ended up making our way as fast as we could to the hidden, hard-to-find Tentstation, a mixed venue of an empty-swimming pool, bar and concert location, and a grassy area for backpackers to pitch their tents as the name would suggest. We had already seen the North Korea vs. Brazil game here so we knew that it was a good place to watch outdoors: even though it was afternoon daylight outside, making it difficult to see any kind of projection screen, the wise men at Tentstation had created a sort of black box theater by covering three sides of their outdoor bar with heavy black clothe. The effect was perfect, but unfortunately the game was not. The only goal was scored by Serbia, making this the most embarrassing game for the Germans until the half-final three weeks later. Even though I was disappointed, I will never forget the joyful and prolonged cry of the sole Serbian in the place as he shouted “Toooooooooooooor!!!!” (goal!) for what must have been several minutes without breath from amidst a bewildered and embarrassed German audience.

June 23 – Germany vs. Ghana @ Käthe-Niederkirchener-Str.
Along with the game against Serbia, this game neatly sandwiched my time away in Prague and Bonn. I was excited when I figured out that I would just make Berlin in time for the game, and the boyfriend picked me up at Schönefeld Airport after my flight from Bonn, and drove us straight to the house of two friends in Friedrichshain. The grill was already set up on the balcony and we joked around, had a few beers, and put both meat and cheese on the coals to cook as the game started. This felt like my “insider” experience of the watching the World Cup: what so many travelers dream about finding in all of the places they visit. Here I was having a German grillparty with Germans in a German home watching a German game, and somehow keeping my cool and screaming at the television screen with the best of them. For the record, everyone ended up happy, because even though Germany won the game, Ghana ended up winning too, as they both got to taste the glory of advancing to the next round.

June 27 – Germany vs. England @ Parsteinsee
If I thought the last game was a unique experience, this one upped the stakes. Since we were up in the country that weekend, we had to find a place to watch the Sunday afternoon game where we were, and our first guess, which turned out to be half right, was that the café/restaurant by the lake near the country house, Parsteinsee, would have a television and would be showing the game. Actually they didn’t and they weren’t, but they directed us just twenty steps down the road to a surf shop (yes they apparently have these up there, for who knows what reason) which would be setting up a TV in a tent by the water just before the game. We returned to a trim but upbeat crowd of swimmers, bikers and parents and their kids, drinking Caipirinhas and beer and squinting at the blurry television purched at the top of a wobbly shelf. The picture would not have been my ideal, but the context could not be beat, and for two riveting hours I watched the Germans compete against my closest brethren (where language is concerned), beating them with a series of truly outstanding goals and one very famous save by the German goalie that will probably be debated until the end of time (or at least until the same thing happens again—that is, when a goalie stops a ball that has clearly already gone over the line, but the judges don’t catch it).

July 3 – Germany vs. Argentina @ Moabit Eckbar
After being flooded with invitations to grill parties, hotel roofs, beach bars, and clubs for this all-important semi-final game, we decided that we were sick of all the hipness, sick of all the drama, and just wanted to find the oldest, most normal, most unhip pub in Berlin and watch the game there. We got our wish. A few minutes into the game, after the Germans had already scored one quick and spectacular opening goal (which, as I said before, I was enraged over not getting to see), we breezed into a corner pub in Moabit, arguably Berlin’s most squarely and comfortably unhip district, to find two seats waiting for us amidst a lively group of middle-aged and old Berlin barcrawlers and afternoon beer-drinkers. This may have been the best decision we could have made, because watching Germany score four times against Argentina was made all the better for the constant shouts of “vier zu null!” and “geht nach Hause!” (go home!) from the bar patrons, the half-mocking laughter and “awwww’s” upon seeing the increasingly long face of Argentina’s former star player and head coach Diego Maradona, and the joyful rapturous bursts of energy as the entire bar leapt to its feet to cheer and embrace whenever a goal was made. In four years’ time, for the next World Cup, I will probably be back here.

July 7 – Germany vs. Spain @ Lehrter Garten
In honor of Germany’s having reached the half final, we did what we said we were going to do all along. Friends came over to our garden two days in advance to rig up a projection screen and a flat screen TV, and by the time I came home from a dinner in Kreuzberg towards the end of the first half, about forty people had amassed on chairs, beanbags, and blankets to watch the game. Unfortunately, their faces were somber, as they watched what would be Germany’s worst game of the entire tournament and their eventual undoing at the hands of the Spanish. No doubt about it, the Spanish team was better, and as the realization dawned on us that we were watching our team’s hopes fade into the distance, groans of disappointment, along with shouts at the screen over how embarrassing the players were, filled our garden. When the Spanish side made its only goal, for a moment there was only silence. Then as the time ran out and we had to watch the inevitable losing game come to a close, we tried to pick up the pieces of our shattered team spirit and have a grillparty as we would have had before. The spirit picked up when our downstairs neighbor and friend Mark emerged from his house with a raw octopus clutched in his right hand, which he held up in front of the projector screen like some kind of bloody primal sacrifice, ready to be grilled (a reference to Paul, the pschic German octopus now known the world over for predicting the outcomes of every single German world cup game, as well as the final, correctly). The magic was gone, but we still had one game left.

July 10 – Germany vs. Uruguay @ Stolzenhagen Clubhouse
This was the one I hadn’t even planned on watching, thinking it would be too depressing to see the two losers (Uruguay had been beaten by the Netherlands several days early) have at each other, knowing that their prize was only third place in the World Cup. But we were already at a party—a weird and wacky “county fair” in the Brandenburg town of Stolzenhagen near the country house—and the clubhouse, just up the road from the “fair grounds,” was screening the game of course. What I will take away from this one was not so much the atmosphere, which was decidedly more staid and somber than all others had been, but rather my lasting visual memory of a group of kids, probably all less than ten years old, sitting in a line along one side of the club house, and watching the games with an intensity only children can have when they are acting like the adults and know something is serious. Every time the German team lost control of the ball, one of them would yell at the screen, telling off a player or arguing with his choice of move. When a goal happened—or almost happened—of course the entire line of them jumped up simultaneously to celebrate the victory. It was nice to see the Germans in fine form winning once again, and especially nice to realize that in four more years, they’ll be even better than they were this year (which at times seems pretty difficult to imagine). Who knows, in twenty years or so, maybe some of those kids will be joining them on the pitch.

But this sudden life change has also meant something else: a sudden and abrupt end to my free time, to my lazy mornings of sleeping in until 11, my afternoons of eating lunch with friends and going to the gym, my nights of staying out past midnight. I admit it; it was bound to happen: I have become boring. And I love it. Last week, for example, was probably the busiest week I have experienced in my nearly two years in Berlin, and it left me exhausted but quite satisfied.

It all started with a plan to go to Bonn, a small city in West Germany near Cologne I had never been to and never really had any intention of visiting. It is home to one of Germany’s biggest and most well-known radio and broadcasting companies Deutsche Welle, who would be hosting a three-day conference on climate change and how the media handles it. An interesting topic, I figured, and one I would be happy to learn about, but even more exciting would be the chance to attend my first real conference (ever) and hobnob with a lot of industry people I would no doubt never come into contact with otherwise. I applied for press accreditation, and spend several weeks frantically looking for friends of friends to stay with there, until at the last minute the website I was working for, a project called Future Challenges sponsored by the Bertelsmann Stiftung (Foundation), up and told me they were going to pay for my hotel room—and it would be in one of the nicest hotels in town. I was ready for my very first conference. But first, I needed to go visit someone very important.

The conference wasn’t until Monday, June 21, but on Friday, June 18, right after watching the World Cup game between Serbia and Germany (and of course the Weltmeisterschaft is important enough as to deserve an extensive post of its very own), I hopped on a train down to Prague (oh how wonderful to be able to use the word “hopped” when discussing a trip to another country—oh the speed and ease of movement it connotes!) to visit my old and dear friend—and freshman year roommate—Ashley.

Ashley is a special case when it comes to traveling: during her junior year (and my unplanned sabbatical year) she went off to St. Petersburg for a yearlong study abroad, something that used to be standard but now seems daring and unusual in face of the shorter, safer, slightly sissy “semester abroad.” She came back speaking fluent Russian. After college she went back for a year to work, and the apparent chutzpah with which she did so may have partially inspired me to take my own leap (of faith) across the pond. Then, about two years ago, she applied for a scholarship that sent her to India, and ended up in Hyderabad for a year. She came back from there with knowledge in several more languages, of course, as well as a keen fascination and enthusiasm for Indian food and Bollywood films.

It was lucky I had been to Prague before, because most of the weekend was spent inducting me into the world of the last two, as well as sharing outrageous stories and long contemplations about our past, present, and future. We wandered the beautiful streets of the Czech capital, drank beer and caught a few World Cup games, and then found that perhaps the only Pakistani restaurant and food shop in the city was sitting at the end of her street. We watched a Bollywood film called Dostana, which I highly recommend to anyone who likes musicals or silly, girly movies about straight men pretending to be gay, and generally had a fantastic time just hanging out and often being slightly lazy. I love it when I get to the point with a city where I know it well enough that I don’t need to run off and do everything; in fact often when I am in a place for the first time, I gaze with no uncertain amount of envy at people lying on the grass (summer) or leisurely lounging in bars and cafes (winter). I always want to be at that point where I don’t have to rush.

This sense of leisure lasted only as far as Monday morning, however, when I woke up and dashed to the airport for a flight to Bonn, to attend my first ever media conference. I checked into the Hotel Königshof, located directly on the Rhine river and with a full view of its banks, feeling very special and proud of myself indeed. Never had I been put up in a hotel by my work, although now I knew how important it could make a person feel. Bonn itself was like a German version of a New England college town—or perhaps I only say that because my hotel was literally across the street from the main university campus, with its sprawling green lawn surrounded by ornate Prussian looking buildings. The beer garden right down the road reinforced my notion that I wasn’t in Kansas any longer, but the general mood of the campus was the same as it is in America: leisurely and friendly, with groups of boys playing Frisbee an kicking balls around on the lawn while smaller groups of girls sat picnicking together, and lone studiers sat pouring over books and laptops. I nearly felt like I was back at Columbia for a moment.

I got to the conference as quickly as I could, checking in with enough to catch most of the last panel of the evening, on how films can inspire activism regarding the environment and climate change. Since I knew absolutely no one there (the one other person from the Future Challenges team being someone I had never met before and could have only vaguely recognized by site), I was lucky enough to meet two nice people—a British woman and a German man—who were at the conference to promote their latest environmental activism project, along with a film called “The Age of Stupid”—also about activism in today’s world, or rather the lack thereof. As we introduced ourselves and started talking, we were herded down a short path to the Rhine, where we boarded and giant and rather magnificent decked out party boat for a cruise down the river. There was dinner, there were two lives bands, and there was an unending flow of alcohol, including the Cologne class Kölsch, which must have been stored below decks in such abundance, it is a wonder the ship stayed afloat. It was a veritable international smorgasbord, with journalists from far and wide, including many from Africa and India. I met the editor of an English language newspaper in Budapest—probably my favorite Eastern European city—who gave me his card and immediately promised me a job if I moved there—a request I was hard-pressed to turn down. I met a lot of people of course, but there was still no sign of my colleague, who had traveled all the way from Ghana to attend the conference. It was not until the next morning at breakfast when I finally met him, and was not so astounded to find that he was the one person I had suspected the night before of being him all along.

The next two days of the conference passed quickly. I went to some truly fascinating panels that approached climate change from different angles (including why it is important to involve religious communities in the issues of environmentalism, and how to do so), and took copious notes at each, in order to prepare myself for writing articles about each panel I had been to. By the time Wednesday afternoon came around, and I found myself again with suitcase in hand, dashing to the Cologne-Bonn airport (which I only link here because the website is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen) for a flight back to Berlin, I could not believe how many new experiences and stories I had accumulated in how short a time. I had gone from Berlin to Prague where I had seen one of my oldest and best friends, and then from Prague to Bonn where I had felt like a businesswoman. Now suddenly here I was, arriving back in my hometown of Berlin into the waiting arms of my boyfriend, driving as fast as possible to his friends’ house to catch the Germany-Ghana world cup game (which both teams won, in a sense, because both were allowed to advance to the next round—but more on that later).

I had come full-circle. Almost exactly a year after I had quit the horrible ad agency that paid me nearly nothing to work ten-hour days and some weekends for them, that kept on promising me the chance to travel but never actually made good on that promise; a year and three weeks after I had quit that job to an uncertain future of I knew not what, I finally felt like I had emerged (somewhat) victorious.  It took only a year and nine months in Germany, but at last I have a visa, I have work, and I am somewhat established. At last, I feel I have arrived.

As it is now, I console myself with trickery: our apartment is festooned with flowers, I baked cupcakes with rhubarb from the garden two days ago, and Spargelzeit (asparagus time—the only definitive harvest in Berlin, it seems) has come and shows no signs of abetting (although I doubt a colorless ground vegetable—is it a vegetable or an alien life form?—has much use for sunlight, whether it’s there or not).

I am told it is the volcano, the Icelandic fire mountain that has already wreaked havoc on our plans once (we were stuck an extra week in New York in April as the airlines canceled flights, waiting for their flight paths to clear). Not content to keep us in New York past deadline, it seems, Eyjafjallajokull, seems destined to be both unpronounceable and unavoidable. Is it her (his?) ashen fumes that block out the sky, making my Berlin summer seem like something out of the Twilight Zone?

I moved to a house with a garden when there was still ice on the ground. And I’m not complaining about the garden part, but I was told that I wouldn’t even notice how small the place was once the sun was shining and I was out there all the time. I imagined myself lying  out on a blanket on the  grass, wearing a bikini and sunglasses. I bought outfits according to the images of summer I had in my head (I do this sometimes). The outfits remain untouched in my drawers, but my jacket is still hanging strong on the hook behind the door, ready for me to grab it whenever I step outside. And I feel like I owe an apology to the bathing suits, who have only seen the inside of the Liquidrom in January (although one of them did get to taste saltwater on a weekend trip to Italy during which it rained half the time).

Perhaps it isn’t the volcano at all, but rather the fates testing me, making sure it really is my intention to stay in Berlin; that I’m really that dedicated to this small city, closer in geography to the North Sea than the Mediterranean, closer in spirit to Scandinavia than Southern France. True, sometimes I find myself asking why I put up with it all. But then I remind myself of my adventurous ideals, tell myself to remember that the summer, when it comes, is lovely and breezy and never stifling like in New York, and wish—even if only with a passing sort of half-wish that doesn’t really mean anything—that the scientists could come up with a way to allow humans to hibernate. Then one day I would eat a big meal, draw the curtains closed, and crawl back underneath the covers, telling myself with my last waking thought simply to “wait ‘til next year.”

I was there to see a band that a friend had recommended, called Orchestra Miniature in the Park. Granted it wasn’t a park, and if it had been the results would have been decidedly soggy and unpleasant given the weather, but the sunny exuberance reminded me of the Polyphonic Spree at Central Park Summer Stage years ago, or any one of a number of twee indie bands that are usually too adorable for their own good. Picture this: around twenty people, each one playing a miniature children’s musical instrument, plastic and colorful. A lead singer who dances around and jumps off of things and disregards completely the fact that the mic is on way too low and that no one can really hear him, and that anyway they’re all far too busy eating their vegan food and drinking their little eco-friendly bottles of lemonade on which is printed, cutely, the word “LemonAid.” Actually you don’t have to picture it on your own, because here’s a video:

While I appreciated the enthusiasm of the performers, and the fact that they really were geared towards entertaining children and parents (as opposed to hipsters who never grew up) and I thought the idea of playing children’s instruments was original and entirely successful considering the context, I was struck by a frightening thought about halfway through, that almost forced me to pick up and leave: Berlin and Brooklyn really are one and the same.

The week started with an epic six—no eight—no maybe nine—hour drive arching across the Northern half of Germany and ending in Trier, the oldest German city, home to Romans, Gauls, Germans, and a certain lovable jazz musician I might have mentioned a few times on this blog before. What a change a few hundred kilometers makes. Sometimes living in Berlin makes you forget you’re in Europe at all, but suddenly there I was in a town with cobblestone streets and Roman ruins, right in the center of the main shopping thoroughfare in a three-level town house with a bakery on the ground floor. Colorful, gabled buildings were everywhere, like an extended version of the Bergen waterfront in Norway, or Copenhagen or Malmø—any one of a number of Scandinavians towns I have visited or wish to visit. Yet there we were on the border with Luxembourg, only a few hours from Paris, and we hadn’t even gotten on a plane to make it there (that still gets to me, that living in Berlin, I can go basically anywhere without air travel). It immediately felt like I was entering another existence, inducted into a family not so unlike my own, complete with its own history and pictures hanging on the walls.

I once read a section of Ian McEwan’s Atonement that has stayed with me more than the entire book. It is when the main character, the little girl who ruins a couple of lives in pursuit of her own selfishness but later becomes a famous writer, is alone in the wilderness of her family estate’s backyard, reflecting on her own consciousness and wondering whether everyone else in the world is as aware of themselves—as cognizant of their own small existences—as she is. It is something, I then realized, I myself had wondered many times: does everyone comprehend their existence as I do? Is everyone as connected to a past, a family, a personal history? The answer is impossible to find for sure, but at no time in life is this the question been more relevant than when you first get together with someone and, over the course of weeks, months, if you’re lucky years, your two lives begin to fuse together. You realize that his family history is just as thick and significant as yours, his consciousness just as deep, and suddenly you are seeing everything in double: where he was and where I was at this exact moment, what my family thinks of him and what his family thinks of me, where we’ve been and who we’ve been with and what we want for our future(s). And if those two histories exist in different countries and different languages, the fusing can be even more complicated.

1. The guest room is a room that used to be his brothers’, with two single beds and a bed table between them. We immediately and, I thought, somewhat suspiciously, took the night table out from its place and pushed the two beds together, jamming a comforter in the crack so that it would feel more like one bed. His mother came in and made no comment, whereas I thought we were doings something utterly guilty that we would later have to atone for by assuring his parents in great detail that we were being good little girls and boys and most assuredly not having any sex whatsoever. In America, this would certainly be the case.

2. Since his parents speak no English, it was necessary for me to practice my German with an intensity I had never really experienced before, from when I woke up in the morning and sleepily went sloaching towards coffee to the moment I wished them “Guten Nacht” and went up to bed. We wondered aloud at the necessity of our two sets of parents ever meeting each other, since my parents don’t speak German fluently enough to really construct a sentence (my mom reads and understands it a bit, my dad just pretends to in text messages). What would they all do? Mime to each other? Make faces at each other across a dinner table? Make us serve as translators? His father, while seemingly gruff on the outside, actually has a hilariously cheeky sense of humor that can come out at odd moments. I know my father would appreciate it. Meanwhile his mother reminds me a bit of my own grandmother, but without all the bits that drove my own mother crazy. It would be good for them all to meet someday, but how exactly, would we accomplish this (geography and distance being the least of our problems)?

3. I am very fascinated by this idea of Abendbrot, although really it’s no big deal at all. It comes from the conviction that eating a big meal or a lot of heavy food right before going to sleep is not good for one’s digestive health, and I have to say I probably agree. Meanwhile, they eat their biggest meal in the middle of the day, which can consist of meat, potatoes, veggies, and all the things that, to me, represent a hot dinner. After dealing with many embarrassing instances of food coma during my time working in offices, which started with longer-than-normal eyeblinks and ended in full-on snoozes, I can’t say I agree with this custom either. But Abendbrot is exactly its translation: an evening bread you eat in place of dinner to tide yourself over until breakfast, which is basically just more of the same (that is, bread with a variety of jams, cheese, meat, butter, and honey, and perhaps pickles and olives as well). Fortunately, these are all of the things I love most in the world anyway, and coupled with a glass of wine or a schlückchen of schnapps it’s near heaven. But really I think the only reason Abendbrot is even necessary is because the alternative is so outlandish. The dinner my parents make consist of a plate of pasta or a chicken or lamb dish and then a small salad; not really all that much more than what I consume at a normal Abendbrot anyway. Still, there is something about the dedicated evening rituality of taking out the bread, the cheeses, the meats and laying them all on plates, even if it is only for your own family, and even if you just put away half of it again later, that is kind of comfortable, and kind of cute.

4. Visiting your boyfriend’s hometown brings the differences between your two childhoods starkly and amusingly into focus. Granted, our childhoods happened twenty years apart and on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, so the idea that they would be in any way comparable was always absurd, but I still felt overwhelmed when he told me about playing ball in the streets with other Trier street kids (Harlem in the 1930’s?), being the leader of his own “gang” in school (keep in mind he meant grade school), sneaking into the Roman amphitheater without paying only to be chased out by the proprietor, going up a small mountain whose foot lay at the edge of the city to sunbathe in his own meadow that no one knew about on the brink of teenagerhood, grilling eels from the river with families in the Luxembourg town of Echternach just over the border. Going on bike tours, sleeping in tents. First experiences with alcohol, first time being recognized as a member of a “local heroes” jazz band. Growing up in the shadow of roaring planes from a nearby American military base, growing up with family secrets that he still doesn’t know. When I think back to my own first ten or twelve or fifteen years, only a few things come into focus, and they help to sharply clarify how different we are. I went to school and did my homework. I went horseback riding on weekends. I didn’t really go anywhere on my own until I was eleven or twelve, from what I can remember. I had no gang, I was the leader of no group. When I wasn’t reading and writing and drawing, I spent my time with the few friends I had building forts in our New York apartments, maybe sledding in Central Park on very special occasions, jealously hating the popular kids at our school, talking about the boys we’d never get. My experiences with the outdoors consisted of the parks in New York City, my grandmother’s backyard, and the summer camp I went to for eight weeks starting when I was ten. Trier is a village, New York City is a megalopolis in comparison, and now we both have this life that exists somewhere in between.

5. Football really is as big a deal for the Germans as the Americans think it is, but the Germans think the American are weird and “spiritless” for not caring so much about it, even when the World Cup takes place in *gasp!* their own country. The boyfriend’s older brother actually reports on football for the radio, and his two sons, aged 9 and 11, are both on teams. On Saturday morning we rushed out to a game for the 9-year-old’s league, standing on the sidelines in the cold as parents and coaches alike shouted admonishments at a bunch of kids who were actually playing quite well from what I could tell. The boyfriend and I decided that we both wanted to have “intellectual kids who didn’t play sports,” and I decided that I only wanted to have girls (something I decided a long time ago when I realized you can’t go clothing shopping with boys after the age of ten). But really, watching the game reminded me a lot of the team sports I was forced to play throughout school, and how bad I was at them. After trying out nothing less than three normal sports offered by my school (lacrosse, swimming, and volleyball), I finally hit on fencing as my sport of choice. It was still competitive, and still exercise, but since it was only ever one on one, you had to rely solely on you to win or lose. And there were no shouting parents on the sidelines making you nervous. When they all got home from watching the older son’s game in the afternoon, the football viewing continued on the television, as they watched the game with both the television announcer’s commentary and the extra commentary of the boyfriend’s brother. “We are a football family,” they announced proudly. I tried to add to the conversation with my pathetically limited knowledge of the sport, which basically consists of the facts and observations I gathered four years ago when, over one summer in 2006, I became obsessed with watching the World Cup, which fittingly, was taking place in Germany. But my attempt at showing off fell short. I didn’t know names, I didn’t know moves, and I couldn’t seem to figure out how you pick a team to root for if neither side is from your hometown. Is it just whoever is better? Do you switch mid-game if the team you liked starts doing badly?

6. Heidelberg is the city Americans love most. While I am admittedly no expert on Germany, I tend to think that Berlin is the place everyone wants to go to, just because I’m here. But no, apparently Heidelberg is high on every American traveler’s wish list for its fairy tale romanticism (a castle high on a hill, cobblestone streets with old buildings). I’ve never seen a more touristy part of Germany (except for maybe Kastanienallee on a Friday night, or Unter den Linden all of the time). As soon as we set foot in town, we heard not only English in all its incarnations, but also Greek and Russian. The groups wandering up and down the main streets were all American or Italian teenagers of the worst sort: badly dressed and unbelievably loud. How did they all know about Heidelberg and I didn’t? Sure, it is perhaps the oldest university ever (or at least claims to be) and is where students have gone for years if they want to have that perfect European schooling experience. But maybe I’m just annoyed because I seem to be the last person to have found out about this. In regards to the famous song that begins “Ich hab’ mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren,” I have to disagree. My heart is still firmly planted in Berlin, where it shall always be.

What am I doing here? Well that’s hard to talk about. My beloved grandmother—the one we thought would outlive us all with the sheer force of her strong opinions, embarrassing questions, and astonishing loudness—is dying of lung cancer. Even writing the word “dying” is difficult, and I realize I’ve avoided saying it for fear of sounding dramatic. Or perhaps for fear of having to deal with the sympathy of others. I never knew how to respond to a simple “I’m sorry” or “our thoughts are with you,” and with the few people I’ve told and heard that from, I haven’t known how to reply. When they say “I’m sorry” I almost want to say “what for?” After all, my grandmother is about to turn 90. (She may make it another two months until she does, but my parents wanted to be sure I got to see her just in case—a decision I fully agree with.) She is not lucky to be dying, but she is lucky to have lived. I think she knows this, hope she knows this, and it is a sentiment I share with her in ways that become more and more apparent: How lucky to have lived. How lucky to be alive.

They live in New Jersey just across the river. In fact, I can see it from my window, and they can see my house from theirs. I hadn’t been to the apartment in years, and it was a strange feeling, getting reacquainted with all the photographs, the paintings, the pictures on the wall I had done for them—badly—at age three. We used to go over there all the time when I—and they—were younger. Grandma would serve plates of cut vegetables on the balcony, and we would eat them looking at the cars passing on the George Washington Bridge, or down at the swimming pool where we would later take a dip. Sometimes we would come over in the evenings and have a big dinner along with apple pie that my grandfather always ate with cheddar cheese. One of the most “famous” pictures I ever drew was of the six of us—mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, sister, and me—sitting around a table and raising our glasses to my birthday, however old I was. Wandering around their small but packed apartment now is like exploring a lifetime through objects. There are so many photographs of my mother and father, when they got married, with the two of us their children, and so many other of my grandparents—looking different through the ages in each one, but always together and smiling.

What do we do when one of us dies? What do spouses do when it appears their other half won’t last much longer? In my grandfather’s case, it involves looking at those objects and pictures on the wall, asking us if we might want them—acknowledging that they’ll all soon be finding new homes, if not this year than in the next five or ten. This is his process, his way of coping. In my case, it’s sitting on my grandmother’s bed with her smooth, cool hand in mine, trying to assure her that she matters—has mattered to me—greatly. It is difficult to see her there, for the first time without her makeup, her fancy clothes, her crazy accessories and jewelry I used to have so much fun with as a child.

It is hard to look at her barely able to sit up in bed, barely able to speak. I wish I could read her more closely, because I can’t tell whether she is content or restless, in pain or merely just tired. She has this look on her face, with the corners of her mouth turned down and her eyes closed as if in a permanent sigh, of a kind of disappointment. It isn’t resignation yet, but that will come soon too I presume. When I think of myself dying one day in the future, the only thing that scares me is that I will not have gotten to do all the things I wanted to. I wonder if she feels the same. After all, she married at 23, traveled the world, had two children. But she came from a generation where women relied on their husbands, didn’t have careers. She went to college and was an educated woman, but she didn’t get to use that the way her daughter did. Women were educated to find husbands; not to become doctors like my father, or run museums like my mother. I wonder, as I sit there watching her face for slight twitches and changes, signs that she wants water or perhaps wants to speak, if she can be happy or proud about the way it all went. Are a loving husband, and two children, and two grandchildren enough, or would she have done more, if only she had been born thirty years later?

At one point, when everyone else had left the room to prepare lunch, I took her hand and asked her to open her eyes and look at me. “Thank you,” I said, “for being such a big part of our lives. Even when we were too busy to notice, even when we were teenagers and didn’t want you there, even when you were loud and annoying and opinionated as you always have been” (and, I thought secretly, as I wish I could still see you now). There was a slight change in her face, the corners of her mouth at last not turning down but up in a smile. “It was a pleasure,” she whispered. “It was a blessing. It was heaven.”

That was all I would ever know.

This year was my second in a row, and a decidedly different experience from the first. Whereas last year I went with three other Americans, each one of them a food-obsessed lunatic in his or her own right (one of whom, in fact, when given the choice, would probably rather stay home and bake bread loaves, pretzels, cookies, and pastries than go out on a Saturday night), this year I went with my German boyfriend. While last year we had no idea what to expect, except what people had briefly told us, this year I expected something new and got basically the exact same thing as last year. That’s not to say it wasn’t just as fun. Whereas last year we went late to get the half off “Happy Hour” price of entry, we really only got to see a quarter of the show, and the last half hour was hectic, climaxing with the four of us dashing across the Messe courtyard (which for anyone who knows West Berlin, is where the Funkturm, a giant TV-antenna and dead-ringer for Paris’s Eiffel Tower, resides) in what felt like sub-zero temperatures, trying to get back to the alcohol-tasting area for one last glass of wine. And we were already pretty drunk by then, having sampled quail eggs with vodka, fruit liquor, and beer all along the way.

This year we went earlier and got a map, so we were able to amble leisurely through each and every one of the halls (well, as leisurely as we could, considering we had to push our way through hordes of the hungry on a Saturday afternoon). Whereas last year it had seemed like a great surprise no matter what we discovered, I had always been a bit worried that I would end up missing half of what was on offer. This year we didn’t just see the international food halls—complete with French and Swiss and Austrian and Italian vendors selling a multitude of cheeses and cured meats and wines—we also happened upon the hall for farming technology, complete with a massive tractor, and the hall for livestock, where a full-on sheep show was going on, completely with handlers dressed in long robes and judges shouting out prizes over a loudspeaker. There was the aquarium section, with turtles and fish, and there was a section with ten different species of dog, all of them lounging happily with their caretakers in little stalls (definitely the job I would choose to have there, if I had to have one). And going with your boyfriend certainly does have its advantages—one of them being that, instead of fending for yourself just like your cash-strapped friends, you split all the costs with another person and still get to eat pretty much everything.

But as we walked around arm in arm, hand in hand, and I marveled at the Portuguese and Spanish and South African vendors hawking wine, the scent of truffle oil beckoning from the Italian vendors, and the unbelievable array of hot sauces available from an American Vendor with names like “Pepper King” and “100% Pain” I thought of something else: I’ve been here—and really, truly here—for long enough that this has now become a January tradition. I’m repeating an activity I did almost exactly a year ago with a different person, making a new set of memories that will last me until January 2011, when, no doubt, I will have forgotten how crowded and expensive and ridiculous the whole thing is, and I will do it all over again.

December 19 – I head out to a Weihnukka (like the German version of Christmakkah, for all you OC devotees) party at the new Hotel Amano on Rosenthaler Strasse. I’ve been invited by my Welsh friend Melanie who has been living in Berlin for years now, and can always be counted upon to make you feel great about yourself and confident about the future when you see her. I take Cora with me. We approach Hotel Amano and see through the windows both Christmas trees and a Menorah. We express shock. We go through the doors and encounter a long table filled with cakes and pies and punches, another with kids and their parents making gingerbread houses, and a third with kids making cookies. All is warm and festive. Children run around everywhere. Melanie is sitting with her friend Olga who has just had a baby, and together we eat apple pie as the baby smiles in her little snowsuit with animal ears like an extra Christmas gift on the table in front of us. We find out that the hotel is in fact owned by an Israeli man, and get excited about Berlin Revival, Cora’s (and somewhat my) initiative to bring Jews together in Berlin. I get the card of the woman who does PR for the elegant hotel and resolve to email her, both for myself and for my boyfriend, who is always looking for new gigs and locations. (Note: I still haven’t done it yet. I’m terrible on the follow-through.)

Dec 20 –I head out to a traditional German Christmas party called a Feuerzangenbowle at the home of my boyfriend’s friends. If you’ve never seen or heard of something like this before, it may seem utterly bizarre. That’s because it is. The absinthe-like Feuerzangenbowle is a bowl of punch, over which one lays a piece of metal resembling a cheese grater that holds a huge piece of sugar. This sugar can be found in cones or abstract chunks, and is apparently sold in shops all over the place for just this occasion. One slowly pours the contents of a bottle of rum on top of this sugar, along with some into a large spoon, and lights the spoon on fire. The flaming alcohol is then poured on top of the sugar, lighting it on fire as well. All watch in awe and pyromania as the entire bowl of punch goes up in flames. Then they drink it. Needless to say, I am surprised to find such a spectacle going on in the elegant home of respectable people, as it seemed when first described to me to be something more suited to a teenager’s rager while the parents are out of town. But we drink, we eat cookies and cakes, we sing hymns, we hear a Christmas story read aloud. Then we leave, treading lightly through a fresh layer of snow, and trip tipsily off to bed.

Dec 23 – After watching my boyfriend play at a traditional old German Markthalle in Moabit called Arminiushalle, I race back from the neighborhood’s main drag Turmstrasse, pumpkin in tow for anticipated pumpkin soup, to find my temporary roommate Dan (who lives in Leipzig but is staying at my house over Christmas) and partner-in-crime Cora ready to brave the anticipated Christmas shopping rush before all the stores close for four days. We make a mad dash to Rewe and stock up, me for anticipated Christmas Eve and Christmas day baking and cooking, as well as some baking for my birthday, and Dan and Cora for ingredients to make gingerbread. I don’t get everything I need and resolve to head out again on Christmas eve morning, when some shops will be open until at least lunchtime. Talking, drinking, and movie-watching commences, and we eventually take an unexpectedly long tram ride to the other side of Mitte in order to pick up burritos at Dolores, a mecca for expats who miss Chipotle, and bring them back to my house. Dan and Cora engage in an argument over the skill versus art of Gene Kelly’s dancing that lasts from when we leave to when we are safely back inside and removing our winter boots again. Dan and Cora go out for his birthday (which happens to be that day) but I stay home, determined to have energy to cook the following day.

Dec 24 – The first of the Weihnachten, and, as I learn, the most important, is in fact on Christmas Eve. I wake up to people wishing each other “frohe Weihnachten” and am confused as to why they are doing this one day early. Then I realize the word is plural: it is not one but several holy nights the Germans decide to celebrate. I head out to Karstadt (a big German department store with a phenomenal food market where you can basically find everything you don’t find anywhere else) on Leopoldplatz in Wedding in the morning. I go up to Wedding rarely, and there’s something about this day that seems kind of surreal. I can’t remember whether it snowed or not, but in my mind there was a light dusting of white on the streets and a lightly floating powder in the air. I expect Karstadt to be a madhouse, like it is at the West Side Market in New York during Thanksgiving week, but instead people are slow and sure-footed. They are keeping calm and carrying on. I don’t see one catfight or customer cutting in line in the half-hour or so I am there. And when I emerge, laden down with bags but light of money, I have found everything I need for the two meals and several days of cakes and cookies I will have to produce. Dan and Cora bake gingerbread while I sit there waiting for it to be done, thinking I will bring a piece to the boyfriend while he plays for the homeless at a special dinner at a hotel ten minutes from me by tram. By the time I finally arrive at the hotel I am greeted by an empty room and a few people telling me the event has ended and I’ve just missed him! Dan and Cora then call to inform that he has just dropped by and just missed me (!) but has left a gift. It reminds me of that O. Henry story…or something. Finally I kick Dan and Cora out and begin to prepare the Christmas Eve dinner I have been planning for days. I have already bought risotto rice at the Arminiushalle, so I ready myself to make mushroom risotto with Shiitakes and Chanterelles, which basically involves standing over the stove and adding chicken broth to rice gradually while stirring constantly for a full 40 minutes or so. I bake a pear upside-down cake and leave it to cool. I make green beans with red chili and toasted almonds, and I prepare the veal I bought at Karstadt to be sautéed in a lemon butter sauce. Only thing is, I am doing too much to remember to change into a nice Christmas outfit, and basically answer the door in a wifebeater and holey jeans (for someone as style-conscious as I normally am, this is my worst nightmare). Luckily my boyfriend shows up still dressed up from performing at the Intercontinental Hotel, and promptly gives me his bowtie to wear, adding a touch of flair to my otherwise lackluster outfit. The dinner is a great success (you can ask him!) and after we have lain around for a bit and relaxed, he proclaims that the thing to do on December 26^th in Berlin is to go out dancing. We locate a club not far from us playing swing music, and set off, me still wearing little more than a tank top and bowtie, old shoes and white socks with the pant legs rolled up a la Michael Jackson. Unfortunately, my bike had gotten a flat that morning, so the only thing left to do is take his bike. I have never done this before, but have watched several attempts end in disaster, so I am skeptical. And with good reason. Sitting on a bike seat with nowhere to put your legs and clinging to someone midsection as the bike goes bouncing over cobblestones, up on sidewalks and down onto streets again, is no way to spend a winter evening. Luckily, the place is close enough that it only takes about ten minutes to get there, and we enter to find…literally five other people dancing (it’s only 1 AM after all, which is basically the Berlin equivalent of lunchtime). No matter, someone has to start, and that someone is we two. We run into a problem as we are dancing, though; namely, that another woman on the dancefloor, probably in her late-30’s at the kindest and clearly already drunk, has taken it upon herself to become the dance instructor for the entire club. She dances up to us and does a wavy movement with both arms, then tries to grab our arms and make us do it to. We laugh it off but she keeps on coming. Then suddenly, as I look around, I realize that the entire dance floor is filled with odd-looking and –acting types. He explains that everyone normal is probably at home with family now, or visiting their parents in Bavaria or whatever. Only the freaks are out tonight. They include too-old-to-be-drunk dance-instructor-lady, guy-with-long-hair-who-bears-a-striking-resemblence-to-Maharishi-Maheshyogi, and two-guys-who-are-touchy-feely-with-each-other-but-not-gay-because-they-are-also-trying-to-hit-on-me. Still, something goes right: by the time we leave a few hours later, the dance floor is packed, and our work is done.

Dec 25 – We wake up on Christmas day and I make a breakfast of spinach, sweet potatoes, and eggs. We spend pretty much the whole day doing nothing, and it’s wonderful. In the late afternoon he leaves for his gig at Interconti Hotel, and I prepare my dish for the Jewish Christmas Chinese Food Potluck Dinner: beef with snow peas. Modeled after the New York Jewish tradition of going out to a Chinese food restaurant and then to the movies on Christmas night, , this is really just an excuse for a lot of expats and some locals who decided to stay in Berlin for Christmas to get together and eat a lot of terrific food. I arrive and deliver my offering to the kitchen, and then promptly find a quiet spot to connect to the internet and have a Skype chat with my parents, sister, grandparents, and dog, all of whom have collected for their annual Christmas morning brunch of bagels and lox at home in New York. As the picture comes into focus I realize I’m looking out from my sister’s computer, which has been placed at a round table that my family is sitting at. It is a wonderful but slightly dizzying feeling, as one person and then another takes turns talking, spinning the computer after they have already begun saying something to me. I finish the conversation feeling a lot more connected to everyone, but also a bit sad that I couldn’t be there instead of here. I cheer up with the terrific food on offer: summer rolls, sushi, Chinese salad with mushrooms and shrimp, teriyaki duck, dumplings, and amazing Shiitake mushroom soup. The evening ends with practically everyone at the party sitting in one room playing the “put a name on your forehead and try to guess who you are” game that was popularized (for Americans at least) in the last year with the film Inglourious Basterds. The problem with this game is that once you have been led down one line of thinking it is hard to dig yourself out of the hole again. I am sure I am Tintin or the guy who wrote him, whereas I actually end up being Oliver Twist.

Dec 26 – We visit Hedi Gigler, an old woman who is an “entire world” unto herself. A violinist who recorded decades ago, she now lives in a flat off of Ku’damm that could easily be mistaken for the Collyer Brothers’ residence (New Yorkers will know what I’m talking about). So full of what can only be referred to as “stuff” that one can barely move, one can nevertheless tell that her flat is beautiful. We get the sensation of moving through time and bumping up against memory as we sit at her table for Turkish tea and cake. The conversation moves so quickly and with her Austrian accent I find myself struggling to understand for more than a few moments at the time, but when she asks me questions I answer them in German without too much trouble, and she says she likes me and gives us both a sort of blessing. He hasn’t seen her in over ten years, and wasn’t even sure she was still alive until he heard her voice on the radio: she had called in to some program to make a comment, and he had immediately known who it was. He phoned her and planned the visit. We walk over to Interconti together for his last gig there, and go to the top of the building where the restaurant windows have a fantastic view of the city, reminding me of the hotel breakfast room on the top floor in San Francisco where I stayed in the summer of 2008, just a few months before coming to Berlin. I go home to begin baking the orange butter cookies I had promised myself for weeks, and to await midnight and my birthday. My boyfriend arrives several hours later bearing gifts, as I putter around the kitchen making the frosting for the cookies and preparing a short Facebook invitation to get everyone in town to come over and eat them.

Dec 27 – My birthday. I make breakfast for boyfriend and houseguest, while boyfriend frantically rushes out to get birthday flowers. I whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies (for those who have an irrational fear of citrus fruit) and clean the kitchen. A party of revelers shows up at 2 with sekt in hand, and proceeds to eat said cookies. We then head out, all seven of us (or so) in one car, to the Arkonaplatz and Mauerpark fleamarkets for a bit of scavenging, but as we don’t turn up much (beyond an old orange coffee bean grinder and a small treasure chest covered in pirate maps that, despite being the coolest thing I have ever seen, is still far too expensive for me to justify buying it) and as it is only getting colder, I head home for a few hours to await my birthday dinner at my boyfriend’s house and to warm up a bit.

Dec 28 – I wake up feeling not a day over 25 (haha). We drive up to the country house for three days of peace and quiet, during which I learn I am spectacular at chopping wood, we drive to Szeczin, the Polish university town right over the border, and a snow storm keeps four invited guests from making it to the house, leaving us to eat a whole chicken and a haunch of venison, as well as myriad breads, cheeses, and cookies, all on our own. Truly the best of all birthday gifts.

Dec 31 – Preparing to leave the country, I frantically call everyone I know and receive calls from them about New Year’s Eve plans. The calls continue in the car back down to Berlin, and I realize I kind of sort of—well actually, completely—hate New Year’s. Finally, after invitations to five different parties at points across town, and a suggestion to stay at home and cook with my roommate, I get a call that sounds appealing: two friends are meeting at an Asian restaurant within an easy distance from me to eat before going to a party. I meet Travis and Mark at a restaurant on Leipziger Strasse and quickly gobble down sushi. They inform me we are going to a house party in the Nikolai Viertel—basically an amped up, almost Disneyfied tourist version of a quaint German village that I find it hard to believe anyone actually lives in. After dinner, we walk along Leipziger Strasse which leads directly to the river and the Nikolai Viertel on the other side. The street is like a war zone: since it is made up of mostly grim socialist housing (kind of the Berlin equivalent of “the projects”), it stands to reason that all the rowdiest kids would be there, dropping firecrackers and all manner of exploding things off the balconies. We have to walk under an overhang just to avoid getting hit. I traipse along through heavy snow, extolling the virtues of my L.L.Bean boots until my companions threaten me with death and destruction. if I don’t shut up. Finally in the Nikolai Viertel, we have a hard time finding the party because everything looks like Disneyland, and then decide to go get sekt to bring first anyway. The closest place to buy drinks is all the way in the Alexanderplatz U-bahn station (how do people in the Nikolai Viertel shop for groceries anyway?) and when we head underground, it is an even bigger madhouse, with a crazed number of people pushing their way into a small drink shop that is obviously thrilled with the Sylvester business, trying to buy alcohol. We leave with approximately six bottles of sekt and walk back to the party, but the second we get upstairs we realize someone made a mistake: instead of walking into a raucous house party, we enter to see a long banquet table around which about twenty Germans are having dinner. They all look up at us when we walk in the room as if to say “and who the hell are yoooou?” The person who invited us isn’t even there yet. Terrifying. I immediately call Cora to find out where she and other friends are, and am told to meet them in Kottbusser Tor, which, from what I can hear over the phone, sounds like an even bigger warzone. On the way back to the U-bahn I receive a call from the boyfriend, who had been playing at a fancy dinner at a fancy villa on Wannsee for the evening. He was finished, and determined to drive to wherever I was so that he could kiss me at midnight. Wunderbar, but where was I going to be anyway? Telling him to drive in the direction of Kreuzberg and await further information, I get on the train, startled every minute or so by a firecracker going off in the underground station and make it safely to Kottbusser Tor. I find friends and we walk up the street to Oranienstrasse, the main drag at night, only to see about four police vans unloading police dressed in riot gear and parked at each corner of the intersection. Apparently they are waiting for something illegal to happen at midnight. We end up choosing Cake Club, a small place on Oranienstrasse I probably would have missed on my own, because it is cheap for New Year’s (only 5 Euro entry fee) and because it was there. We push our way to the back and find a table to ourselves, and I send a text message to the boy telling him where I am. Seemingly five seconds later, he shows up. I’ve never been so happy to see a person in my life (maybe my dog knows how I feel). Although his determination to kiss me at midnight hits a temporary snag when we find out the DJ has absolutely no plans to do anything special as the year turns. For three minutes or so we wait, thinking every time a song ends that some announcement will be made, and yet the music keeps on blaring and no one else seems to care. Finally we, a bunch of rowdy, somewhat annoying Americans, are forced to do the requisite countdown-and-cheer ourselves, at which point I get my midnight kiss at a moment that feels just exactly right.

Happy 2010!

The first was taken from my balcony in the early evening and narrated by me. You can tell that the action starts pretty early over here.

The second was taken spontaneously in Alexanderplatz just a half hour before Berlin would ring in the New Year. In Germany, as you heard in the last video, we wish each other “Guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr,” which actually means “good slip–or slide–into the new year.” I almost made this literal by taking up an invitation to go sledding in Kreuzberg’s Viktoria Park at around midnight, but instead I celebrated a bit more traditionally by dancing the night away–and of course receiving a midnight kiss from a very special someone–at a club on Oranienstraße.

Ich wünsche euch ein schönes, liebevolles, neues Jahr! (I wish you all a beautiful, loving new year!)