BERLIN!!

Always a godmother, never a god.

No, I'm not dead, just far, far away. Lost in a strange land where the "z" key is where the "y" key should be and vice versa, where the symbols are arranged all willy nilly, and I can type letters like ö, ä, ü, and ß with the press of a single button.

Berlin is fabelhaft, and I can't really explain in the few short minutes I have for the internet how great it really is. I'm staying on the equivilant of Michigan Avenue, and just a short U-bahn ride away from the amazingly stereotypical culture of former East Berlin. I'm taking a good number of pictures, some of buildings, some of me making strange faces, and some of me making strange faces in front of buildings.

I've never really been all that aware of the fact that I'm "American" mostly because in, well, America, it's not even an issue. Here, however, it's the only thing that I'm being defined and classified by, and I'm suddenly extremely aware of it. I'm intrigued by the German's sense of history and the importance of preserving it, rather than washing it away as humiliation or disgrace. I'm hopelessly fashionless, and apparently unintelligable when trying to speak to the Deutschen in their native Sprache.

I'm homesick and a little lonely, but I keep reminding myself that this might be the only time I ever get to see these things, to have this experience, so I'm sucking it up like an androgynous man in lederhosen and a santa hat, a sight for only the strong of heart.

Ich hab' dich sooooo.... lieb,
Cathi