London Week 1

Moving to another country is sort of like drowning.  Your initial reaction is to panic and start thrashing everywhere in wild hope of grasping some line of control.  There are duvet covers to buy and closets to organize and things to plug into things that plug into funny shaped outlets and not nearly enough seconds in a day to catch a breath in between.  But at some point there is sweet surrender.  The thrashing stops and suddenly you realize that, if you breathe slowly, you will float.  Not only are you not dying, but you are just fine.  Turns out the current flows on whether or not you are accomplishing all the things you supposedly absolutely needed to do.  

So, despite the fact that I still don’t have a proper bank account or a proper phone or my own towel or tube of toothpaste, I can still say that I’ve done all the things the universe needed me to do during my first week in London.  Not the least of which is learning to speak British by using words like “proper” in common sentences.  I also incorporate phrases like “lorry load” and “by dint of” when I can.   And, obviously, I say “cheers” at every possible occasion.

I learned that gurchins are pickles and pickle is chutney and a marrow is a giant courgette which is not, by the way, an eggplant.  I have no idea what piccalilli is but it is delicious and something like a chutney spread.  I have no idea what marmite is but it is disgusting and also some sort of spreadable paste.   Jellied eel is not a British term for for another kind of chutney -- it is literally eel that has been jellied.  And it is delicious.

                             

Eel with Vinegar

Aaron and Charlie are females, Sasha and Shannon are males.  
“To Let” is “For Rent”, not to be confused with a public restroom sign that’s missing a letter.

San Francisco Toilet

London To Let

I believe a “stupid cow” (pronounced “shtewpid cow”) is either someone who is still in the crosswalk when the light turns red or potentially another way of saying “blonde American girl carrying a giant box across the street and blocking the way of a cab driver who is in a hurry.”  It was difficult to tell from the context.

I got lost on average 100% of the times I stepped foot out the door, which is pretty impressive for someone with a GPS-enabled device.  I conducted a PhD level research investigation comparing stock, quality and prices of several local grocery marts.  And, even with the little “you’re drowning!” voice in my ear buzzing about emails and hours of sleep, I managed to watch every World Cup game, spectate a cross-country meet, drink at least two dozen different British beers (of which four were actually decent!) and play a little guitar/ukulele.

I’ll get around to the rest eventually...  

Farewells

“Dude.  Where the heck are you?”

No reply.

It was 5:05pm and my boss promised that our meeting would start at 5:00pm sharp and last no longer than five minutes.  He said it was urgent. 

But I knew it could not possibly be more urgent than the reason I was in a rush to leave: it was my last track practice before my move to London (where there is no such thing as track practice with post-workout $2 Tecates).  I’ve compared Tuesday track practice to Sunday mass and I would have a hard time disputing anyone who might accuse me of having a cultish obsession with going.  My teammates are my brethren and Tuesday was my last chance to say goodbye.  Explaining to my boss why I needed to go to practice would have been like a toddler explaining to an adult why he needs to sleep with his binky.  It’s just mine and I love it and you’ll never understand.  So I didn’t mention practice but I had made it clear that I needed to leave for an extremely important appointment. 

While he blathered on about the key differences in US vs EMEA markets and other notedly un-urgent nonsense, I was not-so-subtly packing up my things from the conference room and mentally mapping out possible shortcuts I could take on my bike route to the track.  He was still talking when I actually walked out of the conference room, nodding in agreement to what I hoped were his concluding remarks and thinking, I can take the sidewalk up 3rd street, cut over at Harrison and —

“SURPRISE!!”

iPhone cameras.  Applause.  A giant “Bon Voyage!” banner.  A full catered banquet of tacos.  Thirty Ta-da! faces beaming at me.

Before I could even make the palm-on-heart “You really shouldn’t have” gesture, I was being presented with presents and a card signed by all of my coworkers.

“Speech!  Speech!  Speech!” They gleamed. 

My palm instead went straight to my forehead for the “Oh sh*t” gesture and I smiled the squinty-eyed guilt grin of a child unwrapping a book from his grandma for Christmas.  “Wow, this is so nice… But the thing is… I’ve gotta go…”

“We know!  That’s why we’re here!  We’ll miss you!”  They glowed. 

“No, what I mean is… I actually have to leave right now…”  They dimmed.  I cooked in the simmering awkwardness of the collective confusion and disappointment for a few minutes and even managed to eat half a taco and say a few thank you's.  Then, while everyone was sufficiently distracted piling food on their plates, I slipped out through the hallway.

The thing about moving is that it is an inherently unbalanced event.  A person is expected to take the world they have built up, one piece at a time, over months and years and then deconstruct the entire thing in a matter of days.  Collateral damage is inevitable.  You spend the few pre-departure weeks floating between procrastination and denial, telling yourself it’s more important to enjoy your last days with the people you love than to waste precious time fretting about the logistics of canceling Comcast subscriptions and fitting sentimentally valuable coffee mugs into your duffle bag.  

And then suddenly you have 72 hours before you leave the country and there are still three cabinets full of old mason jars.  

I got back from practice on Tuesday night with a nice $2 Tecate buzz and started doing the math.  I could fit maximum 10 jars in my backpack.  Once I factored in the miscellaneous pots, plants, fishbowls and other sundries that had -- at some unknown moment in the past two years -- furtively sidled into my ownership below my radar, I had a at least 15 backpack loads of stuff to get rid of.  The donation center was only a few blocks away but 15 round-trips would take at least an hour and the center closed at 7:00pm.  Fantasies of arson began to play in my mind’s eye.  Just as I was cackling at the thought of my laundry purgatory lamp shade going up in flames, another idea came to me.  And by 6:45pm the following night, my apartment was essentially empty.

I have three websites to thank for this spring cleaning miracle: Pinterest, Craigslist and Songza.  I thank Pinterest for making masons jars 2014’s trendiest dish.  I thank Craigslist for the creation of the “Free stuff” category.  And I thank Songza, for providing the bumpin’ “Moving Out” soundtrack that I played while enjoying a cold beer and a bowl of popcorn, watching dozens of thrilled strangers raid my trash for treasures.

They came in droves.  Little Asian ladies packed roller suitcases to the brim with spices, half empty bottles of olive oil, and mini cans of ginger ale that I never got around to using to make whisky-gingers.  The hipsters didn’t care that the mason jars still had polenta and Craisins in them — they gladly shoved them into their burlap backpacks, along with with my yoga mat and foam roller and crusty paint brushes.  I made everyone who found something they liked also take something they didn’t like (e.g. the printer, the paperback books, the leather boots) and, like a picnic attacked by an ant swarm, the only thing left after they all scuttled away were some pickles and a few plastic bags. 

At one point, I had ambitions of hosting a send-off party for myself on the 4th of July.  But when I no longer had any dishes or paper towels or ginger ale to mix with the whiskey (which I later realized had also been snagged in the raid without me noticing), the prospect of throwing a party felt unreasonably complicated.  And the prospect of generating any more trash on this earth felt downright sinful.  

So instead I opted to skip town on my last day and go spend quality friend and family time in Marin.  No to-do lists, no errands, no cleaning, no stress-eating raw tortillas from the fridge while rearranging contents of suitcases.  Just bikes and trails and dogs and wine and drunk-eating Ben and Jerry's Milk and Cookies straight from the tub.  

I saved the trip to Comcast for the 11th hour, expecting the worst.  It was, as predicted, the worst.  (The story is not even worth telling, but I’ll share the photos of the good bill-paying citizens of San Francisco, commiserating in our mutual loathing for this country’s scummiest company.)

At 2:30pm, I closed the gate on Sumner street for the last time and attempted to inhale all the air of home, like I could somehow vacuum pack my deconstructed world into my chest so I wouldn’t have to leave it behind.  But, just like my red hoodie and my trombazoo and my stuffed E.T. wouldn’t fit in my suitcase, the breath was overfilling my lungs.  I exhaled.  Then I got in the car and drove away.  

Good Riddance San Francisco

Really San Francisco?  You couldn’t muster a single gust of Bay wind today?  You chose this very afternoon to shake off your June gloom?  You couldn’t find a single grouch to glare at me on the street or a single car to swerve into my bike lane?  Today of all days, you just had to flaunt all your blue sky splendor, all your smiley Californianess.  Not even a whiff of urine on Market Street?  Suddenly it’s all rising sourdough and eucalyptus?

Well I don’t even care.  Those two hours I spent tracing through your coastal mountain trails this morning?  Meant nothing to me.  I didn’t even like that feeling of the sun on my back while I cruised my bike to the corner mart. You can keep my friends and entertain them with your silly music festivals and tacos and hoppy beer.  You think I'm going to pout just because I hear people talking about camping trips and rooftop jam sessions and barbecues at the park? Think again.

Don't think I'm going to swoon over your hilly vistas. Don't be so vain as to imagine that I'll be dreaming about your ocean cliff winds in my face. You don't have my heart strings wrapped around your little peninsula. My heart strings are my own!

Go ahead -- splay your bridges in all their glory!  Twinkle your glittery golden skyline all night, see if I care.  See if I snap a single faux-vignette photo of your summer peaches or cookie ice cream sandwiches.  Won’t happen. Cookie ice cream sandwiches are stupid.

Good riddance.

Lucky Charmed Life

Am I the only one who thinks that Lucky Charms is perfectly ratioed?  Apparently there are entire businesses and social networks dedicated to the poo-pooing of the TOBs (“toasted oat bits") and lamenting the tragedy of wasting any oral real estate or chewing energies on something so bland and uninspiring as a non-marshmallow.  

I am staunchly anti the anti TOB movement (which I suppose makes me Pro Oat) -- not because I hate rainbows and not because I find it ridiculous that people form organizations based on the poo-pooing of a shapeless grain.  I am opposed to the concept of an bland-less cereal on a philosophical level.  I see the entire situation as a metaphor, or perhaps a manifestation of a fundamental flaw in modern society’s understanding of Happiness.  (Yes, I took it there.)

In cereal and in life, I believe that Happiness is comprised of exactly 90% normal and 10% magical deliciousness.  

I spent the morning of my 25th birthday slurping down a bowl of Lucky Charms while ruminating on this thought and feeling nostalgically grateful for all the little toasted oat bits in my life.  E.g.: 

• Every weekday, I perform the same morning choreography: I hoist my bike to my shoulder with my right hand and step precariously down the narrow semi-spiraling staircase of my apartment, grabbing my helmet and keys hanging from the hooks on the wall with my left hand.  I take 8th to Folsom to 5th to Bryant -- pedaling in between each of the seven traffic lights at the precise speed (perfected after a year of practiced study) that allows me to roll through all of them without ever coming to a full stop.

• Every weekday afternoon, I eat my lunch out of the same giant red bowl.  Whatever food I scavenge — burritos, sandwiches, popcorn, leftover pasta -- gets dissected, anatomized, and tossed with spinach in the red bowl. 

• Every Tuesday -- regardless of rain, wind, work deadlines, feelings of bloatedness from too much lunch in the red bowl -- I go to track practice at Kezar stadium.  Afterwards I go to the same dive bar with my teammates and I drink one $2 Tecate with lime from Red The Bartender who puts it on the counter when he sees me walk in with a “Here ya go, sweetheart.”  
• I listen to the same few hundred songs on my iPod (mostly from mixed CDs that were burned between 2000 and 2009).  
• I wear the same two jackets — a purple parka and a red hoodie — pretty much every day. 
• I make a cup of tea every night before bed.

These rituals are my daily staples.  They are the hearty toasted oats of my life.  It is their mundaneness that makes them substantive.  It is their unremarkability that make the occasional pot-of-gold moments worth savoring.   My life is comparable to Lucky Charms in many ways -- namely the part about being Charmed and Lucky.  I try not to take for granted the fact that, relative to many people in the world, my life is a bowl of just marshmallows.  

But that said, in bizzarro San Franciscoland where the tap water is tainted with overachiever hormones that turn the youth into facial-hairless CEOs in their 20s, even my charmed life can seem subpar.  At age 25, Mark Zuckerberg had 300 million users on Facebook.  The 24-year-old who invented Snapchat is already worth $1 billion.  

Of course I can always remind myself that at 25 Warren Buffett was a salesman in Omaha, Tina Fey was working at the YMCA and Tim Allen was arrested for toting cocaine through an airport.  And, to be honest, I could give a damn about what anyone was or was not doing at my age.  There will be Mark Zuckerbergs ahead of me and Tim Allens below me at every stage of life.

If I can have marshmallow days for 10% of the rest of my life, that’s enough for me.  And the fact that I can still eat Lucky Charms for breakfast as a 25-year-old bodes well. 

(For the record, my birthday was a weeks-worth of pot-of-gold moments.)

For the record

Why do old people take pictures?
I’ve always assumed that there are two phases in life.

Phase 1: Picture taking
Phase 2: Picture reminiscing

I’d say most of my imaginations about being old involve sitting by the fireside, leafing through photo albums and reading all of my old journals, finally culminating a lifetime of thoughts and experiences into sweet sage wisdom.  (In my head, the photo albums and journals are actual books stacked next to my armchair, although I suppose it’s more realistic to assume I would be swiping at a screen or batting my eyelids at a hologram or something… but that’s not so romantic.)  This is the scene I am thinking about when I snap a picture of the sun setting on a river or of a pretty plate of french fries.  It's that old woman, wrinkly grey-haired me, that I am preserving all of these moments for. 

So naturally I am confused to see anyone over the age of 70 fumbling with manual zoom lenses and peering at the world through a viewfinder.  

This is a photo I sneakily took of the old man in front of me on the plane.  He must have taken at least three dozen photos from his window:

When are you going to look back at that photo, sir?  What are you still collecting memories for? It seems to me a bit like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom.  But I’ve never understood the things old people do — how could I possibly?  I won’t have the chance to culminate sweet sage wisdom about The Meaning Of It All until I’ve stopped taking photos myself. 

The sole motive behind all of my picture-taking (and writing, for that matter) is a latent fear of memory loss.  Creative expression, artistic value, reflection, emotional catharsis, social sharing etc. are mostly happy byproducts.  There are plenty of things I document that are never edited or posted, that are neither insightful nor beautiful.  I must have a Russian novel’s worth of the world’s most mundane lists in my Google Drive folder labeled “Writing.”

e.g.

Mar 22, 2012

-morning run in the park

-last day before taper, feeling fit

-flat tire on the way to work

-called Ali about travel plans

-Dinner out with the roommates.  Japanese restaurant downtown.  Way overpriced.

-Started Infinite Jest

Keeping these records is a fruitless exercise that I can’t stop doing any more than a baby can stop sucking on a pacifier.  Rationally, I am aware that even wrinkly grey-haired me won't be able to juice any wisdom from 80 years of done to-do lists.  But when I go for a period without documenting and then try to think back on what I’ve missed, my lack of recall frightens me.  It's like a small segment has been erased from my timeline.  

Traveling only intensifies the impulse — since each experience is so singular and fleeting, they are even less likely to stick in brain storage.  I just returned to California after spending a few weeks in London and I can’t sleep for the itch to quickly capture the quicksand memories of my time in the city. (Also my body still thinks it’s 11:00 A.M. even though it is 3:00 A.M.)

The first person I met in London was my host Heath.  Heath looked like what Benjamin Franklin would have looked like after a couple years developing a moderate cocaine habit.  He was bald on top with a few strands of oily locks falling just short of his shoulders.  His wiry circular spectacles matched his wiry body frame — all cheek bones and elbows and one long pinky fingernail.  One cat was called Zipper.  The others scampering around the house were never formally introduced to me.  Heath had the Australian knack for leaving “h”s off of words like “he” and ending his sentences with rhetorical questions.  But if not a scholar, Heath was certainly a gentleman — helping with my bags, pouring me a cup of tea, and offering a detailed verbal treasure map of the neighborhood’s best pubs: “You’ll go out just to the corner here and then carry on past the little statue at the end of the main road.  There’ll be a cigarette store to your right and then, if you keep on ahead past the old fire station, you can’t miss it just there.”

According to AirBnB, my second host was named “Sylvie,” but when I arrived at the two-bedroom mini-apartment in Marylebone, I was met by six Italians and one Scott, none of whom introduced themselves by that name.  The Italians were young, mostly gay, all pierced and dyed some shade of citrus.  As far as I could tell, they all shared one kingsize bed.  The Scott was maybe in his 60s, also gay, and—while the noisy vie bohème-ers passed around bowls of pasta and marijuana in the kitchen—he kept mostly to himself in the storage-closet-turned-bedroom, except to occasionally venture out to refill his champagne glass with chilled Prosecco and make a nostalgic and endearing comment about the beauty of youth. 

Marianella liked to ask me the meaning of English words like “prancing” and “glitter” that she heard in songs.  Nícolas like to tilt his head and say “Awww” every time I spoke.  Alberto liked to call me Darling and insisted on giving me a haircut — for which I was, admittedly, long overdue.  I’d like to say that was the first time I let a man shave my head under the auspices of a free haircut…. but that would not be true.  

June 2008:

This time was less drastic:

People say that London has no soul and I think I know what they mean.  There are simply too many types of people to talk about the “Ethos” of the city in any coherent way.  As a whole, it is a ruthless place.  It is the kind of place that might knock you down and mow you over if you don’t have your wits about you (literally, in the case of bikers, and figuratively in the case of anyone earning a sub-executive salary who might wake up one morning to find themselves flat broke).  But as much as people moan about the weather and the prices and the Tube, I think people find London’s grandeur liberating.  Even I — the sniper’s eye for anything even remotely resembling a cliché — couldn’t pin down a stereotypical Londoner.  

Coming from San Francisco, where literally e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g has been stamped, labeled, satirized, ironically iconized, and hashtagged, the slightly dizzying cosmopolitopia of London was actually a breath of fresh air.  There is no headlining war between Mainstream vs. Counterculture vs. Trendy vs. Hipster etc etc etc…. No one seems to give a damn.

London says, “I don’t care who you are - stay to the right of the escalator, the left of the bus lane and get the hell out of the way.”

Running into trouble

It was 8:00 on Saturday and my heart was a flutter.  I had a date with a lake.  It would be just me and her and nothing to interrupt our glorious morning together.  I braided my hair and dawned a fresh pair of running shorts and went to the shoe shop on the corner to buy a new pair of trainers for the occasion.  My beloved Saucony Fastwitches just turned 350 (in miles) and I’d spent the previous two days and nights tossing and turning, wondering if the holes in the sides would hold together for the next three weeks of my time abroad.  Thankfully I fell asleep at my computer before, in a 3:00 A.M. frenzy, I almost clicked “Buy” on an identical pair of Sauconys that would have cost $50 for international shipping alone.  But by the time Saturday morning came, the bottom of the right heel had worn through my old shoes and I had two options: 

1. Buy an over-priced pair of inferior shoes.

2. Not run.

The little store on the corner only had one pair of trainers available in my size so I bought them with the rationale that, if I found a better/cheaper pair at the department store down the street, I could return them.  

I looked up the German word for “return policy” on my phone and attempted to repeat it to the owner. 

“Rook-gab-ebel-rung?”

He replied in a gush of jolly German and I gathered from his nodding smile and pointing at the register’s printer that he was saying something along the lines of, “Yes, yes of course! As long as you have the receipt, no problem!”  I later learned (after purchasing another pair of shoes at the department store that were €15 cheaper, for I am nothing if not my mother’s daughter), that what he was actually saying was: “No, we do not do returns.”  I walked out of the store holding a €70 gift card that I would never use, breathing deeply and chanting the mantra Sunk costs. Sunk costs.   Fortunately, there is no better antidote for the stress of wasted money than spending time with Mother Nature who couldn’t give a damn.  One mile into the sweet humus trails of Grunewald, and all tears over spilled Euros were long forgotten.

The lake and I flirted for a while, we got personal, we got philosophical, and we shared some intimate moments… 

In the thralls of romance, I lost track of time.  Then I lost track of space (namely, my location relative to the trailhead).  Then I regained my sense of time and my entire body was poignantly aware of the fact that it was 2:20pm which was exactly six hours and 20 minutes since I had woken up and over twelve hours since I had last eaten.  I had somehow skipped past the hunger phase and went straight to the tingly nirvana phase.  The blood in my veins sparkled like the surface of the lake and the little stars that reflected on the water also glimmered in the sky and on the trail and on everything I looked at.  

At a trail crossing in the woods, I paused at the intersection to consider which direction to go.  Out of the forest, a band of people emerged.  They were a band, as in a small group, but they were also a band, as in they were all carrying brass instruments — french horns, trumpets and trombones.  Just when I was deliriously wondering how to ask them if they had any food in universal human sign language, they began to play their horns.  It was a regal tune, like an announcement.  On cue, a heard of beagles came running from the trees — at least twenty of them — ears flopping, tails wagging, tongues hanging.  Not far behind them, a low thunder rumbled.  Horses!  Dozens of horses!  Trotting along with uniformed men perched officially atop their saddles. The spontaneous parade surrounded me on all sides and I was suddenly engulfed with music and fanfare and guffawing horsemen who called down to me in German.  What are they saying?  What the hell is going on?  I must be very hungry.  What a bizarre mirage...  

I rubbed my fingers together and felt nothing.  I was still seeing stars when I blinked but I couldn’t blink the strange parade away.  I pulled out my phone to take a picture and when I looked back later, I realized I wasn’t hallucinating after all.

That night, admitting to myself that I should not be trusted to go out running on my own, I googled “Running club Berlin.”  There was one group meeting on Sunday afternoon and, even though they had not posted the exact address of their meeting spot, I had no trouble finding them.  Across all cultural/ethnic/socio-economic differences, runners are a species of their own.  Common traits can be traced among them, no matter where in the world they are found.  In the pre-workout huddle, they mill around a pile of backpacks, some standing like flamingos with one bent knee rolling a foot in circles at the ankle, some with their hands on their hips that jut out to one side as they lean into a cross-legged IT band stretch.  I spotted them from 100 meters away: my people.  

I entered into the circle (in which I heard at least a few English speakers) and joined the conversation like I was catching up with old friends.  Not an eyelash was batted until I asked what I thought was a perfectly normal runners’ circle question: “So, where does the route go today?”  Heads tilted, eyebrows furrowed.  

“Is this your first hash?” said one woman in a German accent. 

I thought I had misunderstood her English.  “My first what?”

Slowly, sinister grins lit up faces like candles in a row of jackolanterns and knowing eyes met one another from across the circle, while my own eyes darted from face to face trying to read the meaning behind their expressions. 

“Ah, it appears we have here a virgin!”

I later learned that this was a meeting of Hash House Harriers, an infamous international organization with the slogan: “A Drinking Club with a Running Problem.”

But at the time, I sensed it unwise to ask too many questions.   So when they started running—each person in opposite directions—I just followed the bearded Dutchman who went straight into the woods where there was no path.  When they shouted unintelligible things and suddenly changed directions, I shouted too and found someone new to follow (just far enough away so they wouldn’t notice I was following).  One random thing led to another and within the hour, we were all back in the circle drunkenly bellowing a song about foreskin to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean.”  By the end of "practice", I was on my knees in front of a pot-bellied Scottish man who--ignoring the protests from the formerly unsympathetic crowd--was pouring beer into my mouth from my brand new shoes (because new shoes are apparently against the Hash ethos).  

On Tuesday I decided to go run on a track--my flat, round, red and white, surprise-proof haven.  I found four using Google satellites (tracks are conveniently easy to spot from space).  The first three were closed but the fourth was open.  There were two burka-covered Turkish ladies waddling in the outer lanes and a class of preteen coeds with their gym teacher gathered on the home stretch.  Normally I would have been disappointed to share my sanctuary, but on that day I was glad to have the audience.  It’s easier to run 600 meter repeats when you have some pressure to impress the spectators, even if they are little Turkish grandmothers who could probably care less.  

On my first lap, I flew by the gym teacher, who stood tall and stern, stopwatch in hand, unashamed to follow me with his stare all the way around the back curve.  On the next few sets, I had to swing out to lane six to avoid bowling over the cluster of students as they lined up at the start line.  On my fifth set, I came up behind them as they were running a lap of their own.  They were spread out enough that I could weave between them and, even over the music from my headphones, I could hear their giggling German commentary.  With about 130 meters to the finish line, I felt a surging gait at my heels.  I glanced down to see a spaghetti noodle kid sprinting up next to me.  He couldn’t have been more than 4’10, 90 pounds.  Witnessing the challenge, the gaggle of girls sitting on the infield started to squeal and cheer.  I changed gears and went in for the kick.  Noodle boy surged harder, panting his little lungs into hyperventilation.  But he didn't drop.  I kicked harder.  He stuck.  I pushed harder than I’ve pushed in a long time (half marathons don't involve sprinting) and I leaned at the line.   

I like to think we tied. 

At home a mere twenty minutes later, when I explained to my housemate why I was holding a bag of ice on my foot, I said that I won. 

Wie sagt man, "I would like all the baklava, please."?

The day before I left for Berlin, I bought a suitcase at Ross for $70 because my roommate’s was too big and my coworker’s was too small.  I bought a neck pillow and an eye cover and earplugs. I would have bought Ambien if they sold it over the counter but I bought Melatonin instead and got some Xanax from a friend.

I bought these things in secret because it’s not like me to buy things.  I am supposed to be Carefree Katie.  I am Go-With-The-Flow Girl.  I am from Colorado and my feathers don’t get ruffled when the wind blows.  But I’ve been in California for too long and now I can’t deal with things like jet lag or mediocre sandwiches or bad internet connections or air colder than 50 degrees.  

It’s a slippery slope down to neurosis.   On the morning of my departure, I was struck with a sudden wave of paranoia about dropping my rent check in a mailbox.  At line in the post office behind a dozen or more tardy taxpayers (it had not occurred to me that April 15th would not be a normal day at the USPO), I literally started tapping my foot in a nervous twitch.  Normal Katie would not have batted an eyelash about running twenty minutes behind schedule.  The only items left on my pre-departure checklist were 1. Assemble plane snacks (two minutes max), 2. Remove toenail polish (optional) and 3. Research best practices for taking Xanax (which I could do from my phone while waiting in line).  But OCD Katie could only see a clock arm ticking dangerously close to 10:45 which was the time I needed to leave my house in order to arrive at the airport one hour before boarding. (I decided the two-hour rule for international flights didn’t apply to me since I’ve been TSA prescreened.)  

Of course, as Normal Katie would have known, everything worked out fine.  Despite checking in at the wrong airline (“Lufthansa flight 730 is operated by United, ma’am”), leaving my passport in the self-check kiosk scanner, having the wrong name on my ticket (“I’m sorry miss, the reservation is under Katie but your ID says Kathryn”), and getting bounced from the TSA prescreen line (“If the stamp isn’t on your boarding pass, they won’t let you through”), I still managed to board the plane before takeoff.  And despite not sleeping on the plane (neck pillows and Xanax be damned!), I still managed to feel relatively normal upon arriving in Berlin at 11:00am.  And despite not having the exact address of my AirBnB host or any way of contacting her without internet access, I still managed to serendipitously run into her just as she was leaving the building.  

Despite still having chipped nail polish on my toes, everything was going to be just fine.

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Lucy, my host, has a bob cut and wears a jean miniskirt bunched up over leggings that tuck right into the lace-up boots whose heels barely touch the ground when she walks with a slight duck-footed bounce.   I wanted us to be friends but the tone in her voice when she asked me if I had any questions told me she’d be keeping our relationship professional.  She offered me a cup tea and then headed out for the night.  

The house was cold. I made another cup of tea.  Then another.  I poured more cups until the leaves in teaball were blanched and I was just drinking hot water.  After fidgeting with the knob on the radiator in my room, googling "How to turn on german heater", and pushing all the buttons on a mysterious box in the kitchen, I decided to cook some pasta. Lucy had technically said “Help yourself to whatever” but I could tell she only said it to be nice and didn’t actually want me rifling through her cupboards.  But I didn’t have any Euros yet and I was descending into a manic state of cold and hunger.   I would have stolen a secret slice of her birthday cake if there would have been one in the fridge.   I felt like Lucy owed it to me for abandoning me in her ice house.  But the pantry was all pots and jars of tea leaves and dried beans and one half bag of rotini noodles, of which I stole one cup.   I held the warm pot to my body and stood over the stove, which I left on even after the pasta was done.  

When Lucy got home around midnight, she explained that the central heat for the building never comes on in April so there is no way to turn on the radiators.  Perhaps she felt guilty about sending me to sleep in a room with an unsealed window because she offered me some of the egg scramble she was cooking.  We ate together and had a lovely conversation -- at least I enjoyed it.  I can’t speak for Lucy because once she finished eating she said, “Well you must be very tired...”

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Other than the lack of space-heaters, Berlin seems to be the perfect city.  To me, it is Goldilocks’s middle bowl between my other two favorite places: Bogotá and San Francisco.  The street vendors and jabbering pedestrians and third-world chaos that give Bogotá its charm can also make it impossibly dysfunctional at times.  On the other end of the spectrum, San Francisco’s efficiency-obsessed tech fever is sexy and exciting and famous… and solipsistic to a sometimes nauseating degree.  Berlin has the urban hum, it has the hipster-hating hipsters whining about gentrifying neighborhoods, it has the cultural hodgepodge that makes it tricky to pick out tourists from locals.  It works without trying too hard.

Being a foreigner here is neither exotic nor cliché, which is quite relaxing.  However, for the first time in my life I am in a place where I cannot ask for directions from just anyone on the street.  I, the Queen of Eyelash-Batting for Favors from Strangers, have been quitted of my most resourceful superpower.  Thankfully, universal human sign language has been sufficient so far.  That is to say, sufficient enough for me to walk into the Turkish pastry shop and point to the baklava behind the glass and hold up all my fingers to indicate “I would like all the baklava, please.”