I’m going back to Germany in two weeks. This trip to New Jersey is half over. These last two weeks have been full of death and natural disasters, plus a sun burn, a cold sore, and a computer virus. 
 
I survived my first real hurricane. When I was in middle school, the eye of a hurricane supposedly passed right over my town. School was cancelled, and everyone stocked up on canned food and braced themselves for power outages and flooding. But nothing happened. It rained, but not even for the whole day. I remember at one point going in my back yard to kick around a soccer ball.

So now, ten years later, I wasn’t taking the hurricane warnings very seriously. It’s my experience that people really enjoy freaking out and making a bigger deal out of things than is really necessary. Plus I had scheduled a trip to New York which I was really looking forward to. At first it looked like Saturday was going to be decent weather and the hurricane would only ruin Sunday. Then it looked like both days were going to be pretty crappy. Then by Thursday they were telling us to evacuate Atlantic County, at which point it was finally time to accept that the trip was cancelled.

We really didn’t have anywhere to evacuate to; the closes available hotel room was in central Pennsylvania. Who knows what that would have cost, plus when you consider the traffic…we decided to take down the lawn ornaments, flood proof the garage, and stay put. And despite everyone’s efforts to get me to participate in the hysteria, there was no tornado, no power outage, and no damage to our house. Okay, a tree branch did crack the fence around the pool, but we’ll live.

By Sunday afternoon the sun was out and the grocery store was open again. Good thing because I hadn’t wanted to go pre-storm. I hate crowded parking lots, plus I knew there was a chance the fridge might stop working anyway. I was subsiding on clementines, chocolate, and a soup I made with whatever vegetables were left in the fridge. The first season of Modern Family, Uno, and Apples to Apples kept my family from going too insane. So basically, we all survived unscathed. I’m just not ready to do this again anytime soon.   

Summer’s ending, and every year that kind of feels like the year is dying. This year it’s especially tragic because weather-wise, I had a total of maybe ten summer days. I know some people would love that, but despite my choice of places to settle in, I really love the sun. Since I have an iguana’s ability to produce my own body heat, I really appreciate this brief period where I can wear one layer of clothing and still not shiver. Thanks to my friends deodorant and aloe I don’t mind sweating or moderate sun burn and I don’t really understand why other people do. Okay, I guess the whole skin cancer thing, but I choose to put that out of my mind.

Speaking of friends though, it’s always interesting to come back from an extended leave and see who’s still my friend and who has lost interest. It’s no fun coming to the realization that some people just can’t be bothered to make time for me anymore, but I guess I’m glad I have this kind of clarity. If I haven’t been here all summer and I’m leaving again in three weeks and you’re repeatedly flaking on me and then not even apologizing, you’re not really my friend and you don’t get a Belgian beer I smuggled back with me. You know who you are. But if you’re reading this I’m probably not talking about you. And I have seen my best friends. They work crazy hours and still make time for me, and that’s why I love them.

I’m going to “The City” this weekend to see my favorite cousin and my favorite aunt on Saturday and Katie and I’m hoping some of my other friends on Sunday. All this distracts me from how much I miss Ader and how much it sucks to be forced back into a long distance relationship by things way out of our control like immigration laws. He’s in Morocco now without internet so we can’t even Skype. He’s going to call me briefly on Thursday so I can wish him a happy birthday, but since it’s expensive we probably won’t talk long enough for me to vent about how they charge for water at the Beach Bar or people who ride their bikes in the middle of the road right next to the bike path. He’s missed me too.

In other news, the University of Florida lied to me; they said they would start accepting applications for fall 2012 on August 22, but they pushed it back to September first. And I found out that editing the rough draft of my novel the way I had envisioned costs about a tenth of what I had been told before. Just thought you’d like to know.   

I’m back in New Jersey. It’s only for four weeks so I’m not complaining. I didn’t even cry when passing through customs in New York this time. All the things I hate about America are still here: English with American accents, prices that don’t include sales tax, the feeling of isolation and dependence that go along with not owning a car. Just to be clear I never want to live in the land of undereducated overeaters permanently, I haven’t changed my mind about that.

But I think that I will always like to come back and visit. Firstly and obviously because this is where my immediate family lives. My mom threatens to move to Australia if the Republican candidate wins every presidential election, but she won’t go anywhere without my dad, and he’s probably never going to stop teaching at Stockton College. My family and my family-like friends are pretty firmly rooted here, and not everyone can just hop on a plane and come visit me in Europe. It’s nice to take a break from converting dollars to Euros and cringing. And then there are the material comforts-my bed, our pool, Hulu, my favorite brand of chocolate soy milk…My linguistic insecurities are gone here. My accent’s kind of ugly but so is everyone else’s. I don’t have to stress over tu or vous, du or Sie. In Europe I am average-looking with an average knowledge about the world that comes from having read an average number of books and visiting an average number of countries. But relatively speaking here, I am very pretty and very smart. Sorry, but that’s what I think. You’re free to disagree.

In other news I’m looking for an editor for my novel. Because it sucks right now but not so bad that it couldn’t be good with some help. I just didn’t realize how expensive this is going to be. About $3,000 if I want someone who knows what they’re doing to edit the whole thing. My mother is graciously lending me the money, but what do people who don’t have and can’t borrow that kind of money do? I guess write brilliant fiction that doesn’t need to be edited, or stay out of the literary world. Do I really want to be part of such an exclusive, capitalistic group of snobs? That’s how I will comfort myself if this whole writing thing never works out.      

On August fourteenth I will have been on the Schengen Zone for ninety days without a visa, so I have to leave Berlin on Sunday. And I get to leave Berlin on Sunday. I guess I could say both today. Right now, this second, it would be the former. I’m sitting on a park bench. It’s sunny. Nobody’s bothering me. My tummy is still full from breakfast: kimchee and noodle soup I bought from the Asian supermarket for 86¢.

But an hour ago I was contemplating packing my bags and leaving early, now that I have my Deutsch Zertifikat, i.e. the only thing I needed to accomplish here. I’m not going to because one I’m not a quitter and two I know the second I pass through customs at JFK and find myself surrounded by Americans I’ll regret it.

But it’s been lonely here. In New Jersey and Paris I have at least a handful of friends I can call and make plans with. I don’t take advantage of this as much as I should perhaps, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone two whole weeks without seeing anyone I’d consider a friend, not since the last summer I spent in Dobelinik when I was sixteen. I’ve had the same conversation—Hi, I’m Rose, I’m from Canada/France/Poland, where are you from?—with strangers at the hostel probably about twenty times now. But that’s the extent of my social interaction so far for this month.

Earlier this summer I read Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert (which I recommend you read to by the way), in which she describes how hellish it can be bumming around a foreign country with a roof over your head yet no place to call home. She was in Southeast Asia and had to do things like travel between cities in a bus full of chickens, so she had more to complain about than I do.

But I totally get when she was saying about how much it sucks not to have your own space. I sleep on a bottom bunk so close to a top bunk that I can’t sit upright. I’m almost never in the room by myself so when I’m sleeping it’s almost certain that someone will come in and wake me up, and when I have to go in the room to get something it’s almost certain that I’ll have to be quiet and rummage around in the dark because someone is already in the room sleeping. To use anything—the shower, the sink, an outlet, silverware—there’s probably going to be a wait. I can buy groceries to save a few Euros, but there’s no guarantee that there will be space in the fridge for them, and then no guarantee that someone won’t eat or throw away my food once I leave the kitchen. As you’d expect there are people in the hostel from all over the world, which is cool but also means that everyone has their own culturally specific idea of how to conduct one’s self properly. And then of course there are those who are drunk and on vacation and, unlikely to run into anyone of us again. That’s the only reason I can think of why anyone would organize a sing-along with bongos at three in the morning, or cook a meal with every communal pot and pan and then not clean up after themselves. Living here reminds me of living in the dorms of a party school, minus the pretext of school.

Well, that was my rant, thanks for listening. To my Jersey friends, I’ll see you next week, and believe me, I’m looking forward to it.    

This is my fifth time in Berlin and I’ve done the free walking tour three times now, which is where all of my knowledge of German history comes from. So I’m not an expert, but I think I’ve finally figured out that what I love so much about Berlin is the extent to which it has reformed itself in such a short time. Just a generation ago life here was pretty dismal and two generations ago I would certainly not have been welcome here. But today Berlin is a green, left-leaning, cultural melting pot, and it comforts me to know that a city is capable of such a turnaround. I can’t think of a way to say this that isn’t cheesy, but if Berlin is capable of such self-improvement, then maybe there’s hope for the rest of the world. Berlin makes me feel like someday I’ll be something more than a wannabe writer who’s always in need of a nap and a visa.

And this is why I think it’s such a shame that the only mention of Germany in my American education (until I got to high school and elected to take German) was about Nazis. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have taught us about the Holocaust; of course they should have. But at the risk of sounding cynical, I’ll admit that I don’t believe that Holocaust education was built into our curriculum for the right reasons, or the reason out teachers gave us: So that it (genocide) never happens again. First of all that’s a load of crap because it did happen again, repeatedly, and is never discussed. But I also think that Americans extensively study--dare I say dwell on—the Holocaust because it not only distracts from our own unsavory history but also fits with the narrative that America is the best country in the world. History as we learn it clings to an era when this might have been true. We love to say “Look at these incompetent Europeans and the atrocities they committed. Look at how much help they needed, and how wonderful we were being by providing that help.”

But we never (outside of my German electives) stopped talking about Nazis to have an honest discussion about modern Germany and modern America, and how each country treats the environment, foreign policy or its own citizens. Because such a discussion would make it painfully obvious that America is, in fact, no longer number one.

But anyway, besides the free walking tour I’ve encountered a few obstacles in doing things I’ve wanted to do. It’s totally possible to eat well in Berlin with 10 Euros a day, and if you’re willing to eat the same thing every day it doesn’t even require any planning. But I used my googling skills and planned out where I could go to sample all kinds of cuisines whilst sticking to my budget. The problem is that three of these places so far are closed, either permanently or for the summer. I wanted to climb the Reichstag, but turns out I would have had to register for that weeks ago. (Every other time I’ve been to Berlin you just had to show up and wait in a ridiculously long line.) Oh, and Museum Island isn’t actually free on Thursday nights, even though an English website and my French guidebook both said otherwise. But I’m still having as much fun as one can have alone. And given that I can’t be in France, and will be at the beach in less than ten days, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than Berlin for the moment.            

I’m in Berlin now in religious exile. Actually, that’s probably an offensive thing to say. Sorry, let me explain. The reason I am no longer in Paris is because it’s Ramadan. Ader and I decided it’s just better if we don’t live together while he’s fasting. We did last year, and it was terrible because for most of the time my neighbor from New Jersey was in Paris with his high school students. They mercifully kept me busy all day and I could stay with them until nine something at night, at which point I went home with cupcakes or seaweed salad or whatever else I was craving. At night we ate and said and did whatever we wanted without stopping to consider how god would feel about it until morning.

But the days that we were sharing a confined physical space were pretty miserable. If I ate or drank anything when I knew that Ader couldn’t I felt terrible. When I didn’t eat or drink anything I felt terrible. I was reluctant talk, because I didn’t want to say anything that wasn’t allowed, because I didn’t completely understand the rules. Ader also didn’t have a lot to say to me either except occasionally asking me to put more clothes on (until the fast was over and he was back to his normal self). If I had to describe our relationship to someone who didn’t know us, I’d probably start by saying that we’re very affectionate and we love cooking/eating together. So if we can’t have any physical contact or meals together I’d rather juts not be there.

Even though I know it’s better this way it still kind of hurts that Ader would rather observe Ramadan than be with me for two more weeks. I know it sounds ridiculous to some people that I’m complaining that he’s choosing god over me. But from my perspective, he’s choosing something imaginary over me, his flesh and blood girlfriend. Oh well, I guess I should just be happy I found someone who makes me so happy, who’s willing to look my most irritating personality traits, and who gets along so well with everyone else I love. Getting to be with him all the time is I believe that’s what’s referred to as having your cake and eating it too, which is apparently not allowed.

So instead of eating my cake I’m in Kreuzberg eating falafel and seitan currywurst and patiently waiting for the sun and wishing my time away.