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.