Hello, Stranger

While wandering around the city, I have at times been stopped by people who have questions. Most of this happens when I'm sitting on a bench at the Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz, the source of my free wireless internet [why the Sony Center offers free wireless, I have no idea. It's not like using their internet is going to make me buy the overpriced food at the Sony Center cafes. Well, one time it did.]. But most of the people without laptops in the Sony Center are in some way interested in, or confused by, the number of people sitting around, typing away or talking to their computers through microphones. So people will come up to me and ask, in a variety of languages and accents, what all the typing people are doing. And I tell them, and sometimes they understand me. Some people broach the conversation in awkward German despite their obvious American/British/Australian citizenship, and I answer them in German, and very rarely do they understand me.

But in other places, for example: walking down Unter Den Linden, there is less call for strangers stopping other strangers to ask questions. Which means that when this does happen, it's usually fairly interesting. The people who stopped to talk to me on Unter den Linden were two kids about my age, German-speaking but kind of mumbly, so I didn't at first understand exactly what they were on about. Their initial attitude - the gestures of lostness and vague needing-of-help that caused me to stop and try to look helpful - belied the fact that they were not actually confused tourists, but kids on a mission to have me join their bible study group. Now, I have absolutely nothing against Bible study groups in general - I don't go out of my way to go to them, but I have accompanied friends to similar events at times in the past - but it's a pretty huge assumption that a random person walking in the middle of a big city, especially on a heavily touristed street, is (A) a resident of the city, (B) lives somewhere close to wherever this study group takes place, (C) is, if religious in the first place, not already a member of some other study group, and (D) is going to be trusting/stupid/naive enough to join a group of strangers who wander the streets in search of a congregation. They really did look like nice kids, and maybe they meant well despite their very dubious methods of druming up interest in their group, but I told them that I would'nt be here much longer, and went on my way.

There was some other weird sidewalk exchange, but I can't remember it now, so I'll close with some highlights and finds of the past week:

1. literally steps down the street from our apartment: a restaurant that has 10'' pizzas and bowls of decent pasta for 2.90 each. That's almost definitely cheaper than me buying ingredients and making food on my own. Yes!

2. at the intersection 3 minutes south of us: a cafe and bar called MANOLO, run by very flamboyantly gay men who seemed to be confused by the idea of "coffee," despite having an extensive menu of coffee drinks - they interpreted my order of a cappuccino and a mocha as: first, just a cappuccino; second, just an espresso; third, just a mocha; fourth, as a cappuccino and a mocha with whipped cream, despite a conversation we had during the third iteration in which i expressed a preference for foamed milk, and no cream. The words for "cappuccino," "mocha," and "espresso," incidentally, are the same in German as in English, which makes sense, as they are Italian words.

3. many, many versions of a stand called "Mister Miller's Hot Dogs" that sells horrible combinations of American-style hot dogs and twisted, pseudo-American toppings (please don't get Jeremy started about the "chilli sauce"), seeming to completely fail to realize that Germany, and therefore Berlin as well, offers numerous delicious types of Wurst, including some that area similar to but far better than American hot dogs. Also, the Imbiss that is widely agreed to make the best takeaway Wurst in the city is directly across the street from one of the MMHD locations. Mysterious!

4. This is actually a mystery I've since figured out, but for the first week here I was a little confused by the sheer number of women trying to maneuver baby carriages and strollers through stores. I was once completely unable to enter a grocery store because a woman was attempting to push her double-wide twin stroller in through the entrance. It's not that more people have small children in Berlin than elsewhere, or that there are fewer babysitters available - it occurred to me as I watched, for the 20th time, the spectacle of a woman lifting a stroller onto a subway train that practically no one drives here, so mothers can't just transfer their kids from carseats to the kid seat on shopping carts.

5. Cheddar cheese: while available in a few select places (huge cheese store near us!!), it is pretty uniformly horrible. Apparently, all of the sharp or even slightly more interesting than mild cheddar is still kept out of Germany by some antiquated clause in the Marshall plan, or maybe England is hoarding the good stuff for iteself. If you come visit, bring sharp cheddar!