May moves to June in Berlin. It’s been raining and raining for days, but the forecast looks like a little sun is on the way. Thank God!
Benjamin and I spent this past weekend looking for apartments, meeting with friends, making new friends, and doing some pretty fun people-watching. I will write about the apartment search later, because we are still waiting to hear if our application was accepted for this totally gorgeous place, and I am too excited and nervous. I am also trying to stay hopeful as it is competitive here.
So I will instead describe some of the nice moments we’ve had with people here. I must begin with a little one I am affectionately naming “kaleidoscope girl.” As Benjamin and I sat outdoors at an Indian restaurant, this little girl, couldn’t have been more than three years old, toddled by, very, very slowly. She was wearing a red kerchief on her head, and she was holding two kaleidoscopes up to her eyes as she tried to walk. She’d put both of them up to her eyes, pull one away and look at only one, shift to the other one, and change again, all the while trying to walk and giggling with delight. She then went up to a young man sitting near us, total stranger, but she didn’t care, and handed him a kaleidoscope. It was like she was saying, “Aw man, you gotta see this.” The nice younger man did as she asked, smiled, and handed the toy back to her. She smiled and kept doing her goofy little walk. Her mother patiently watched shrugging her shoulders and smiling too. “Kaleidoscope girl, wherever you are, thank you. You made my afternoon.”
Brunch at Butter was really nice this past Sunday too. Julie and Brendan introduced us to two new friends, Aubrey and Terril. I hope I am close with the spelling of their names. Aubrey is a SoundClouder too and a total sparkle face. She’s really animated when she tells stories, and she’s very funny. Terril is a sweetheart, and I immediately liked her because she said she loved to diagram sentences. Aubrey joked that we should get together one night for wine and sentence diagramming, but I am grammar geek enough to do this for real. Anyway, I hope we can hang out with them again.
Another nice new meet was Sophie, an intern at SoundCloud.
She went with us to view the apartment (the one we really really want), and she helped tremendously! She interpreted for us, asked questions, and then helped us fill out the rental application. We did this paperwork at a cafe called Suicide Sue. Again, this is another fantastic place to eat and write–great music, great coffee, great bread with all kinds of yummy fruit and vegetable spreads. Sophie was so nice and patient with us. It was an absolute pleasure to meet her and a complete comfort in this process of relocation that seemingly goes on and on and on.
AND ON that note, I will close. Hopefully, my next entry will be about an apartment, or our plans for our first trip out of country. We are seriously thinking it’s going to be Prague for a long weekend/summer trip. We shall see…for now I dream of balconies…
