How Deutsch Is It?

French culture is fetishized in the United States to a point of absurdity. Just a glance at the most-emailed New York Times articles will make one feel that the French are better at dressing, eating, parenting than you. Once I was in Paris and overheard a girl telling her friend "I just love Parisien girls because they're feminists but they're also into dressing well." We project our wildest fantasies on to France, while choosing to ignore the rise of anti-immigrant parties Le Penn. Croissants! Cute streets! Lalalalala!

Germany is another story. The prevailing assumption among U.S. editors seems to be that the public lacks a similar fascination for the cultural habits of Germanic people. German culture is hardly ever analyzed on a scale similar to French culture, besides a few articles here and there about the country's fondness for thrift shopping. More often than not, the article will find a way to tie a cultural trend to the country grappling with World War 2 or right wing extremists. Perhaps that's to be expected. But I still feel what's missing is real cultural engagement with Germany. I mean, the country has emerged as the strongest economy on the continent and the only articles about it are about the debt crisis? So much is being missed. What I'd really like is for this blog to become a conduit for discussing what's really happening in Germany. How has immigration affected the country's identity? How do people relate to American culture? Jewish culture? What might the U.S. learn from how Germany treats gay people? What about taxes and capitalism...how are they regulated here? What about guns?

I've spent so long in Berlin and only now do I find myself with oodles of free time for exploring what it means to actually be here. I hope you'll continue to read as I explore what the fuck Germany stands for these days. I'll try my best to bring you stories that are moving, heartfelt and revalant. Stick with me here!

Mykonos!

So Greece has been in the news a lot recently, and not for good reasons. The birthplace of democracy, and famed exporter of dolmatas and charmingly long last names, has been ridiculed as a place with a shitty work ethic, enormously overpaid state-employees and a blushingly bad credit history. Anyone who listened to This American Life's "Continental Breakup" episode knows that there are construction projects in the country that were started 15 years ago, still languishing under the Mediterranean sun, as well as an ever-increasing poverty rate, and a whole lot of resentment towards the German autocrats who want to keep the country from borrowing their way into a new debt hole.

What's interesting about actually traveling to Greece is analyzing how the crisis actually affects ordinary Greek people's lives. After all, pitying Greeks is a whole lot easier (meaning lazier) than trying to understand all the messy undertones of life there. Greece is not just a country with failing banks and inept politicians; it's also one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. And throughout my admittedly brief trip to Mykonos, an island famed for celebrity sitings and gay beaches, I couldn't figure out whether I should feel good or bad for the Greek people. Yes, yes, the economy is a mess, but life goes on. And life is often beautiful in Greece.

I'm aware of the fact that any armchair anthropology I perform here will be severly limited by the short time I spent in the country, my own romanticism for warm locations and the fact that I was traveling from the cold and soggy city of Berlin, but more than understand the psyche of Greeks I mostly just want to explain to you, in the most emphatic terms, like a travel agent on crack, why you should forget absolutely everything you've read about the supposed looming breakup of the European Union and go to Greece immediately.

After landing in the miniscule Mykonos airport, my boyfriend and I were picked up by Yannis, the propetier of a hotel called Omiros. Yannis was a charming and tan 30-something man with a buoyant air. He asked about our lives in Berlin and we answered somewhat hesitantly, suddenly aware of the politics of being residents of Germany traveling in Greece. But our fears were completely unfounded as Yannis told us his own tails of traveling around Berlin; he'd even stayed in our neighborhood of Kreuzberg. "Lots of gays there," he noted. "Lots of gays here, too." Then Yannis turned around in his chair winked at us from the driver's seat, narrowly missing a motorcyclist. 

As his minivan rounded the tightly cornered roads hugging this mountainous island, the contrast between this vacation destination and Germany began to sink in. The discombobulating experience of jetting over the Mediterranean and landing in a completely separate world in a mere two hours provides an addictive rush. Like smoking a joint, every minute spent in an entirely new place feels like its own discreet bubble in time; the world slows down so that you can soak in every new detail.

Bright white houses and dazzling turqoise waters: the contrast was intoxicating. I think I let out my first real breath in 24 hours when we pulled up to the hotel. It was exactly the way it was portrayed in the pictures on Trip Advisor, and I almost gasped thinking about the fact that I would soon have the exact same view staring back at me as I saw in the pictures. I grabbed Eyal.

"What. The. Fuck," I said, eloquently.

"I KNOW," he responded.

Both of us sat, mouths gaping, as Yannis opened the door. The hotel, for which we were paying an insanely reasonable $95 a night, was perched on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. A white catamaran floated by as I entertained dreams of purchasing the entire coastline. The sultry warm air enveloped both of us in a bear hug and I almost died of a happiness heart attack right then and there. I felt like Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love, minus the Medicine man and delusions of enlightenment.

The days which followed consisted of startlingly little. We woke up, went to the beach, sat on our asses, came home, showered, ate, went out for a drink. On the second night, we found ourselves out on the town with two chatty women from the East Coast. We made our way through the white stucco labirynth shopping district and found a quiet restaurant.

These girls would not shut up about their jobs! You just cannot take America out of Americans. But it was fun to talk trashy TV with equally devoted fans. Additionally, it was fun to turn my relationship into a Jewish stand-up routine with the kind of schticky humor that Germans would never appreciate. I wish I could encapsulate the schtick for you right now, but I don't remember the specifics. Suffice to say, it was funny enough that I felt simultaneously proud and embarrassed before, during and after. Weirdly, these are feelings I associate with a successful comedy routine.

Weirder still, I was super happy all the time. Like, maniacally happy. One thing about being happy is that when it happens, you always want to investigate and find out why. So you narrow down all the usual suspects -- Sun: check. Fantasies that you're in an Abba music video: check. A gaggle of intelligent, funny women: check. A charming, loving, warm boyfriend face to stare at: check, check, check.

Naturally, I wish I could repeat Mykonos over and over again. I wish I was there right now, honestly. I would happily be buried there just to force my family to visit the damn place (is that morbid? DON'T CARE). And now, of course, whenever I read about the Greek crisis and imagine German readers tsking their papers, I think: you (anonymous stranger) obviously haven't been to Mykonos. Because you wouldn't pity anyone who lived there. In fact, they are much happier than you.

And obviously, I'm sure the story is completely different in Athens, and that's a whole 'nother blog post but DAMN: MYKONOS. YOU ARE SO FINE.

Having a Mental Illness is Not the Same As Having a Gun

I'm into having a rousing debate about the state of mental health services in America, but the difference between debating guns and debating treatment for the mentally ill is immense. Guns are literally engineered to kill people. Mentally ill people are people -- with hopes, frustrations and needs. Many have been failed by their community, parents and the government. 

I know I shouldn't be shocked that the way Fox News has jumped into the mental health care debate in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings shows an utter disregard for mentally ill people as people, and instead characterizes them as ticking time bombs waiting to explode and shoot everyone in their vicinity, but it's endlessly frustrating nonetheless.

After shamefully burying the debate over gun control, Fox is now convinced the way to prevent another Sandy Hook is to institutionalize more people with mental illness.  

The tragedy in Connecticut has reopened a difficult debate over whether states should be allowed to involuntarily commit the mentally ill.  

The trend over the decades has been to release mental health patients, with a number of court cases restricting involuntary commitment. Last week’s deadly rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School exposed cracks and inconsistencies within the nation’s mental health system. Many say that until those problems are fixed, it’s only a matter of time before another national nightmare unfolds. 

Ironically, a Connecticut mental health bill calling for changes that could have taken someone like shooter Adam Lanza off the streets was defeated earlier this year in the state legislature. 

Fox News then goes on to talk about how little money is given to states to help people with mental disabilities (most of whom are not psycho killers). But it's because of Fox News's RELENTLESS focus on government-expenditures-as-the-root-of-all-evil that makes it harder for states to pass comprehensive mental health reform in the first place.

The answer is not to commit every bipolar schizophrenic person to a mental hospital. We need more money for social workers, therapists and doctors. We need to provide parents of the mentally-ill with more state support. We need well-run hospitals that can provide better care. We need people who can SPOT mental health problems that may lead to violence. And all of this requires raising taxes -- which is exactly what Fox News has been rallying against.

But now that mental illness is seen as a national security threat, Fox News believes money should be thrown to mental hospitals. It's kind of like, "Oh, now that someone blew up the World Trade Center, everyone who's brown needs to submit to a full body check." GUYS, WHAT THE FUCK.

Let's focus just a BIT on what Lanza was able to get his hands on: a GUN. Crazy people can't kill without a weapon. Demonizing the hundreds of thousands of people with mental illness in America and stoking fears of them rising up and killing everyone is just going to cause more pain for innocent people.  

Want to know why so many people suffer from mental illness? Let's look at our society. Let's look at how alienated our young people feel. It's easy to just say "lock up all the depressed / paranoid / schizophrenic people out there!!!" but much harder to take a broader look at the systemic issues in our society which may have lead to the massacre. 

And while we're doing that, let's get rid of guns for god's sake. 

If someone with a mental illness threatens to hurt themselves or others, mental health professionals should know about it. But let's stop demonizing people with mental disabilities, and making sweeping generalizations about them. The only generalizations we can really make are about guns. They're designed to kill. People are infinitely more complex. As we grapple with the immensity of the shootings, let's not jump to conclusions about the mentally ill. 

Nazis, Wedgies and Waterslides -- My Trip to Tropical Islands

Tropical Islands -- AKA"Europe's largest tropical holiday world!" -- is filled with a myriad of things, including Germany's tallest water slide, hot-air balloons, rides (AKA a slight jostling while seated) tipis, Mayan temples (not real), and clouds (totes not real).

Remember that scene in the Truman Show when Jim Carrey's character opened a small door in a wall painted with clouds? Well, spend a day at Tropical Island and eventually you'll want to pull a Jim Carrey and escape its fake, plastic world, too.

Why did I feel like I was in a Russian commercial for Disneyland? And how many Pina Coladas would I have to drink before it felt fun?

Like most attractions in Germany (even heavily-marketed family-friendly vacation destinations, apparently), Tropical Islands has a bloody history. The area surrounding the park was first used by the Nazis as an airfield, then taken over by the Red Army as a training ground for fighter planes. 10 years after the reunification of Germany, a company called Cargolifter AG decided to use the site to create world's largest airship hanger.

Construction began in 2000 on what would become the world's largest building (by volume). 360 meters long, 210 meters wide and 107 meters high, the hanger was large enough to contain the Eiffel Tower. But apparently the market for Zeppelins was not enough to sustain Cargolifter, and the company went bankrupt soon after the building was completed. Seizing the opportunity to own such an enormous building, a Malaysian company called Tanjong installed the world's largest tropical indoor resort inside of it because really, why the fuck not?

(Pic from Lightstalkers.org)

But no matter how hard you try to keep your eyes below tree line at Tropical Island, you can never quite forget you're inside a giant hanger. The scenery comes close, but not quite close enough, to add up to something greater than the sum of its parts; a strawberry daiquiri might help, but they're 8 euros. A more convincing wall of clouds might also help, but that would cost 5,000 more euros, and you're basically next door to Poland so stop complaining (no offense, Poland).

After spending about an hour trying to find a comfortable way of "enjoying" the fake beach, my boyfriend and I gave up and made our way to the water slides.

I was climbing up the stairs to the water slide when I decided I wanted to climb down them instead so I could see Eyal's face as he emerged from the tallest water slide of them all. Called simply "Water Slide A," it was a covered blue slide which curved around the structure like a snake. It was so fast that when someone slid down it, the entire staircase shook.

I suddenly really wanted to see Eyal's face after experiencing that kind of insanity, so I switched directions and walked down the stairs, clutching the railings. But the stairs were covered with water. That's when I lost control of my feet and, like an old lady, slid down a dozen wet, steel stairs until I hit my knee on a pole. I tried to get up but my leg was numb and tingly, like a prosthesis. I watched helplessly as a thin stream of blood weaved its way down my kneecap, through the metal stairs and (probably) on to someone's head.

The rest of the day was spent clutching my leg, limping, and enduring the sting of chlorine to gain access to the pools. I'm a loser.

But still, I can say this: tropical Islands is weeeeeird. And oddly unsatisfying.

An entire day could be spent searching for a convincing illusion of paradise. Walking through the park's "rainforest" was kind of like watching a film and constantly seeing the boom mics above the actors or McDonald's golden arches peeking through a studio set supposed to look like the desert: no matter where you looked, you could see not only the beautiful lush greenery but also the ugly airport hanger behind it.

The German design team tried to take their cues from Walt Disney, but it's hard to create multiple themed lands on a limited budget so you see lots of symbolism jutting up against each other; one area that's themed like a beach side bar sits adjacent to a shack house made of sheet metal. Poverty chic meets island resort. Perhaps they're aiming for some commentary on globalization? It's hard to tell.

Next time I want to spend 10 hours in an artificial universe with a bunch of people I don't know, I'll just watch TV.

I'm Back, Bitches!

After nearly a year hiatus, I'm entering back into Blogger mode to tell jokes to myself, entertain Internet strangers and try to turn tragic events into comedic gold. I hope you'll ignore the rest of the web and listen to me a few minutes a day.

When we left off, my ass had just landed in Berlin (on the Alexanderplatz TV tower to be exact [I died and my ghost is now speaking through me]) and I was musing about the charming cultural differences between Deutschland and my native Seattle. "Germans are so sophisticated and shiny!" I think I wrote. How embarrassing. There will be no more generalities on this blog. I will no longer speak in awe of "Europe," that hot mess, and will instead try to speak truthfully about my experiences here since, you know, I've now been living here for two years. I should know some stuff by now ( I hope).

I've thought a lot about what I want this blog to be (over the past five minutes) and I think I would like it to clearly articulate the experience of being an American Generation Xer (or Yer, or whatever the hell all us broke kids are called) who skipped out of town to live in a city where poverty is seen as slightly less god awful, and slightly more romantic. Berlin, after all, is a proudly thrifty city (I'm currently sitting on Ikrappa furniture. Berlin would literally not exist without cheap Swedish crap).

So guten tag! Hallo! Ach so, genau and Tschuss! Hallo fellow broke Americans. Should you move to Berlin, too? I DON'T KNOW. Read this blog as we explore what it's like to be a poor European artiste (who still religiously watches American TV shows online). What is it like to live on cheap European food and fart in chic European yoga studios after eating such food? How romantic is it to take your lover to a big beautiful European lake and then realize it was where Hitler ordered all the Jews to go and die? How can you irrigate your nasal passages during the dark and dreary Berlin winter? ALL WILL BE REVEALED.

"Scares Away the Rats" ....Pt. 2!

First, I have to tell you about the plane ride. Glory of glories, I was sitting next to someone with post-nasal drip. The term "post-nasal drip" has never made sense to me. When did "pre-Nasal drip" happen? Now we're suddenly over it?

Anyway, if you ever find yourself sitting next to someone who feels the urge to snort his snot back up into his nose every couple minutes, don't make the situation more frustrating for yourself by counting the time that has elapsed between each snort. Just do the normal thing and listen to music on your iPod really loudly for seven hours or until he falls asleep.

By the time the digital version of the plane is hovering over Dusseldorf, I am comatose. When we arrive in Berlin, I am practically dead. Suffice to say, It takes me a bit of time before I settle into my life in Berlin. I am SO jetlagged. Not like the kind of jetlagged where you go to sleep really early one night and wake up really late the next morning and feel groggy but drink an espresso and get over it, but the kind of jetlagged where you lay incapacitated in your hostel bed for almost three entire days, only taking little breaks to down a gatorade and grab a croissant.

The short Italian man in the bunk above mine seems to share my restless sleepy temperament. With every twist and turn, every change from cadaver to fetal to cadaver and back again, he seems to move in a synchronized fashion. We are like the Naavi in Avatar, communicating through bedspreads and steel springs instead of hair. It is uncomfortable, and awkward, to see him in the morning, standing above me and putting on deodorant, his crotch in my face, knowing he'd heard me whimper a little bit the night before as my exhausted body continued to refuse to fall asleep.

The hostel room smells like dudes who smell like rotting Subway sandwiches. And halitosis. And death. The first thing I do after I've roused myself into consciousness is go and get a drink. It's 9 am but I can hear bleeps and bloops emanating from a locked wooden door about fifty feet away from the hostel entrance. I sit down in the bar and order a vodka orange juice from the supermodel bartender. She pours half a glass of vodka into my drink, mixes it with orange juice, asks me for three euros and then runs off to dance suggestively with a woman who looks like her sister. Then someone offers me acid. It's 9 am! This is, weirdly, the moment when I fall back in love with Berlin.

I wander dazedly out of the bar and spot two gays kanoodling over espresso. I stare at them as I'm walking and almost trip over a bike. There are old ladies schmoozing, tatooed hipsyers locking up their bikes, tall, skinny women riding bikes with little wooden carts filled with screaming children attached. I welcome myself to Europe.

I sit down at a restaurant and order a salad. "Salad? Do you speak English?" I ask the waitress with the requisite amount of shame one should feel for not knowing the language in a place you have flown thousands of miles to live in. "No, I don't speak any English," the woman says to me in perfect English. Then she smiles. "What do you want?"

I'd bought a German to English translation book written by Rick Steves- a proud monolinguist -but half the book was about beer. I could ask for an obscure lager but was still at a loss when it came to telling someone they looked sexy. However, I was actually enjoying not knowing the language. Life is so much more exciting when all you have to work with are the wild gestures and emotive facial expressions of an out-of-commission mine.

After ordering, I look at the pictures in a German newspaper sitting next to me. "La la la," I think to myself as I stare at the pictures.

The man next to me feels around his butt. It suddenly occurs to me that I am not reading some newspaper left to the population by a benevolent cradle-to-grave socialist country for general perusing, but this man's newspaper that he bought with his own cash money. I apologize and give it back to him, miming the universal expression of regret.

My food arrives but instead of eating it, I stare into the crowd of people sitting lazily about, munching on croissants, talking, laughing. "This is the life!" I think to myself and renounce all the epiphanies I'd had in New York about the importance of hard work and dedication.

I end up staying at the hostel for over a week. Staying in a hostel for such long periods of time is kind of like enrolling yourself in an international speed-dating service. Everyone starts with the typical questions ("Where are you from? What are you doing here?") but eventually you find yourself courting new friends and romanticizing their home countries. "France, wow, such a beautiful country," you say, attempting to conjure memories of the trip you took with your family when you still claimed you were straight.

Eventually, I meet two Israelis who seem fun.

"Hey, you're a gay right?" one of them asks me.

"What do you think of this shirt?"

"I think it's fucking ugly. Wear that one," I say.

"Hey, all right! That was a good tip, man! Yeah, you're good!"

I feel comfortably bitchy around them. The boys have a series of catch phrases they repeat, probably because they don't feel like coming up with actual English sentences around me.

"I don't give a fuck," is stated was frequently and emphatically as in a reality television show. South Park episodes were quoted with reverence. This was going to be a long night.

One of the first things we do is visit Alexanderplatz, home of Berlin's television tower. Soaring much higher than the space needle, but crowned with an orb that looks like Epcot, the building initially looks like a piece of space junk that just happened to land in the capitol of Germany.


TO BE CONTINUED!!!

Oh, By the Way...

The reason I haven't been writing here is because I've been writing over here. Come read about art!

Hallo, Vas Is Up?

i cannot stop trying to sound like bruno here.

it all started with a music poster which said "vas is worldmusic?" i thought the poster was so silly (because, uhm, world music is world music, aka "music of the world" aka "music made by non-white people") so i started thinking in my head "vas is worldmusic" like all day long because it was bizzare and also i'm trying to learn german so i could file it under the part of my brain that was reserved for "new and exciting information". but i can't stop thinking in bruno's accent. which is actually a fairly accurate depiction of a flamboyant gay german accent.

besides old people and babies (such classics) there are many other things i enjoy laughing at here. i was horrified to find german country music at a gay club, but after i'd sat around for a while i just found it funny. it's amazing to hear the german accent in a dolly parton type song.

some things also get amazingly lost in translation. there's an asian restaurant here called "rice queen" which, in america, is a derogatory term for an older gay man who likes younger asian boys, though i doubt the owners have realized that. the restaurant (i kid you not!) is right next to another restaurant called "papa no." it kills me.

people from every corner of the planet live here. french people are probably my favorite. watching french children eat food is hilarious. they are so dainty with their forks! such cultured children, even at a young age. how do they know how to hold their knives. christ, they even rest the fork and knife on the plate after they're done. when i try doing that, the fork and knife fall to the ground and i laugh because this is what american people do: we fuck up and laugh. these kids are something else, though.

there are sex shops EVERYWHERE. there are like five gay saunas next to my apartment. i went once and stared at the porn on the walls and left. good story right? another time i asked the man behind the counter if i could buy a bottle of water and he looked at me like i was an alien. i want to think of a good gay sex club joke. i want to find something funny about sex shops, but maybe theyre actually just kind of sad? yeah, that might be true.

germans LOVE techno. everywhere sounds like a gay club. i'll be eating falaffel at a schwarma shop and have a gay club flashback mid-bite-of-chicken because the turkish owner of the shop is in lurv with an obscure lady gaga remix.

germans are lazy. relatively speaking. either that or americans are workaholics. i oscillate between thinking one is true, then the other, then both.

germans are effortlessly creative. this is what i've decided. at some point in their lives, some representative from MOMA sat them down and told them how to decorate their living rooms, then they traded a blowjob for excellent fashion advice from michael kors, and then they decided they were "over" all that and created living rooms and wardrobes that were somehow even more sophisticated than anything in america. seriously, i walk into apartments and i feel like i'm a model in a catalogue. i want a life.

germans roll their eyes when you say you're an american, but there's still a lot of love there. you just have to talk about obama and the differences between red states and blue cities. then you're in.

i need to learn german.

i miss u!

Scares Away the Rats

"A gay," the woman chewed the word over for a minute. "A Jew. A gay Jew."

"You are Jewish, but you are also a gay," she explained to me. A lengthy pause. "Vow."

The drunken elderly lady stared deeply into the infinite and confounding space between her face and mine.

"Vas is innn your book bag?"

"A book."

"Vow."

I resisted the urge to feel flattered. Usually, when people remark on my specialness, I blush, thank them, and try to impress them with more fun facts (most people won't press if you tell them the third nipple is on your butt). But I was a tough New Yorker now. I didn't divulge my life story to just anyone.

My childhood friend, now behind the bar, made a bug-eyed face at me. I could tell she was debating over how much she wanted to help me out and how much she wanted me to experience the crazy she deals with every day.

"Izzz zhaatt soccherr?" the woman asked, pointing at a screen depicting men kicking balls on a field. She threw her body against the back of her chair in mock shock. "Is Spain in zee orange shirts?"

I went back to reading my book and when I turned around, she was slumped in her chair, almost falling off. I shot her a concerned look and she laughed at me. I turned back around.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry for making fun of you."

Then she fell off the chair.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god what do I do?" I called to Jane.

"She falls down all the time."

This was not the first moment I ended up relishing because it felt like Authentic New York.

Later that day, after I had transformed myself into a quintessential cliche NYC tourist - buying a soft-pretzel, humming Alicia Key's "Empire State of Mind" song and meandering around M&M World - I arrived back at my friend Julia's place in Crown Heights. It was around 1:30 AM and a gaggle of Jamaicans were still playing chess under a "No Loitering" sign. Julia was such a pro at having guests over that she didn't even look phased by the fact that I was coming home so late. She held the door open for me and a haggard looking man who said he required apartment entry so he could "go find his girl." He followed us up the first flight of stairs and then wandered into a dark corner.

When we reached her apartment, Julia pounded the floorboards with her bare feet.

"Scares away the rats," she explained, matter-of-factly.

This deeply impressed me.

Okay, so I was not on the "Sex and the City" tour of Carrie Bradshaw's favorite vabrator stores, but I'd still spent a portion of the day like a naive outsider, praying I'd see Liz Lemon's character in Rockafeller Center. These were the kinds of experiences that made one feel like a clueless Midwestern tourist. Witnessing Julia's fairly nonchalant attitude towards rodent infestation, on the other hand, gave me the realest picture of the city yet.

Excusing moments after branding them with the "authentic" label was something I had also done, exuberantly, while hanging out with my friend Stephanie. Stephanie had seemed harried and had big dark circles under her eyes when I visited her in her diminutive apartment in the East Village but I quickly convinced myself that she was having a totally enviable New York experience. The dark circles were proof of this. I had not a shred of compassion for her; she was living the dream.

I had always held fast to the idea that traveling permanently altered your internal hard-wiring, and now my wires had been re-arranged into a large F circuit, for failure. Failure to become an authentic, hard-working, stressed out New Yorker.

Just as it had taken me a long time to come to grips with the fact that simply setting foot in Chelsea does not a more fabulous gay man make, I was slowly coming to grips with the fact that simply meandering around the streets of New York was not turning me into a more interesting person. I'd have to get one of those job thingies. But what were my skills? The greatest thing about living in Seattle was that I didn't really have to prove myself. If I lost my job, I'd have to move back in with my parents. But I didn't mind watching Oprah on their couch. Unemployment in New York meant being eaten alive by pigeons in some Bushwick alley. Not applying myself was not an option.

The next morning I took the subway back into the city. As I strained to listen to an episode of "This American Life" over the screech of the train, I began to think of ways of simulating a New York life in a less expensive city. Maybe I could rent an apartment under train tracks in Philadelphia, open a bagel shop that doubled as a comedy club and pay people to be slightly rude to me.

I must admit, at this point in the story, that I hadn't expected to fall so masochistically in love with New York. My plan, essentially unalterable due to the price of plane tickets, was to leave New York for Berlin in a week.

"Why Berlin?" I can still hear my mother's voice in my head. I had traveled to Berlin a year ago and had loved it but couldn't find a way to explain my love to those in what that they call the "Post-Holocaust" generation. Like an Arab in love with Noah's lox shmear, mine was a culturally-inconvenient adoration. You should have seen the expression on my mother's face when I had handed her the Lonely Planet Berlin guide book.

"Look at all the great shopping!"

"This is a page on Hitler's bunker."

"Oh my god."

Let's get one thing straight: I do not have a Hitler fetish. Let's get another thing straight: the shopping in Berlin is incredible.

After a week in New York, I packed up my bags and headed for JFK with Julia. As she fiddled with her car's iPod, narrowly missing a crowd of Hasids, I attempted to prepare myself for this new lederehosened leg of my trip.

Traveling from Seattle to New York meant preparing myself for the smell of human feces, rotting garbage and the crippling anguish of monetary-inferiority complex. Traveling to Berlin, on the other hand, meant preparing myself for sophistication-deficit disorder.

I tried to adopt a cool but detached look in the airport security line that signaled someone who was over it. I imagined that, if any Berliners asked me what I thought of Obama, I'd reply "I like him, but let's not make a religion out of it." I'd be in the clear unless Germans watched Bill Maher.

Still, it was hard to concentrate when I was having panic attacks about being rendered mute. I still knew no German! I didn't even know what came after "drei" ("drei-et-un"?) Worse, I had adopted a patronizing attitude towards the language. German just made me giggle!

....TO BE CONTINUED!

Like a Pervy Nancy Drew

Last night I read Edith Zimmerman's blog out loud to a few friends. Everyone was yelling at me to stop because the pacing was philistine - like something you'd find in a really stupid campfire story that goes on and on and isn't so much scary as it is boring and weird - but then came the shocking and outrageous and pretty creepy punchline, and that really sorted folks out. I laughed, because the story WAS dumb, but proudly and self-consciously so, and everyone stared at me silently before resuming their activities. So you're just going to have to trust me on this: her blog is stupid hilarious (the best kind). Here's one story that made me howl.

ghost!!!!

Right as I was drifting to sleep, a thumping noise in my bedroom startled me awake, and I gasped. “Who’s there?” I said, sitting up and pulling the covers tight around me. “Who’s there?!” Just then I heard another thump, but this time the thump was followed by a long, slow creak. I know that creaking noise, I thought to myself, That’s my closet door opening! So I looked over and saw that my closet door was opening! “Oh my god,” I whispered—the door seemed to be opening by itself! Finally the creaking stopped and the door was completely open. I held my breath and for a second nothing happened, but then a pale, transparent oval floated out from the darkness within, and it had two empty holes for eyes and a long empty gash for a mouth. It was a ghost!

“Oh my god,” I said. “Oh my god, oh my god, what do you want!?”

The ghost said nothing and just floated around my room, going back and forth, causing all the papers on my desk to flutter to the floor, and my drapes to flap in the wind. Then he came over to the side of my bed and just hovered there, staring down at me with his empty eyes, with that same unchanging expression. “What do you want?” I whispered. “Oh my god, what do you want?! I’ll give you anything. Money, jewelry—whatever you want. I’ll suck your dick, just please don’t kill me!”

So he pulled out his ghost dick and… well, I’m still alive, I’ll say that much!

Haaaaaa...ewwwwwwwww! (hewwwwww?) Edith (who really is so wonderfully weird) also selects and comments on the funniest and most interesting internet memes for New York Magazine's Culture Vulture. You can check out her posts here.