Fairgrounds of Overstimulation

Not to fear. No news is good news. Classes at the Goethe Institut started this past Tuesday, so with opera in the morning, opera in the evening, and Goethe in the middle, plus hour-long train rides in all directions, I'm a tired girl.

My classmates are hands-down hysterical. Brilliant people, all around: an archaelogist from Turkmenistan, a photographer from Nigeria, an anthropology professor from China, two engineers from Russia and so on. NO ONE has the vaguest idea what's going on. Our adorable, grandmotherly teacher repeats two, and three, and four times over, "This is a table," in German (Das ist ein Tisch), and then asks the Libyan surgeon, "What's this?" but he doesn't understand. She asks again, "WAS IST DAS?" But he doesn't even have enough German to tell her he can't understand her and begins to look like he'll vomit or run. He looks to the Italian hotel manager for help. The hotel manager says: "Here is a door." It's first rate comedy.

I sit at the English table with an English girl who's normal (not an aeronautical engineer), a Romanian actress, the one other American, a guy who appears to be averting a mid-life crisis by simply side-stepping it, and a New Zealander who's so busy having a good time he hasn't learned anything.

I discovered a few days ago that in Germany you can buy gum in bargain-size pill bottle containers. My chain chewing habit is decidedly more serious. Not to mention my other bad habit: I had probably six milchkaffees today. But then, I've also discovered the rapture of Vollmilch here which, of course, we have in America: full fat milk. Not to mention full fat cheese.

Last night I saw the best opera of my life. No exaggeration. This was one hour after I considered that it would be a good idea for me to leave Berlin immediately and apply to Divinity Schools. That was three hours after my mother called me on the phone from Nebraska and I cried. Like I said, I'm a little tired. It's good.