The Big Lebowski

(Photographer Martin Eberle's quote regarding Berlin's Club Scene after the Fall of the Wall)

I haven't been writing a lot because I wanted to write more about the people I meet, rather than places. I find when I am in non-English speaking countries, it is harder to meet interesting people. I am not as friendly and chatty as I would be in Ireland or the States. When I visit a country, I try to learn how to say "hello", "thank you", and "please" in the local language, to be polite. Needless to say, I had limited conversations in Poland and Hungary. A couple friends and Germans assured me Berlin would be different. Here, almost everyone spoke English and it would be easier to communicate. However, my experience in Berlin hasn't proved as such. A former coworker, Mariyana, invited me to her house for dinner. She is Bulgarian and studied German and English. I met her mother who is visiting and she speaks Bulgarian and Arabic. Within three minutes, I used up my Arabic vocabulary. Mariyana's husband speaks German and English, and their 4 year old son speaks German and Bulgarian. I think Mariyana's brain was exhausted from translating all night. Bless her heart. Last Sunday I was in Starbucks and asked for zitronenkuchen. I know I butchered the pronunciation. When the server looked at me quizzically, I said, "The yellow cake." Again, quizzical. "Zitro," I said rhyming with nitro, which I guessed meant yellow or lemon. Blankness. Finally another server behind him says something sounding like, zee-tro-nen-koo-chin. Wunderbar! As an aside, in Budapest, Starbucks does not go by grande, venti, and trenta. It's the conventional s/m/l. How very unpretentious. As the server explained, "Hungarians don't know grande…." I wanted to tell her Americans didn't either. Today I went to breakfast at YadaYada Breakfast Club. Okay I thought, name is American and easy to pronounce. I ordered blueberry waffles, and got blueberry pancakes, which wasn't even on the menu. But hey, I'm happy with either. I asked the server for the wi-fi passcode. He says something guttural and it's my turn to look quizzical. He finally writes down, "the dude." I literally laughed out loud, "The dude??" He said that he didn't know how to pronounce it.

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(Sign at Checkpoint Charlie, which is in Front of McDonald's and Sandwiched by Souvenir Shops)