It’s my last Saturday for a while in Berlin. Busy week ahead, nine busy weeks behind…  I’m sitting in a cafe in Kreuzberg having had a Berlin breakfast, boiled egg and bread rolls with milchkaffee. A friend of mine joined me here for a WLAN session. It’s just nice sitting and typing away together on a summery terasse – though, the weather has turned colder just over +20’C after big storms yesterday and the day before.

There is a long list of things I haven’t done and people I haven’t met. Somehow the anemia still tires me, even though I’ve been taking iron supplements for a month. I also had a league of visitors – wonderful ones and we had great time also seeing around Berlin – but all this also took time out from my local and everyday life. A good question is: can one have local and everyday life when staying somewhere for only two months?

Two month’s is really too short a time for settling down – I knew from the beginning that it would take me 4-6 weeks to settle down and then one starts to think about leaving. Extending the stay for two more weeks didn’t really help. Also, in getting into a new language and culture two months is an annoyingly short period.

In some ways, two months is enough, though. One also starts getting a hang of a city and its people. For sure, I don’t feel I’ve been just a tourist here.

One of the points of spending time in Germany was the language. Slowly I have started to realise how much I could know and speak German (that I studied at school over 5 years, taking my exam in autumn 1996). It’s the fourth time I’m in a new context trying to survive on my language skills (or fifth if one includes the American and British varians). I’ve known for a while that after three months one is used to the foreign-language environment and starts communicating without too much problems. Now I could already see it coming. However, I have to admit that after so many times of having done this – always sounding like an idiot trying to construct sensible sentences in foreign language, and feeling like one trying to get the point of the random (unguessable) stuff people telling me – I’m feeling lazy. Not again! Could we not speak English? For once, unlike most of my experiences in Hungary, these people do communicate in other languages, too!

In fact, it’s generally difficult to get Germans to speak their language to a foreigner. I’ve been lucky enough to meet many who would. And a lot of foreigners who speak good German and would be wanting to chat with me in that language. That leaves me feel ungreatful and guilty if I don’t. And communicating with foreigners in disbelief, makes me wonder whether I deep down really think that English is the world language… Has it got something to do with my years in the imperial Britain?

Yesterday I had a whole day seminar in German – I even made some points and people got them! I was told that I have a Spanish accent… Yippiii… Does this mean that I should brush up my Spanish next?

The journey continues…