so the going home countdown is now around 19 days. nineteen days. thats really really really nothing. i successfully delivered the oral report on tramhalte beethovenstraat, successfully finished my first hausarbeit, kicked my klausur's ass (still waiting on a grade), and have generally been having crazy full productive days every day. in the next 19 days i need to write two more papers, finish up the formatting on all three, and take another exam. do-able? yes. crappy, yah, but even though i wanted to get started earlier i knew i wouldnt ... i dont actually know anyone who lives any sort of interesting or enjoyable lifestyle and simultaneously spends every week writing their final papers. i mean come on.


last night i had a fun pre-quarter-life quarter-life-crisis. my newest irrational fear is that i will return to the united states and have my ego completely deflated by everyone's lack of interest in my life. its not the first time that it's happened. see also: thanksgiving break freshman year, xmas break freshman year, summer freshman year, every other time i've ever come home from college, and about a month after i left for berlin. i can't be mad at anyone but myself over it all ... i build up all these ideas in my head about what i want to happen, and when it doesn't happen i break out into full only-child-brat-mode and get all pissy that no one follows through with my imaginary plans of lavishing me with attention and parties. i get frustrated with myself, because it's kind of unattractive for a 21 year old to act like a 5 year old, but sometimes i just want to stomp my feet and pout and yell at everyone for not being more FUN. the thing is, im not a child anymore, i'm essentially an adult and i moved away. when you move away you move out of people's lives and i can't expect everyone to just, like, bookmark the place that i used to occupy and wait for me to saunter back into it whenever i feel like it. while its normal to want to be missed, i am fully aware at how most of my friends have lost almost all contact with me, and as sad as it makes me i know that its really not coming from my end. it would be one thing if i left for berlin and kissed everyone goodbye, but after so many unanswered emails and awkward trans-atlantic cell phone messages, i have very low expectations for my return.


add to that the fact that so many people at middlebury has been somewhere for a semester or a year and that its JUST NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL. for my family, yeah its great, and in the larger scope of things, yes its big and its something to be proud of. i packed up my life, peaced out of new jersey (which is NO easy feat), transplanted myself into germany and started a brand new life here. not many 20 year olds do that, this is true. then again not many people leave new jersey at all, so its all relative. but coming back from study abroad and being in middlebury is anticlimactic by definition: everyone sits around, head swimming with their year long adventures, and after a few drinks and a week everyone gets over it and moves forward. you cant drag your friends through your memories and expect them to give a shit. they werent there, they wont find the inside jokes cute, they dont want to see 85 pictures from random parties nor do they really care about the angle at which YOU captured the eiffel tower or a canal in venice. part of coming back is just a big get over it, i think. being up to my ears in post-holocaust literature is probably (um, read definitely) affecting my mood/perceptions of things - but its true. people only want to hear about the past so much, and when its your past (read the last 10 months of my life), most people could really care less. of course my mom is going to tell me that im special and smart and awesome (and is the only person reading this anyway ......), but thats why she's my mom and thats her job.


i knew i wouldn't want to leave berlin, and even though i have readily admitted a sense of homesickness, i have always been very clear about wanting to stay here forever. now that im down to less than three weeks its even more apparent. i dont want to uproot everything here. i know that my friends here will disappear from my life just as quickly as friends anywhere do. berlin is a fast paced city of hedonism and excess ... it is full of interesting, smart, active, fun people and i try to remind myself that even though people will miss me - i'm not necessarily irreplaceable (to the left to the left!)

and with that beyonce reference, i think i should end this depressing blog post and read more heinrich böll. bis aufs bald.

the countdown: im leaving berlin in four weeks. what do you have to do in that period of time, one may wonder? well i'm only too happy to share my misery with others and detail it over and over again. yesterday i re-took the exam from last semester, which i had failed (AND THANK GOD THATS OVER) and managed to escape from that stress-hell sans migraine, which is a testament to my power over my own brain because i could feel that migraine building up somewhere in my cerebral cortex (is that where they happen?) and i beat it down before it could wreak havoc on my relaxation plans.

on monday i have to give my belated oral report on tramhalte beethovenstraat by grete weil, which part of me is looking forward to because i LOVED the book and worked my ass off to understand all of its different aspects, and i therefore want recognition for my obvious genius. im nervous that maybe i'm way off in my estimation of my grasp on the book, or how well i can sort out the IMPORTANT plot threads/ideas from the less important ones ... also my professor is one of those intimidating geniuses who has spent the better part of their life reading everything they can possibly get their hands on. the kind of professor whose office is intimidatingly full of books and periodicals and their OWN publications - but unlike some of my FAVORITE professors - has an air to them that seems to snort at you with contempt, as if to say "think about this for another 20 years and then talk to me you PLEBEIAN". anyway, we'll see what she says about how i introduce the book, seeing as how SHE WROTE half the literature on it ... nothing like a genius novel that was ignored by the authors contemporaries because she was a WOMAN and a JEW and they COULDN'T HANDLE IT (i always manage to find shit like this that i harp on ...)

THEN comes the fun stuff! write the last 4 pages on my paper about mother-ideology/obsession/deification in erich kästner's children's literature. then write a 12 page paper on billiard um halb zehn (aka billiards at 9:30) by heinrich böll which answers the question "BILLIARDS: what is UP with that?" (my words, not aforementioned scary professors). then another 12 page paper about the founding of my current university, die freie universität, and why/how it happened which i then have to, um, analyze? yah talk about love/hate relationships this semester ... german university leaves me with an endless feeling of who-the-hell-am-i .... like .... what do i have to say about all of this epic stuff like post-holocaust survivors guilt and cold war politics in berlin. im some 21 year old american jackass ...

then! i have to take ANOTHER exam! about how 4 or 5 different authors works span naturalism to expressionism and what-it-all-means etc etc. i would almost rather re-take my IB klausur than try to deal with this course on turn-of-the-century lit, where i have less than no idea where to start. the lesson from all of this? you can't teach an old stupid college student new tricks. did i say i'd be finished with all of this way earlier? yep. do i want to try to complete said papers and exam in 3 weeks? yeah. is it going to stress me out? yeah, duh.

but then i have one glorious week in berlin where i can do as i choose. my plans: boden museum, maybe the pergamon again to see their new exhibit, lay around on the banks of the spree, tour a few of berlins lakes in order to lay around and read (all part of my plan to come home more attractive than i left ...), and have ONE week of summer before its all over. i also want to read klaus wowereit's biography, which has been sitting next to our toilet since i got here (which is kind of hilarious).

the word for parting/farewell in german is abschied, and the verb is then verabschieden. i have to verabschied myself with the city (to really denglify my thoughts, as usual). there will be abschiedsparties (which is actually an adoptive german word: abschiedsparty), there will be abschieds-dinners, abschieds-brunches, and probably a lot of abschieds-crying. i think my feelings on the whole matter are perfectly balanced. i love berlin with all of my heart and find it hard to tear myself away from it. i can't repress the feeling that i want to return to berlin as soon as humanly possible. at the same time, i miss new jersey and my home and my room and my life there, and i miss vermont and my lifestyle and friends there as well. so many students here in the program have made NO friends other than the americans we came with, have done NOTHING but study, and many of them leave berlin almost every weekend (for places like MUNICH no less ... i mean COME ON). these people are dying to leave, some are even leaving in two weeks, and i think that berlin is not for everyones personality necessarily. this is probably why these people and i don't really get along and won't really miss one another. i feel as connected to berlin and my apartment and my neighborhood and the parks as i do when i drive down the street i grew up on and see my elementary school and the way the trees come together forming a canopy over the street. now its like i have three homes instead of one, and when i'm in one place i will miss the other two, but its comforting to know that i have so many people and places that are home to me, and that they are a little spread out so that i am usually near at least one.