Here's an interesting half-conversation I heard as I was coming to work today. The conversant was an Irish woman on a pay phone, so please read this with a nice dutch accent. "I tell you,

I go with Mathias and his friend Jan to play squash. Improving on my rookie effort of the week before, I actually win some games. If I had to sweat on the court to do it, well, who

I get in in the morning, and Mathias has usurped my desk. The rest of the day, whenever he says "Let n be an integer," I belligerently refuse, insisting that it is very clearly a letter.

Having just finished my dinner doner, I am standing in Adleshof, waiting for the tram back to the Bergers' apartment in Karlshorst, when I am approched by a shaggy man. Man (something like): Eisen wien iesen schtraben?

I wait on platform 7 of Berlin Haustbahnoft, the central train station in Berlin. Mathias, for whom I am waiting, has already left, from Berlin Ostbahnoft, to the conference we were planning on going to. Deciding, after an

My foot hurts. As I walk about in my sandals, distrusted by the Germans who feel I am disrespectful of their winter, every step I take sends a shooting pain up the middle of my foot. When I

I'm sitting for my breakfast doner in the dining room of the Hotel Agon. A pretty girl comes up to me. Girl: Do you mind if I join you? Me, pointing: There's an empty

Mathias shows me the office I will be stuck in for the next two weeks. It's too small, and the secretary they have given me doesn't speak English. It is all I can to