Last weekend, I visited Ines. It was something of a special occasion because I had not seen her in a month and because it was a holiday weekend in Germany. We spent one day of the long weekend in Berlin visiting a friend of Ines’. Berlin is probably my favorite city in Germany, and as usual, I was not disappointed by this visit. The city is just so vibrant and alive. The cafes and bars are generally well-populated with young people (not like the retirement community that is Plön). Moreover, you can do all kinds of cool stuff. When I was in Berlin with Ines and friends in early September, we started the evening at a kitschy Arabic café where we smoked shisha, before having dinner at an Italian pizzeria (horse meat on my pizza!), and then ended up in club, frequented by Americans, in which a British electro duet was playing. You can’t do that in many other cities. The trip this past weekend was considerably more laid back. Ines met up with several friends from her school days, so there was a lot of reminiscing. Happily, beer, the ultimate foreign language enhancer and social lubricant, helped me converse in German. A 3 am currywurst completed that lovely evening in Berlin. Multi-culti restaurants, indie discos, greasy fast food joints that never close, kitschy cafes, laid-back and tolerant attitudes…these are some of the cool things that I associate with Berlin and with living in Germany in general. I think I would really miss this stuff if I move back to the U.S.