Out of place

I've never had a travel experience in which I have felt completely without a language. In Thonon, I spoke a good amount of French and had a host family to act as the buffer between me and the outside world. In Tijuana, I knew enough Spanish to get by and was able to speak with actions. In Beijing and Zheng Zhou, I was with a group of musicians, and people seemed to like our music enough that they didn't seem to care what language it was in. And in Belfast...well, they speak English.

In Istanbul and Berlin, though, not only do I not speak the language, I neither have connections (like a host family) nor make contributions (like building a house or sharing music) with which to create meaningful interactions. The language difference was more pronounced for me in Istanbul, where I stood out as an American and was almost always addressed in English. Even in Berlin, where I blend in a little more and people generally assume I speak German, I feel very out of place. My presence doesn't feel very constructive to the places in which I find myself, so I have trouble seeing how I am an acting part of these places.

A night or two ago, at the cafe near our apartments, this out-of-place-ness was more pronounced ever--but also more fun than ever. I went to the cafe all ready for some quality homework-doing, Husky-Cycling-website-writing, gmail-chatting-with-my-bff-Kamila time, but when I got there the quiet little cafe that I had gone to on Sunday night with my roommates was now THE SCENE. By the time I got my drink there wasn't a single free table, and the crowd around the bar was out the door. It wasn't crazy or rowdy or anything--just totally hoppin'. I was the only one there alone, and definitely the only one doing homework. I must have looked very out of place with a laptop and photo-copied reading pages on the table instead of beers and margaritas and fancy appetizers. Imagine a college kid being all studious on a Mac in the middle of, I dunno...a super trendy bar in Capitol Hill. I'm imagining The Saint, but take your pick. Now, make me the studious college kid, and put the bar in Berlin. Yup.

Nevertheless, I came for my free wifi, and nothing keeps Gennie Gebhart from some good free wifi. So I stayed for an hour or two. Some German ladies sat at the other half of my table, someone asked if I was using the chair across from me (nein), and, as things got crazier, a waitress came over and asked me if I could move my/the German ladies' table over so they could fit in another one next to us--all in German! Whoa. As awkward as I felt, all of these little micro-encounters were actually kind of fun. I felt like I saw more of the neighborhood than I would have if I had been walking around or on a tour. And, now I know--Wednesday night is THE night, and this cafe THE place to be on Wednesday nights, in Mitte.

I kept on truckin' with my mundane, more-appropriate-for-a-quiet-Starbucks-in-the-afternoon-than-for-a-cafe-in-Berlin-that-serves-liquor tasks, until a guy with dreads down to his butt came over and gestured to my tea and my menu and asked me something in German. I just shrugged--maybe he wanted to know what kind of tea I'd gotten? Regardless, I took this to be a good sign that the hipster barometer was getting low. (Get it? Get it???!? It's like there was a hipster storm coming!!) So, I packed up my Seattleite cafe gear (if only I'd had a North Face and a Nalgene) and headed back to the apartments--which is where I am now. Now that I think about it, if you turn around a few times and squint real hard and don't read the labels on anything in the kitchen, our apartment could totally be somewhere on 45th and Roosevelt...