“Fremd is nur der Fremde in der Fremde.” - Karl Valentin. My teacher started the second part of class with this quote yesterday. You don’t need to know German to get the same out of the quote that my classmates and I did: fremd, fremd, fremd. Fremd means foreign, and the quote basically means that what is foreign is only foreigners in a foreign setting. Hmm. What we knew was that we had to write an essay about being a foreigner in Berlin and since then have referred to the essay as the “fremd, fremd, whatever” essay. In order to understand the quote fully, you need to be familiar with the intricacies of German cases and prepositions. Perhaps we should all be studying a bit more.

When I’m on the U-Bahn, the subway, listening to a “This American Life” podcast, I forget that I’m in Germany. It still hasn’t hit home. I don’t know if this is good (I have a positive outlook) or bad (I am deluding myself). I’m on the subway. Words are only symbols, after all, so after a few days with the U-Bahn, it’s not a foreign word. I can’t hear any German, two women across from me are wearing hijabs, and the guy beside me is wearing a jean jacket just like me, but his has seen more wear and tear. I could be anywhere. The train is pretty crowded even though it’s not rush hour. I imagine that most people are commuters like me, since this subway line only goes from outside the city to a stop in the center, it doesn’t go through the city like most lines. But then we pull into a station, and there is a “ß” in the station name, and I notice that the guy beside me is carrying a tote bag. Earlier, I was in a computer room in the Sprachenzentrum (language center) of Humboldt University becoming gradually more irritated with the German keyboard as a “ä” showed up every time I hit the apostrophe key and every question mark required a special “Alt Gr” (I’m not sure, either) button. Just as I was becoming reacquainted with the switched “y” and “z” keys, the monitor in the computer room told us computer users that she had to leave soon, then repeated her message in English, as if we ended up at Humboldt by some grand fluke.

So I was in Berlin, after all. I ended up writing in my essay that I don’t feel that Berlin is foreign. In fact, I feel oddly at home. Perhaps it’s because I am used to living in a big city-- after living in a suburb of Pittsburgh for a few months of agonizing sales work, Berlin- as a city- feels more comfortable. Maybe it’s due to my new hypothesis: Berlin is very welcoming. When I was here with my mom, I didn’t feel like a tourist. That was almost certainly due to fact that I will be here for ten months. But it was more than that, I didn’t feel like any city residents were scorning us as tourists. I know it happens, because I sometimes think mean thoughts about tourists in Toronto when there is a group of them clogging the sidewalk. And then came the clue that we really didn’t look like tourists: someone asked me for directions in the U-Bahn station. I had told my mom that I would really feel like I am a part of the city when someone asks me for directions, and it already happened. That only goes to show that there’s not a typical Berliner. You can’t see it in their clothes or their haircut, you can’t discern who’s a native by trying to guess their economic situation.

Instead, I am a foreigner. I feel conspicuously, but proudly, American here. Yes, as we’ve learned, on the U-Bahn, no one can tell the difference. It’s true: more than one person spoke German to my mom, who knows no German. She would wordlessly point to me. Especially in my class though, which is an intensive German class, I am a proud exception. I’m the only American. I’m the only one who speaks English without a British accent. I’m the only one from a country where we all eat ten donuts a day, according to the British boy I sit next to. And on the U-Bahn, I probably am the only one whose head snaps around when George Bush appears on the Berlin Transportation Commission subway news. For now, I’ll try to figure out why Berlin doesn’t feel like Germany, it feels a big city without a concrete location in a certain country. I’ll study my separable verbs and my prepositions. I’ll try to rely on a map less and impatiently wait until I can buy my bike used from a tour company. But then again, that is what every new Berliner is doing, no matter their country of origin.