First Post From Berlin

One week has passed since the gruelling transatlantic flight that transplanted us to Germany. My eyes are no longer swollen, my throat no longer dry, and my self no longer sleep-deprived!

We are now in our apartment in Schöneberg. It's still bare wooden floors with bare white walls, and a primitive kitchen and bathroom, but we have been able to sleep on mattresses and we have acquired a laundry machine, figured out how to get hot water, and applied for a telephone connection. The outside of the apartment, partly obscured by oaks, and with stores in the ground floor, is a pale yellow, rising to a peaked black roof roughly reminiscent of a Teutonic castle.

The apartment is situated on the busy Hauptstrasse, where the noise of cars assails us night and day, so that we continually raise our voices (excellent practice for me to speak more clearly). I've already walked all the way along one side of it into the Potsdamer Strasse and thence into Potsdamer Platz -- foolishly, as it turns out, on a very hot day --, I've become doubly aware of the virtues of the U-Bahn. My siblings and I -- except two brothers, who are with our uncle and aunt in the countryside -- routinely wake up at about 5:30, much to my surprise and pleasure. At 7:00 or 8:00 the shops open -- including the Turkish bakery about two blocks away and the convenience store opposite -- and I've accompanied Mama to them twice as she bought breakfast and the newspaper (usually the Berliner Morgenpost) there.

I hope to do more cultural things soon, like going to museums and art galleries and concerts, and sketching architecture, and painting scenes. I would like to go to an opera at the Komische Oper, but I'm not sure if it will be a sex-obsessed modern version or a less distracting traditional one . . . So far I did sketch one window (though I could not have told anyone the name of its style or the approximate date of its construction), and I played a lot on the violin (though I neither divide my bow, nor hold it straight, nor do any other things that I should be doing).

The big "but" is that the container with our belongings has not yet come, and that my parents are considerably stressed (though at least Mama is relaxing more), and that we miss the two brothers who are elsewhere. I wish I could just speak out directly about things, but in this case it would be better not.

P.S.: It turns out that I can't by any means go to the Freie Uni this coming year because of my bad marks; instead I should find an evening school where I can do a sort of "Abitur" extra. But I did leaf through the "studies handbook" of the FU and decide to take a bachelor's programme in comparative literature once I'm there.