this morning i found an unfamiliar piece of lingerie in my bed. i dont know how it got there. i was flirting with a graphic design student from brazil who studies in italy and is here in berlin to look at schools. i know it was not his lingerie.

hung over in berlin. coffee, just some fucking coffee, some green-painted picnic table on the street, in front of a cafe. four persian men are joking and being loudly amicable. cigarettes being enthusiastically truncated by four loudly amicable train stacks. they have two vans that are totally packed with orangina. one of them gets up from their table to slide open the door and boom, there they are, like bricks in a wall, all these bottles of orangina. cigarette smoke. the sound of a palm slapping a green painted table top.

i am watching the bicyclists buzz by. it is good to be back in germany. there is a tremendously tangible difference between countries that did and did not get money as a result of the marshall plan. even a shitty handle on the german language is better than a zero handle on czech or slovakian. on the other hand, coffee with baileys -or a similar alcohol- was available almost everywhere in prague. gott damn you, germany, you aint measuring up.

coffee and europe have a different sort of relationship than coffee and california. if one orders a kaffee -a groß kaffee - it is very likely that one will receive a couple shots of espresso instead of our watered down home drip-and-dunk. there are starbucks everywhere, and i have only broken once. it was across the street from the staatopera in vienna and it was raining and i was alone and the classical architecture was overwhelming. just a fucking cup of coffee.

adam and i have lost all sort of a plan; the only thing we are sticking to is our final date of departure. everything is up to chance.