on the top of the reichstag, next to the glass cupola, there is a cafe with the whimsical name of marienkäfer (eng: ladybird.) even their napkins had cheerful ladybird motifs. on my final afternoon in berlin sven and i had coffee there, and sitting on the glass-walled terrace we could look out over berlin towards alexanderplatz. i realise that i am starting to pick out landmarks, and that i was subconsciously navigating by the fernsehnturm. we had just been to a fireworks display by the tv tower the night before - a tame display, we agreed, compared to those we'd seen in france and in the us, but nonetheless fireworks are always enjoyable. standing near the edge of the crowd we could see that the organisers had placed dry-ice fog machines along the perimeter of the plaza - the wind was too strong for the fog effect to be theatrical - but some tendrils did swirl about us. and i liked being out in the square, watching the brilliant flares leap forth from the top of the galeria kaufhof, being there in that moment in time, slightly cold, pleasantly detached, happy to be in berlin and nowhere else in the world. on my second evening my hostess had asked me what i thought of berlin. and i could not give her an answer, and, flustered, stammered the conventional: it's too early, i've seen so much in one day, i haven't collected my impressions. but that was not it. i had no strong feelings one way or another, i did not have even the vague sense, as i usually did, of whether i could live in this city. all day i walked, and saw, and admired, and yet the city did not impress itself upon me as a whole. was that because i was guided rather than finding my own way? because i didn't have a mental map of the city before i started out, and so could not fit what i saw into the context of either history or physical space? we come to a new place with expectations, having done the research, and you bring with you your own set of lens - that of your home city, and you assess the new city, and you form an opinion. but i came on a whim, without expectations, without knowledge except that the staatsbibliothek will hold all that i'm looking for, and i simply was in the city, being there, without even my boston eyes. but then was it also that my sense of a city is less visual than linguistic, and here i was the mute uncomprehending, and that ultimately i was not interacting with the city? i liked everything, but nothing overwhelmed me. i was interested, and intently so, and i enjoyed myself, but my usual tendency to be quickly moved was somehow checked. why did i not experience this city like i do in others? did i and could i belong here, in another time? but while i puzzled over my inability to feel i did not know that already i was becoming part of the city, and when i looked out over berlin on that last afternoon i knew all of a sudden that i did, without being conscious of it, know the city afterall, , or was beginning to know it, and that i had a sense of place, and that i had learnt it by simply being there. paris, said our hostess, will never accept you unless you were born and bred in paris. i was born in the banlieus, and parisians don't consider me parisian. but berlin accepts new people. you can become a berliner. i thought too, that new york, perhaps, is much like berlin, and boston, perhaps more like paris. i am sure i could be a new yorker, though i don't want to be one in the least, but oh, i should like to be a berliner.