You Can't Not Take It With You

I would like to tell you all that the transplantation of the self to a foreign land has led to the immediate rectification of all bodily ills. I really would.

But today I could not leave my bed until 15:00 (listen, if I have to deal with these weird o'clocks, so can you). My legs ached, my shoulders ached, my ears ached, my jaw ached. Even the bones in my fingers ached. My head was one big cotton swimmy thing.

It didn't surprise me. I could feel it coming for days.

I've been afflicted since I arrived, eyes all a-puff, ear canals keening. Back in Brooklyn, I'd taken to blaming kitty Cleo for these ills. How sad to learn that an ocean away, in a life without dander, I'm no better off. It's probably the vast downy pillows that are to blame, first at Hotel Am Zoo, now at the sublet. In the states, I'd replaced my goose-feather pillows with special anti-allergy brands, and outfitted everything else that could be outfitted with dust-mite-proof armor.

As for the gut, oh, the poor, tormented gut. That first bite of gluten on that first day seemed okay. It's been one swift downhill slalom from there.

I will leave the details of my intestinal distress to your imagination. Suffice it to say, the let-me-try dairy-wheat-muesli-beef-sauces-dressings-coffee-condiments experiment has failed. As my nutritionist warned me it would. So much for positive thinking.

Early this week, I was getting that brain-foggy feeling I get whenever I start forgetting I am not a normal person and start squeezing as much as possible into every day, tromping for hours and hours down city blocks and daring to stay up past 22:00.

So today, I let my poor weepy body stay in bed as long as it liked. Actually, it would like still to be there. But I was cruel and dragged it to a café with wireless on Siemondach Strasse, where I have pumped it full of two large coffees, black, and forced it to type this post for the sake of you, my readers, because I wouldn't want you to suffer even a day without my Tales from the City — god forbid, I should neglect you like that. (Please now remove two-inch violin from two-and-a-half inch case and begin playing languorous tune, preferably by Barber).

Oh, but this leads me to the BEST THING about Berlin EVER. In fact, it is such a good thing, it deserves its own post.