Oh Berlin!
Oh Berlin! Study abroad was such a wonderful part of my college experience and I long to return to my favorite European city. I studied in Geneva but after three days in Berlin I knew where I wanted to live. Berlin was so perfect. It was gritty and real and just cool.
Why do I speak of Berlin six months after I walked amongst its graffitied walls? Because my life is conspiring to remind me of it. Coincidence after coincidence have piled up and it now feels like fate is trying to tell me something.
- One of my summer jobs is working for a company that helps people find lost assets. I’m essentially working as a paralegal. I hunt through bankruptcy courts to see if people have forgotten money. If someone goes bankrupt they try to find all the people to distribute the money to but if the court cannot it goes and sits in an account until someone claims it. I help connect people with the money. I have been dealing a lot with interesting names and keep landing on web sites in foreign languages, including German. A bit of a stretch but it’s the first in a long line of coincidences.
- My other summer internship is working for a documentary film company (Providence Pictures). I spend my time getting rights for film footage, inputting and researching images to be used in the film, and helping to keep the script in order. The producer and head researcher just came back from a trip to Israel where they filmed historical recreations. I want their jobs! Anyway some of the footage I had to find was of the Ishtar Gates, the ancient gates to the city of Babylon. I happened to have walked through these gates when I visited the Pergamon Museum. Happen to know which city plays host to the Pergamon? Berlin.
I actually found this footage by using the travel channel’s Samantha Brown. I saw her show Passport to Europe and then tracked down her production company in an effort to license footage of the gates. - This is sort of a random coincidence. But the other day I turned on the television and up popped Anthony Bordain. Where was he? You guessed it! Berlin.
Now the cherry on top of this ice cream sundae of coincidence. Yesterday while driving back from a visit to my Grandmother’s we got lost. In an effort to avoid traffic in Connecticut we just took a wrong exit and ended up in the middle of nowhere. Guess what the name of the town in the middle of no where was? Berlin.
So my whole life is telling me to head back to Europe, head back to Germany, head back to Berlin. I checked plane fairs. I can’t afford to go. But maybe I could convince my friends to come with me for spring break. If not I can always go back to Berlin, Connecticut. It’s the low cost college student’s version of traveling to Europe. Just go to towns named after European cities.





































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