A small midnight news flash from Di in Berlin

Tonight I met Alex from Heidelberg and he just wanted to chat as we sped through the dark Berlin night on the Sbahn here in the city of Berlin - past things I had no idea about to a destination I was completely unfamiliar with ...

One of the things about traveling like this is that you need to correctly fit the mask of pretense, the one that warded off those guys who were trying to sell dodgy tickets to lost tourists at the ticket vending machines in the metro. The mask that makes it appear that you know where you're heading and what you're doing. But Alex seemed to see past it and gave me his copy of the 2008 tram network map for Berlin, counting off how many stops till mine and generally submitting to the Curiousity of Di about his German life.

His wife's grandfather was a most interesting man and we agreed that Heidelberg is a beautiful city. It was a good way to arrive in Berlin.

And it's excellent to be back. This time I'm staying in the home of a friend and have already spent a couple of incredibly interesting hours talking with a Palestinian professor of literature from Ramallah, and before that, with another lovely man I first met as the groom at the Berlin wedding shoot. But the story of this piece of my life is so much bigger than I am up to telling at midnight and perhaps I should ask permissions.

You know when you find some place you enjoy being, that you relax into?
For me I know it by the feeling of the air or the atmosphere. I'm not sure how to define this softness I feel in the air of a place where it feels good to be but I am staying in a beautiful, rambling, white wooden-interior apartment, full of life and colour, excellent books and interesting people. The air is soft in that way that makes me know it's a good place to be.

Anyway, gute nacht from this wandering creature.