Berlin ist ein Dorf

Here's how small Berlin – or at least the expat/journalist/fellowship-recipient community in Berlin – can be:

I'm looking to sublet my spot in my office share, so I wrote a post to an English-speaking academics' listserv and got a bunch of responses. The first guy to actually make a specific appointment and show up to look at the office (let's call him "S.") was a journalist, but someone I don't know.

But he showed up with a friend of his... who I know! We'll call her E.; we met through friends a few months ago and she even came to my Chanukah party, but that was just before she had a baby, so she understandably dropped off the radar for a while. We were both excited and pleased to have stumbled across each other again.

We tried to explain to S., the journalist, how we knew each other – we were both at a dinner at our mutual friend J.'s house... except in truth I don't even know J. all that well, it's more that she's a friend of my friend R., and R. had invited me along...

"Oh, wait," S. said. "Is that the R. who dated P.? I know P. Through journalist stuff."

Yes. It circled all the way back around.

"Berlin ist ein Dorf," as the saying goes – Berlin is a village.