TWO LANGUAGES IN MY HEAD

I feel pure love for the English language, a love not soiled, not conflicting. The language of my childhood is the language of fear, the language of horror. I have been beaten up and humiliated to German words. “You’ll never amount to anything," my father said. "You are a quarter-liter jug and I’m trying to pour a half- liter into you," the teacher said.

English: James Baldwin, Bob Dylan, Easy Rider, Woody Allen, Talking Heads.

Deutsch: Heine, Hölderlin, Beethoven, Brecht, Fassbinder, Fußball.

The bluest sky in the world, the New York evening light, the majestic clouds over Provincetown are English. Gray, drizzling skies, the melancholy Lower-Rhine, poplars standing at attention like soldiers are German.

German is the language of the internal -- confined, conscientious, meticulous, encapsulated. Glück (happiness), lifelong friendships and profound conversations are German

English is the language of the external-- superficial, uncomplicated and unreliable. Fun, fleeting acquaintances and small talk are English.

English is the weightless summer dress; German the heavy winter coat.

English is doing; German is being.

The German sailors in the New Yorker subway talk among themselves. "Where do we get off for Central Park?" I secretly listen to their conversations. How beautiful the German sounds. How familiar. Like Christmas cookies and Glühwein (mulled wine). Here in New York, I am allowed to intrude in their conversation. The sailors made a mistake when they got on the express train. "If you don't get out at the next stop, you’ll land in Harlem," I say. The young man from Heidelberg beams. I speak his language.

Rita, a psychiatrist from Berlin, is visiting. We are sitting in the subway. Rita has come alive. She feels enthusiastic, inspired; she raves about New York. The furrowed, old lady opposite us slides nervously back and forth on the bench. She trembles, she is terribly pale. Her eyes are full of fear. She pierces us with her gaze. Suddenly, she gets up, positions herself before us and screams: “Don’t you dare speak that bastard language in my town. Get out! Get out now!”

The German journalist is distraught. He dreads having to return to Germany. He doesn't want to go back into his charming house in Hamburg-Eppendorf. His wife and daughters don't want to go back either. Soon the girls will be sitting in a German class room agian. The fifteen year-old takes the PSAT regardless. No question, she will attend an American university. The father doesn’t know how he’s going to pay for it.

Forced to return to Europe, they miss New York terribly. The New York ease, the small surprises in everyday life, the friendliness without a cause, the humor. Precious New York moments.

The New Yorker subway brought me and a German-Romanian writer together. My friend Liz sat next to Carmen-Francesca Banciu in the subway and started to talk to her. She found out, that Carmen-Francesca is a writer who lives in Berlin. "Then you have to meet my friend Anna. She's from Berlin too. She's a writer too."

Friendships are formed effortlessly in New York. Often they don’t last. But would we have met in Berlin or Bucharest the same way?