PS -- Quite a number of years ago, when my marriage was starting to dissolve, I met a woman online from Berlin. We conversed a lot and I almost felt like I lived there. She was extremely smart, a university lecturer, and described it in great detail. A great roaring city, she called it. Heaps of snow. She had a cat named Castorp, named after a character in a Thomas Mann novel, who she said was systematically destroying all her beautiful plants. She had an orange bedroom. She was originally from Frankfurt and moved to Berlin after the wall came down. She lived in an area called Neukolln, where David Bowie spent some time. She said they steal mail out of the mailboxes shamelessly here, nothing is safe.

I have not spoken with her in years. Too bad. You don't meet many people that memorable in your life.