Grey

Berlin is one grey mess. For the last few weeks the weather in Berlin may best be described as grey. It rains, it slushes (when it is almost cold enough to snow, but not quite- so we get big blobs of slush falling down our necks instead of rain drops), and the city is wrapped up in a high lying fog. I was listening to a German radio station the other day, they compared Berlin to London- that we were living in a soup of fog, clouds, and rain. When it isn't raining or slushing, the heavy fog makes everything slick and shiny- coming out of classes it is often hard to know if it had rained or if the soaked surfaces are merely a consequence of the fog enveloping the city.


I do love fog. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of waking up, looking out the window, and not even being able to see the house across the street, the fog was so thick. Or watching the morning news- hoping for a foggy day schedule. On the playground, pretending I was ice skating across the frozen dew covered grass, getting lost in the fog. Christmas eve will always mean driving home from my Aunt's house, at 10mph through patchy fog and orange groves. The first time I ever drove alone was the day after Christmas, through the fog, windows rolled down and radio turned off, headed to a friend's house.

I write poems about getting lost in the fog, driving in the fog, living in the fog. To me, winter could never mean snow- it shall be inexorably tied to tule fog blanketing the valley in a coat of dangerous silence and seductive beauty.


But the fog of Berlin is not the fog of my childhood, not the fog that I fell in love with long ago. It is high and not nearly as dense. It obscures buildings, but ones a mile or more away, it could never be powerful enough to erase the building across the street. It is quite impossible to get lost in Berlin fog.