You're a writer who starves if ...

You're a writer who starves if:

1. When you feel magnanimous, and you think you've had enough with three consecutive days of eating sandwiches made with bread from the supermarket (for 80 cents) and a delicious coleslaw (for €1.49),  you decide to give yourself a culinary privilege and buy a Happy Meal at McDonald's for the expensive price of € 3.69.
2. When you are eating your Happy Meal, enjoying the spectacular view that a fast food restaurant's second floor can offer, you look through the window a guy running down the street and you notice he drops, apparently, a pack of cigarettes.
3. Automatically you choke yourself in a hurry to go down and collect the package before any other insane pick it up first. You cross the street running away from the double decker buses, which are coming in the opposite direction, you take the pack and although there are only three cigarettes left, you are happy: maaaan, a trio of cigars! And no need to roll them! Without any doubts, the addictive success of the month.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You work cleaning hostels dreaming to possess, like Virginia Woolf, one day, your own room, where the snore of four Italians, in a not so operatic choir at three o'clock in the morning, disturbes your imagination.
2. You collect toothpastes, shampoos and deodorants (even if they are for man; at least in that way you can remember how a guy used to smell) that customers leave in the hostel, so at least you do not spend money on that.
3. Your collection includes toothpastes in Portuguese, deodorants in English (Old Spice) and shampoo in a language that seems to be Slovak, but at least has a regenerator and universal Pantene written on the bottle.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. When you walk down the street, during your unemployed stroll you regret at least once to have stopped studying music to devote yourself to the literature. The one euro coins in the case of that violinist who plays around the corner are more visible than the ones in your bank account.
2. You wished to have had talent for other arts. It is feasible to paint on the street and make money. It is feasible to dance on the street and make money. It is feasible to sing on the street and make money. It is feasible to sculpt on the street and make money. But it is not feasible to read a novel on the street, where passersby are always in a hurry, starring their own personal stories. The golden days when the medieval bards were in style are gone. Face it. Sweet Middle Ages times, fleeting from me forever now...!
3. You start considering that to dress yourself up like a gnome in a Dublin's street is a much more useful, profitable and honorable profession. You stare at a fake goblin, who receives at least five clients in ten minutes and get one euro from each of them, just to pose for a picture in a mythological hug, which makes a fantasy come true in a stupid touristic turn. At that moment, you realize that the fucking leperchaun makes a bunch of money and you start to evaluate the possibility to invest your savings in a green suit topped by a crazy hat, adorned by an honorable and brilliant buckle.
   
   It seems like she is carrying the goblin's head, but noooo: the leperchaun is still alive, making the big bucks.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You spend more, more, waaaay more hours looking for a job on websites, polishing your resume and filling requests, than the time that you actually invest writing.
2. You dream about getting that job, which consists in creating avatars for an explicit dating website, so far the most lucrative employment that you have been able to find.
3. You think that this job provides you with  some sort of space to improve your creativity and create characters, especially when you can write in the space designated to the bra's size: "Guess..." or the naughty: "I'll tell you later."

You're a writer who starves if:

1. When somebody ask about your profession, your answer is "journalist", although you haven't worked as one for soooo long, even if you studied Journalism for four years, in the worst possible academic joke ever.
2. To give the answer "writer" seems too big for you, like saying "I'm an astronaut" and you think that trying to fulfill the dream you have since you were a little girl is not respected in the grown ups world.
3. Even though your friends say you write very well, they still advise you to get a more lucrative and realistic job, like those ones related to customer service, sales, and of course, the glorious call center, the new century's coal mine. And the best part is that your friends are 100% right: you definitely should do that.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You have slept, at least once, in an airport, train station or park.
2. You have considered (as you smoke the last cigarette of the trio lost by that guy who ran in front of McDonald's) to pay €50 for a bed in a hotel, with the same eagerness with Adam and Eve could have seen their lost paradise, once they were on the other side of the fence, naked and screwed.
3. You ended up sleeping under a staircase in your sleeping bag, with two Benadryl in order to build a wall made of dreams, which keeps you away from the solvent people, who keep walking in the middle of the night towards some place where they do have a bed to write the day's final period. But not you: your destiny is to close the sleeping bag, while the culinary's common denominator with Adam and Eve, an apple for dinner, get digested slowly in your stomach. However, even when the floor is cold, you sleep for nine hours deeply and the next day you wake up in a very good mood, as if you slept in the privileged hotel's thalamus across the street, exclusively for the gods. But who wants to be a god anyway?

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You are infinitely more used to hearing many, many "no" and almost no "yes" at all.
2. Or better: even more used to that "no", you are infinitely more used to the silence of those who did not even bother to answer.
3. Since you know you always have a guaranteed "no", you do not mind going for the "yes", because you know that, in any case, you have nothing to lose.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You've had more jobs in random places, such as construction sites, hotels for dogs, nudist camps and hostels, than in an editorial or in a newspaper.
2. Earning $ 400 per month seems to you as a magic amount, almost obscene, which would solve all your problems, like a monetary panacea.
3. You think working at random and unstable places will help you to create interesting characters and write stories, which you will be proud of once someone deigns to open up the Parnaso's back door for you.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. Having a room in an attic to write eight hours per day seems like paradise.
2. You have it right now and you can not stop writing, but at the end you can only do it for two hours, since you have to feed the dogs, clean their poop from the multi square feet garden, and hug when they come into your room, wagging their lovely tails!
3. You think taking a bath in a tub at the end of the day is the best thing that has happened to you in weeks, a water-hygienic privilege which deserves at least 30 minutes daily. Still, you take the laptop with you to the bathroom to keep writing: nothing like to write in a bathtub full of warm water!
   
   My German attic.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You take more care of your laptop than your passport, your debit cards, your camera and even the Cow herself.
2. Being without Internet seems to you like being with no air, no oxygen to check the Dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spanish Language or the synonyms Dictionary, for those moments of suffocating cacophony.
3. You prefer to not have a health insurance, in case the laptop gets broken. It is more important.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You spend too much time alone, days and weeks that begin to turn into months.
2. You hated it at first, but now you're more used to and you feel this will be your destiny. To be a writer is a solitary profession anyway, and you better be comfortable with your own ghosts, which usually come to drink a cup of coffee with you.
3. You consider that the only way to deal with your loneliness is to listen to the keyboard in response to your thoughts.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You watch this video at least three times per week in order to give yourself encouragement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwJMC0CjVwc
2. You feel proud to be out of your comfort zone to live fully in your panic zone, which has not yet been transformed into “the magical area” precisely. But no worries: we are working on it.
3. Emotional stress attacks you every day, even more than the creative one, but after a cigarette, when the smoke fades, everything looks better. (Yeah, like the best tobacco's advertising from the 80's).

You're a writer who starves if:

1. Every single encouragement comment, every single like, every single shared link, and every single word is a reason to continue. They mean infinitely more than the cold "Thank you" from a client to whom you have unlocked the credit card for, more than the relief face of a guest when he or she finds a clean room after a long journey, and certainly much, much more than that polaroid smile that the fucking leperchaun receives, even when he is smiling mask outside only. Knowing that someone liked what you wrote means that you have touched his or her soul, even with a brief sigh of letters.
2. You have received support from people you never expected it and you start to think that if they believe in you, even when you may never have met them, you should believe in yourself and enlighten that lonely darkness with the laptop's glow.
3. Even when it is difficult, you can still make fun of yourself and feel satisfied that, although perhaps you've made a bad decision, bad decisions are precisely those with the potential to become the best stories. And you know you will be able, sooner or later, to write a happy ending for this one.
   
   Do you like the way I write, or do you prefer seeing me in goblin's clothes? Do you think that being a writer is a respected profession, just like any other? So please, please share this text in your social networks or, if you feel like doing positive karma points today, click on the buttons on the right side and subscribe yourself, or give me whatever you think is fair for my work. Just imagine that you invited me a coffee.Thank you for reading! :)

You, who will paint the sunrises

To Martina, who may not remember this character, but that is hers, as much as her blood.

Some people say there is no one who does not come into your life just at the right time, with a stated mission.

I believe in that. I believe that you, Gemma, came into my life to paint the sunrises.

I am guilty, I must confess: a few years ago I hated Spain and Spanish people. Nothing to be surprised about: Latin Americans have a love-hate relationship with the country that taught us the language and its citizens, who pronounce all the z and the c correctly. A historical resentment, illustrated by many history lessons and by many hateful graffitis, makes us hate them occasionally, especially with their insistence on speaking in a way that, for us, sounds like from Don Quixote's times.

However, at that time, I had a kind of post-traumatic stress reason: my boyfriend dumped me for a Spanish girl. Since then, I suffered from Spain-phobia and I hated everything that smelled like peninsular. While the World Cup was played in South Africa in 2010, I supported, from bars in my town crowded with the local Dutch community, the Clockwork Orange Team with all the possible fervor, willing that Piqué, Iniesta and el Niño Torres would pay with their blood that red rage that burned inside me. Needless to say, when they won the cup, my reaction was more visceral than that one from the well mannered Dutch, who watched me meanwhile they were eating their traditional cheese and drinking their Heineken with an air of resignation.

I was with this Iberian irrational hatred when a friend of mine, from my volunteer time in Africa, asked me to host her, four Koreans and a Spanish girl for a few days at my house in San Jose, Costa Rica, while they were on a trip towards Belize. She is Brazilian so I had no problem, neither with the Koreans, but with the Spanish girl ... Fuck, a Spanish! Really: do I have to endure that accent for two days in my own house? Rediez!

Of course, obviously, I would ended up enduring it. One thing is to wish that the soccer team of an entire country loses the world championship and another one to close the door to a person in the face.

And so, one of those typical rainy afternoons in my city, Gemma came to my house. A girl with glasses, pierced chin and dreds, which she used to adjust with a knitting needle, meanwhile she was sitting on the sofa.

Two Koreans, plus Gemma, plus two Koreans, plus Silvana, from Brazil.

That was the beginning of my Spanish exorcism. I like her so much since the beginning... And not only that. She gave me a feeling that I had not experienced since I was seven years old.

At that time I was on first grade and I perfectly remember a girl who was a year older than me. I liked everything about her. The way she combed her hair, her earrings, her shoes, her name, her house, her parent's car, her attitude, her way of walking, everything. Absolutely everything. I would have mistaken it with a lesbian feeling if I had not discovered, since I was three years old, that I already had a deep and extremely strong passion for men. What this girl generated in me was another feeling I had not previously experienced: admiration. The admiration for another woman of my same age.

Among the pride of my teens and my attempt to build my own personality, I didn't feel that way in more than 20 years until I met Gemma. I saw her and wanted to be like her. I wanted to be a graphic artist and create a world full of colors and characters (which she called Pusinky; "kisses" in Slovak). I wanted to dress like her. I wanted to have that creativity and that magnetism; when she entered into a room, you just could not stop staring at her. Man, and that was not my impression only: while she visited a school in Costa Rica, the children asked her for autographs. No wonders: I was also fascinated with the character whom I had opened the door of my house.

While she was grooming her dreds with the needle and I was talking with her in the living room, both of us kept by my first communion photo (my mom refuses to remove it from the wall, for my great despair) I mentioned that I was saving money to go to Brazil and look for my ex boyfriend, that one who left me for a Spanish girl.

She looked at me and said to me two things: one, that her mother also had some pictures of her first communion and her sister's hanging on the living room's wall and that I should not feel embarrassed about it, because that was a thing that mothers do, here in Costa Rica, in Spain and in Mars. And two, that she understood that idiot desire to love somebody, even if he doesn't love you back. She understood me with the heart and not with the head, not as the rest of my friends, who tried, unsuccessfully, to convince me to let go someone who was already lost anyway.

Silvana, Gemma and me.

Eventually, I changed my mind and I decided to look for you, you, who are Spanish as well and who I will love until the day I die. Spanish, as Gemma. So after ranting against Spain, the first country I visited was, ironically, Spain. I do not know how they let me go through Barajas Airport, considering my evil desires against their glorious soccer team. Somehow meeting Gemma made me think that I could resist, at least for a few days, that accent. And you already know how it was: we even ended up going to watch Torrente 4, on a cold and rainy night.

A couple of months later, I decided to declare my love for you in a video. I recruited my friends across the world and I asked each of them to send me a video in their respective languages, telling you how much I love you. The very first video that I got was from Gemma. It was like she was with me on my way to make peace not only with Spain, but also with my deepest feelings.

One snowy night, when I was drinking a cup coffee with my mom in Amsterdam (yes, with that same lady who refuses to remove that lovely picture of me, toothless and dressed in a white dress), I read on Facebook that Gemma was receiving chemotherapy. I knew she was sick for some time, she used to post everything from her bed in the hospital. Even with that, she was awsome: she was able to make people believe that to be in a clinic's room was something magical, as she posted Instagram pictures, messages and drawings she did with her tireless colors, which were immune to anything. I clicked on the “like” button of her picture shaving her head. I knew she had done it before, when she shaved those dreds she used to groom with her needle. I clicked on that like not for compassion, not even for solidarity: I clicked on that like because I was sure that if there was a woman who could shave her head and always look beautiful, was her.

Gemma with a pusinsky.

Eventually, more photos and drawings arrived. Papers to rip off. Papers to drill with the pencil. Papers to scribble without control. It was a reflection of what she was living. A struggle which was bleeding all that creativity, that splashed in colorful drops.

When May began to decline, she posted a black and white photo of herself. She was running out of colors, although I could not believe it. I draw exactly as I did in second grade, without any hyperbole, I have no talent, but instead I write and I refused to take out this character from my novel. No, the heroine never dies. She will recover and we will see each other again, although we both know, as travel junkies, that always that good bye can be the last farewell.

One Saturday afternoon, while I was checking Facebook after a nap, I found the following poem, accompanied by a cartoon of her, full of color and pusinkys.

When I leave, I don't want you to cry,

Stay in silence without saying any word,

And live on memories, that comforts the soul.

When I sleep, respect my sleep

For some reason I fall asleep, for some reason I left.

If you feel my absence don't pronounce anything

And almost in the air with very fine pitch

Meet me at my house, look for me in my letters,

Among the papers I have written in a hurry.

Wear my shirt, my sweater, my coat,

And you can wear all of my shoes.

I'll lend you my room, my pillow, my bed,

In cold weather, wear my scarves.

You can eat all the chocolate

And drink the wine I left.

Listen to that song that I used to like,

Use my perfume and water my plants.

If they cover my body do not feel sorry for me,

Run to the open space, free your soul.

Touch the poetry, the music, the singing

And let the wind play with your face,

Kiss the soil, drink all the water,

And learn the living language of the birds.

If you miss me too much, hide it.

Look for me in the children, the coffee, the radio,

and that spot where I used to hide myself.

Do not ever say the word “death”.

Sometimes it's sad to live forgotten

Than die a thousand times and be remembered.

When I sleep,

don't bring any flowers to a bitter grave

Shout with all your strength

That the world is alive and keeps going.

The flame will not dissapear

For the simple fact that it's not there anymore.

Living men never die,

They sleep sometimes, not for so long

Sleep and infinity are just an excuse.

When I leave stretch out your hand

And you'll be sealing with me

And although you can not see me, and although you can not touch me

You'll know that I'll always be by your side.

Then one day, smiling and vibrant

You will know that I returned to not leave again.

(I'm going to look for my bearded guy.

Don't wait awake for me).

I knew, then, that the color had returned to her. But she was gone.

And then, with tears in my eyes, I saw the cartoon sadly blurry, and I had to say goodbye to one of my favorite heroines.

Living women never die. They only sleep sometimes. I will know that every morning when I wake up and I will see the world's most beutiful dawn. Then I'll know, Gemma, that you've woken up already and you'll be coloring it. And that, indeed, you have never gone away.

About how I learned to speak German

I like the German language. I know: it's weird. It turns me on more to hear a German guy say something random like Einunddreißig instead of hearing an Italian guy whispering in my ear: Ciao bella. I love to see those kilometric words, as if there were not enough letters to express what is deep inside. I rather to hear those strong sounds, like a hard cookie that you can not bite really well with your teeth, instead of the Brasilian-Portuguese-honey, that one which can make you feel sickeningly sweet, but that everybody loves.

As time goes by, you learn to commit some social suicides and accept, in front of the scepticall look of the audience, that you like things that anybody else does. Yes, I like the snow. Yes, I like McDonald's fries. Yes, I wanted that Heidi would stay in Frankfurt for good and that the Coyote would eat the Roadrunner finally. And yes, I like German. Genau.

But German, as we all know, those who Schiller didn't feed when we were growing up, is hard to learn. My first attempt to learn it date back when I was 18 years old. Back then, full of energy, I sign myself up in a German course in college. After two weeks, I was totally disappointed with my progress. Since I was incapable of pronouncing, for example, my age (achtzehn back then; Youth, treasure only gods may keep, fleeting from me forever now!) with that acht that used to get stuck in my throat and never went out for Goethe's perpetual glory, I decided to change my birth certificate for learning purposes and be born in 1980. Neunzehn. Nineteen. Easier.

After a while, I quit. Especially when I arrived to the accusative. For the sake of a real gender equity and a lot of mental laziness, I decided to learn all the vocabulary without taking notice if the words were feminine, masculine or neutral. Then I realized, as soon as I discovered the accusative, that I was screwing the whole thing up and the German books began to get some dust in the drawer, they saw the new millennium pass through and they slept waiting for the resurrection, in the hope that the Esperanto would swept all the languages away and we would be able to go back to a kind of primary Indo-European tongue in a new age, in which peace and harmony would end with all these linguistic¨differences to put attention to more urgent business, such as wars for the water possession, the fall of a meteor, or the zombie apocalypse.

Until one day, 12 years later, I decided to study German again. A trip around Europe made me realize about the importance of this language, as I was smoking some pot in an apartment in Vienna. Suddenly, I realize I was not able to share with the ones around me the philosophical knowledge which was emerging from the green smoke's fertility. In that moment, I discovered the meaning of life. However, since I was not able to articulate it properly in German and remember it the next morning, the human race lost its chance. In the same way that Einstein's last words were lost since, as the legend tells, the nurse who was seated next to him at the moment of his death didn't understand German. Oh, German language, how many tragedies are committed on the sake of your unpronounceable name! Enough, I thought. I learn German because I learn it and puntk.

Yeah: Mark Twain was soooo right.

Der, die, das

The first obstacle I found, as a German neophyte, was precisely the one that made me drop out twelve years earlier: the words articles. Der, male. Die, female. Das, neutral. Bad news are that anyone who wants to learn German needs to have an excellent memory, because there is no way to know whether a word is masculine or feminine or neutral. There is no a generic "a" or generic "o" to lead the way to put sex to things that doesn't have it anyway, as in Spanish. So, dude, you're screwed: every word has to be learned by heart. And as if that was not enough, you have to do it also with the plural, because each word has its peculiar way of being pluralized.

For example, I am a girl. But in German I'm a mädchen. Or rather, a frau, because I am not 15 years anymore and I already crossed the border of my 30s. Feminine. But a door is a tür, feminine. And the entrance is an eingang, feminine too. So, face it, no-German-speakers: there is no help.

Anyway, before going any further, I must confess that, actually, I'm lying. Beyond pass on my knowledge to the German-speakers when it was smoking, I found my motivation in a somebody else's eyes. A look, ironically, which it doesn't need any words. Men perhaps wouldn't look at us women in the eyes if they knew how one learns over time to decipher their looks. We are not talking, in any case, about the typical blue-like-the-sky or blue-like-the-sea kind of eyes, which usually Latin Americans girls fall in love with. As I said, I'm a little weird. I do not like blondes, really. These eyes were honey-colored. A childish look. A shiny look.

I haven't being in love for a long time. And when I look at that girl (because back then I was still a mädchen, not a frau), who used to be in love head over heels sooooo many years ago, I can not recognize myself. It seems like it happened in another life, when for sure I was blonde, and tall and I even spoke fluent German.

But I must admit that this look was the closest I've been so far to fall in love again. And not only I was about to fall in love with that look, but also with his big hands, big as the ones of a farmer, his back to which I could cling myself to, his silences, his way of walking down the Alps, his simple way of seeing this world he had traveled more than me. And especially I was about to fall in love with his childish and his well-mannered bitte everytime he asked for something. Soon, I discovered that there was nothing that I wouldn't do for that bitte. No please, no por favor, no お願い し ます. Moreover, I didn't even need a fucking reason for that bitte. It was the word whose answer would be yes, always.

Der Mann. Die Frau. I was sure that I would learn.

One afternoon in Austria, that will stick forever.

Akkusativ

The importance of learning these lovely articles is that you will need them later, when the accusative makes its glorious entrance. In Spanish that existed during the days when Latin was not increased itself in Romance languages, but continued omnipotent. If all great empires have fallen and Rome fell, so would the Latin, with all its accusative.

The accusative, for those who have not had to martyr themselves with cases in Latin and the litany of agricola, agricolam, agricolae, is a direct object that is declined. For example: if I say in German: "I have a pencil," I can not say "Ich habe ein Bleistift" which would be the first thing to pop into our minds with a basic knowledge of vocabulary. No: we must say "Ich habe einen Bleistift" because it is a direct object, therefore, accusative. And if it's female is another story and if it's neutral another one, and so on. Yes: be scared. This is actually an article to discourage people to learn German and boycott all German schools.

Okay, then, according to the accusative, I had an Austrian guy. Ich habe einen Österreicher, I was thinking naively, as I packed my backpack to go with him two weeks to Peru, where the hazel eyes of this nomadic were reflected on Lake Titicaca at that specific moment.

Sick of a job in a shitty call center (one of those jobs which we, aspiring writers, will be proud once we are seated on the Parnassus next to Borges, remembering it as a rimbaudean part of our lives that shaped our character to write as well as we will do), I impulsively quit on Monday afternoon, ready to go with all my savings towards south. Ich möchte einen Freund haben.

So, I went after him. I should already have known by now that these romantic and Latin impulsiveness do not fit into the Aryan world. In these countries, people think every little thing one, two, three, four times before doing it. And if they can, fünf.

So, at the end, I had to deal with watching his back sleeping next to me for two weeks. An Argentinian girl broke his heart weeks before and afterwards, this man didn't look at me the way he used to. There was no childishness, or brightness, or anything. I realized from the first moment as our eyes met in Cusco, meanwhile a smoker like me was struggling against the lack of air that you suffer when you are 3000 meters above the sea level and especially, that you suffer when you realize that someone does't look at you in the same way.

That was, then, the most that I saw during those endless days, as I was trying to do my best to marvel myself at the dizzying height that Machu Picchu was built (how the Incas would not going to leave that city? Who wants to go all the way up there, for God's sake?), how difficult it is to do sandboarding in Huacachina and how a llama can spit on you if she is very angry. His back. Since he is tall and Tyrolean, he walked a lot faster than me, a short-city- girl. And if you look at the photos of my trip to Peru, that's what you will see: his back.

When we finally said good bye in Lima, I watched him walk away with the knowledge that I would never see him again. Enough, I thought. He doesn't love you. Er liebt dich nicht. That is also accusative, not the way I dreamed it, but accusative anyway.

His back. Immer.

Dativ

Did you believe only the accusative was annoying ? Noooooo, unsuspecting no-German-speakers. Germans have more for you. Welcome to the dative's world. Another case, this time used for indirect objects. And, natürlich, we must decline it, depending on whether we are talking about something masculine, feminine, neutral or one of its bizarre ways of plural.

Anyway, such an Austrian negative on Peruvian land was far from discouraged me. I'm stubborn by nature and when I want something, I go for it. Resigned, I spent the following months studying alone at home, with a book and the automatic voice of the frau from Google translator. With her, I had a good relationship. Perhaps because she has no eyes, and of course, no back either. Anyway, I always understood her.

So when I returned to Germany this year, I was more than ready to challenge myself in all the possible idiomatic ways with any German, even if it was only to ask for a fucking cappuccino to fulfill my coffee needs. Puffffff, you, naive Costa Rican girl: reading German and be able to write it with a more or less decent grammar does not mean that you can speak it. I did not understand a shit. Not a shit, literally, because the well mannered textbooks had not even taught me some bad words in case I needed to defend myself.

In any case, the little that I knew was enough to locate the subway in Berlin (or U-bahn as they call it here) and meet a German friend who I didn't see for 15 years. What can I do... I have a weakness for men who speak German. And especially if they are tall, and if they have large hands and brown eyes, and if they are intelligent, and nice, and if they have traveled ... So you know then where this kapitel would end. There was no other way.

And as I was sleeping next to him, I realized that he didn't turn his back on me. He just hold my hand. A huge hand in which mine was so small ... A woman like me, frankly, does not need jewelry, clothes, or even a ride back home the next morning. I like to think I'm strong and independent. But sometimes, all I need is someone who gives me his hand. Gib mir deine Hand. Give me your hand. To me. Indirect object. I'm content myself with being indirect, not the center of your life. But please, bitte, give it to me.

That night I slept so calm... As I haven't slept in a long time.

The order of the words in a sentence

If you ask me, this is for me the most difficult thing that German has. I am totally and absolutely convinced about Yoda's Germanic roots by now. These people do not speak in a logical order. Take this case as an example: Wir haben uns schon so lange nicht mehr gesehen. Translated into English, roughly, this becomes: "We've us already so long no more seen." WTF? Genau: they speak like that! For them, it's important to say that something happened not so long ago just to, like a good story in that you have to read it all the way down to find out the end, what happened is that we didn't see each more anymore.

Likewise I had to travel many miles back to Berlin to find out the end of this story.

Absurdly motivated, I asked for a few days off in my job (I clean a hostel in Portugal, one of those jobs which I would be proud of myself when I would be seated next to Dostoevsky) and I came to spend a few days in Berlin. No, I'm not in love. The only thing I needed was to sleep again taken by his hand. As simple as that. To me, that was worth jumping over Spain, the Pyrenees, France, the Alps, Switzerland and all that would get in the way. Especially at this stage of my life, because I feel like Cinderella.

After wandering a couple of days in Leipzig and feel happy to be the protagonist of this story, walking the streets in search for cigarettes only to find Schiller's and Schuman's houses, finally I came to Berlin in a car loaded with Germans who did not talk too much in all the way, but with the little they did, I saw, with satisfaction, that I could understand them. Man, way to go: I can understand German and I have the chance to sleep with someone who will give me his hand. Yes, happy to be the protagonist.

After getting lost a bit in the neighborhood, always observed in any case by the Fernsehturm for further reference, I finally reached my destination: his apartment, perched on the top of a fairly Berliner building, which is accessed by an endless staircase, similar to the one who can take you from purgatory to heaven.

While I was climbing, I was trying to atone, then, my sins: some extra kilos, half-collapsed lungs for cigarettes of anguish and a stupid hope that maybe, maybe, for once, at least, I would be able to be with someone to speak German with and all beyond that.

And bam, I entered in his apartment, scared to death, but I entered. Me and my optimism entered, as well as my need to be cared at least for a few days, and as well as my fears of not being pretty enough, smart enough and nice enough, as it happened before, when I couldn't compete with the ghost of an Argentinian girl.

After an introductory and very polite conversation, and drink a couple of beers (this story has for scenario Germany, don't forget it), we decided it was late and it was better to go to sleep. Sleeping ... with all the connotative meanings that word can have. I do not know how it will be in German, but sleep together in Spanish can go far beyond of just closing your eyes and snoring within two minutes next to someone.

And it seems that this is, in fact, all it means in German. Sleeping.

Meanwhile, I saw his back. I thought the accusative was already an overcome stage in my life, but no. There it was again, so I could make a review, so I could understand the hard way, once and for all, that all I'm going to get is this: a back.

And I had not noticed it, but from his side of the bed and mine there was a huge space. An unbridgeable gap, an abyss where all my dreams started to fall down into a never. A place where there was not even a hand to hold me and save me to go straight to the bottom. And yet, the ghost of a German girl was sufficiently huge, gigantic, monstrous to fill that gap there, between the two of us. Gross. Much bigger than his hand, even.

And there, in the middle, was also your ghost. As always, as it has been for 15 years. At that moment, then, I had an epiphany, in that attic in Berlin: as long as I keep this brief space where you are not, there will be always a huge gap between my side of the bed and any man's who sleeps beside me. Perhaps they can hold my hand, but never hug me for good. It's time to leave that space empty. For anyone who wants it.

That night, he slept. I didn't. The next morning, as soon as he went to work, I took my backpack (easy, because I did not even unpack) and left, probably on the tram that followed his.

And since then, I'm sitting in this hostel, drinking coffee, smoking, and eating cheap pizza from the guy around the corner, who I like, because he speaks Italian and no German. The other night a kid of about seventeen, drunk as possible within his half-baked testosterone, approached me to propose having sex with him. I sent him to hell (yeah, zur Hölle, I already learned) and to my surprise, I realized that I had all this conversation in German.

Thus, dear readers, who have had the patience to read this text, that's how I learned to speak German. So think it twice before you ever consider to learn such a difficult language.

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