It was like Déjà vu, all over again!

For me, when it rains, it pours.

Seriously, I can go weeks without having social plans and then in one evening have two offers. This actually happened to me two weeks ago.

At the same time I can go a long time without seeing guests from out of town, but… Sunday I had not one, but two expat visitors—and not the normal in Germany type of expats, but Germans who don’t live in Germany, so expats visiting their home.

Or not—neither were Berliners when they lived in Germany.

The first visitor Sunday, who lives in one of the Low Countries, spent the day with me and we wandered around. After she admired my apartment, we wandered around Brandenburger Tor and the sites in that area, before going to Ritter Sport for lunch (I had a salad, seriously, and ate no chocolate). It was really a fantastic fun five hours.

At that point I accompanied her to the airport, gave her a hug good-bye, and then hopped a bus to the main train station, where I met my second guest of the day, a German woman who now lives on an island.

Guest number two spent two nights with me because she was getting some minor surgery done. Between the train station and my place we went past Brandenburger Tor and all the sites in that area, before going to my apartment where the first thing she did was admire it.

The funny thing was that we ended up talking about the same issues that I’d talked about before—so from the train station until evening, when we settled into separate beds, every conversation I had with the Islander seemed to repeat a conversation I’d had with the my first guest.

It actually even extended through late Monday evening when we were walking back from seeing a terrible movie (run away if anybody asks you to watch “The Road”—easily the worst movie I’ve seen since moving to Berlin) and we were talking about my neighborhood and its (famous) diversity.

This was actually a repeat of the very first conversation I’d had with my first guest:

No, I don’t live in the gay neighborhood, but it is close by.

Déjà vu, all over again, indeed.