It started simply enough: I was walking down the street when a young man stopped me and asked, “Do you speak English?”
He didn’t fit my profile of people to whom I say, “I’m terribly sorry, but no, I do not speak English! What a terrible misfortune. I wish you luck in finding somebody who does speak English.”
Instead he fit the profile of people who look vaguely lost and need directions, I said, “Yes.”
“Do you know any Croatians?” he queried.
“No,” I replied.
“So, you only know Germans?” he asked.
“I don’t know any Croatians,” I said.
We then started a brief discussion where I admitted I was an American and he wanted to know why Kansas and Arkansas were pronounced so differently – “I have family in Arkansas,” he said.
It was in this moment that I suddenly recalled that this wasn’t the first time I’d been asked if I knew anybody from Croatia.
The last time had been a very cold evening, as I was returning home from a party. Coming out of the U-Bahn station, it had occurred to me that I needed to pee. And pee badly. The multiple half-liters of hefeweizen were coming back to haunt me.
About 20 meters from my front door, a young man had stopped me – with the very same series of questions: “Do you speak English?” and “Do you know any Croatians?”
I don’t recall the exact tale of woe that I was told 18 months ago, but the young man who stopped me today was a construction worker who was going to get paid tomorrow, but last night his roommate had been too drunk and he’d had to sleep in a hostel. He now needed 12€ to pay off his hostel bill.
There’s no way I will ever pull out my wallet on the street to give money to somebody on the street so I lied: “Sorry, I don’t have any money on me.”
“How will I pay my bill,” the guy asked me.
“Good luck,” I answered as I started walking again.
May all the Croatians I don’t know, who live in Berlin, stop rooming with alcoholics.
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