I had the strangest thing happen to me yesterday. I spent probably an hour and a half in the international cookie-cutter that is Ikea. When I came out, it was dark, and I had to walk along a major road (on the sidewalk, don't worry) to get to the S-bahn station. The road I was on joined with another, lower road up in the distance, and it was prime traffic hour. Somehow the time spent in Ikea, combined with all the red break lights and the layout of this particular street made me forget that I was in Germany. I felt like I was back in downtown LA. Even after I remembered, after I looked around and saw the traffic signs in German, after I heard the people around me speaking a language I didn't understand, I couldn't get my brain to compute properly. I kept having to conciously say "no, I'm not in LA, I'm in Berlin," and my subconsious would say "Are you sure? It looks an awful lot like LA..." It was really weird - and unpleasant. I couldn't wait to get back to my neighborhood where I can tell what city I'm in!

Of course, when I got back to my place I found that the washing machine was stuck on wash cycle with all my clothes in it. It's a font-opening machine, and we couldn't get the thing to drain, so we had to put a bucket in front of the door, open it, and fish my sopping wet clothes out. We don't have a dryer, either. Thank god I didn't wash ALL my clothes - I would have been stuck in pajamas for two days while everything dried...