Last night, with the help of my current host and illustrator friend Ditte Winkelman, I purchased a ticket to Berlin. Those of you who receive my frantic e-mails already know that I’m very hopeful about this move. Maybe one day if you ask me when my new life started, I’ll be able to say, “Oh, my real adult life, the one where I got a job and shed the skin of a hypersensitive, depressed cowboy–that started when I went to Berlin with no real plan.”

Though I’m hopeful, I also try not to have expectations, because I’m a realist.

Fortunately, I’ll be able to stay in Berlin with a new friend, also a great illustrator, Mark Verhaagen. Apparently I have a thing for crashing at illustrator’s places. I like to be vicariously creative I guess.

I’m writing this from Hopper, my favorite non-weed selling coffee shop. A girl just asked me what time it was and I didn’t understand until after asking her to repeat her vocalization three times. Though briefly awkward our interaction quickly morphed into a conversation. She said she loves everything about Rotterdam except the weather. I feel the same if you replace the words the weather with Rotterdam. She mentioned before she had lived in Antalya, Turkey, which was somewhere else I was already thinking about if things don’t pan out.

Back to Berlin though. I’ve heard nothing but positive comments about Berlin. Though the weather won’t be drastically different, I think the larger-city atmosphere and exploration opportunities will definitely be a step forward for me. Now that I’ve gotten over the pesky flu I received from watching The Life of Pi, I am thinking more clearly and turning back into the Positive Peter I’ve learned to be over the years.