A year ago I was in Berlin, coming to terms with a new job I hated and a new hometown I loved. In the year that followed I saw the whole city from every angle, taught English to a selection of unwilling babies and blogged constantly about it here. I also, funnily enough, managed to learn German, which was sort of the point in the first place; at the end of this year I hope to get a degree in it. Yes, the year to come is the final year of my studies at Oxford University and all of a sudden this hardened and weatherbeaten Berliner is having to come to terms with being a new student all over again. With someone to empty my bin and someone else to set me homework. Gone are the toddlers, in with the essays. It's odd to be back in the UK, mostly because nothing has changed whatsoever; the weather's as grey as it always was, the student accommodation is as grimy as it always was and the economy is still resolutely tramping towards catastrophe. The one difference for this blogger is having a whole new language to blog in, and that's what she'll do. This year I'm going to parallel-blog in English and German. I'll blog about Oxford and finals and about living 'between two stools' (a phrase I have never understood - though perhaps I am simply strange and the rest of you well know the feeling of literally not being able to choose between a selection of backless chairs). Sometimes the topics will be the same, and sometimes different, and that's for you canny readers to figure out among yourselves. Maybe some of you will pick up some vocab; maybe some of you will be so offended by the smug concept that you'll hurl your laptop out the window on reading this introduction. Mal schauen. (We'll see. Fnar fnar.)
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