“I took it upon myself to use this outsider feeling as fuel”
I moved to Berlin when I was 24 years old because I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. When I arrived I felt very much like an outsider because it was a culture I only had a fake connection to. Everyone seemed to be so cool, this was Berlin in 2001, it was post wall coming down.
I didn’t know where I fit in there. The first couple of months were really difficult because Germans are notoriously difficult to get to know, they are not like Americans where you can come up to on the street like this and have a chat.
I didn’t have very many clients in the beginning and it took me a while to access the kind of stories that I wanted, so I took it upon myself to use this outsider feeling as fuel for my curiosity and understand it a lot better to start being a journalist.
I can’t recall having any stuffed animals as a child only my brother’s, it is still around and in tatters. Now all the stuffed animals are in my son’s crib.