The pre-war, stone row houses on my street in Tempelhof are painted colors unusual in drab Berlin: rhubarb red, periwinkle blue, hunter green and three different shades of yellow. Every house has an old cherry or magnolia tree out front. On the long oval patch of common green in the center of our street, we meet for block parties at the end of the school year or for Christmas caroling in front of a bonfire. We can knock on our neighbor’s door if we’ve run out of milk. We water each other’s vegetable gardens when we go on vacation. We keep an eye on each other’s kids. We gesticulate wildly when a car drives too fast down our block. Although we rarely go there, we love to remind everyone how close we live to the excitement of Mitte. We drive almost everywhere in our minivans, but we boast about the subway’s proximity anyway. (Rose-Anne Clermont)