I arrived in Berlin just in time for the cottonwoods. Their seeds drifted through the air in such numbers that it looked as though God had taken a giant dandelion, blown on it, and forgotten where the fluff landed. The fluff collected along curbs and in doorways. Little tumbleweeds of summer. A breeze would gather them up and send them skittering down the street again. Every city has something it would rather not talk about, but Berlin seems incapable of changing the subject.