Portraits: Anja

She looks like a real-life Barbie or a porcelain doll. I say that not in the catty jealous woman sort of way, but more in admiration. Every day, she sweeps into the office, as if she stepped out of a catalogue. Yesterday she wore what no American would ever dare, especially after Labor Day: white pants and a white sweater. Somehow she made it look classy, with a brown belt looped around her thin frame and large wooden beads slung around her neck. Her hair is an unnaturally natural blond, and it’s always pulled back away from her dimpled smile, which make her blue eyes look that much larger. There would be no keeping my American guy friends away from her if she were ever to visit.

One recent afternoon, a group of us stood indecisively at the corner, caught between her desires for lunch and the rest of the group. “I’d like something healthy,” she had said with a pout, after someone suggested Chinese. Suddenly they turned to me. “What would you like?” Philip asked. He suggested that if I didn’t want Chinese, I could go with Anja to get a salad the small “bio” store to our right. She looked at me expectantly, batting mascara fringed eyelashes. The ticking of the cross walk vocalized the pressure of their stares.

It was a combination of the chill in the air and the fact that I had a salad the night before is what I would like to say won me over to Chinese. “I’d actually like something warm,” I said just as the light switched green. If I’m honest, however, a part of it was that I wimped out. It was the dread of having to make polite conversation with Anja alone in German. Why women are so intimidated by other women is something I will never understand.

Befriending other girls in a foreign country is difficult but something I’m ever trying to do. A female relationship is so simple. There are no undertones of unwelcome expectation. No blurry lines. And among women, there is always at least one unexhaustive fallback conversation topic that does wonders for bonding in any culture: men.

So I found myself sitting among them eating sweet and sour chicken, trying to follow the group's conversation like a spectator follows a tennis match, and constantly losing the ball in the sun.

I should have gone to lunch with Anja that day.