The longer they lived in Germany, the more mindboggling southern European inefficiency seemed to them. It wasn’t like that in Berlin, they would tell their friends, not out of snobbery, but in a genuine attempt to get them to move there too. And those friends would fantasize about going to visit them or following in their footsteps. They, too, longed for something else, a difference they couldn’t find at home; they, too, felt that need for abundance.
