Newly arrived in Berlin, a young man from Sicily is thrown headlong into an unfamilar urban lifestyle of unkempt bachelor pads, evanescent romances and cosmopolitan encounters of the strangest kind. How does he manage the new language? Will he find work?Experience daily life in the German capital through the eyes of a newcomer, learn about the country and its people, and improve your German effortlessly along the way!This book is designed to help beginners make the leap from studying isolated words and phrases to reading (and enjoying) naturally flowing German texts.Using simplified sentence structures and a very basic vocabulary, this collection of short stories is carefully crafted to allow even novice learners to appreciate and understand the intricacies of coherent German speech.Each chapter comes with a complete German-English dictionary, with a special emphasis on collocative phrases (high frequency word combinations), short sentences and expressions.By working with these "building blocks" instead of just single words, learners can accelerate their understanding and active usage of new material and make the learning process more fluid and fun.