After I dropped Maya in Kita today, I went to a coffee shop and ran into a friend. She is what the American call “tough cookie”-a lawyer and a mother and she just knows everything: what bike to buy for the baby, how to file your taxes, where you can find a good dancing class and when is the next course is starting. Did I mention that she is a full time lawyer?

Anyway, she is now moving with her family from Berlin to another big German city and she is in the process of running her errands: finding a moving a company, finding new Kita for her daughter, terminate her health club membership.

The first thing was, of course, finding a new apartment. She leafed through the local papers, called real estate agents and scheduled two trips to see some apartments. Then she also looked into the Internet site that provide listings for apartment to rent all over Germany.

She browsed through one of the ads. She knew the neighborhood–it was heavily populated with immigrants–and she liked it, and the more details she read about the apartment, the more excited she was about it. Then she reached the bottom of the ad. It ended with a sentence promising the future renter that this building have all the intention to stay Deutsch.

I know this woman for more than two years. Our daughters really like each other, but we never managed to get into a deep conversation about some decisions that she made in her life, about her family, and how it shaped her views and attitudes toward Germans and how they look and treat foreigners.

“You know”, she told me, “I really don’t believe that Germans are doing it on purpose. I just don’t think that they understand that it is discrimination”.

“Yes, I think you are right”, I told her, “and that’s why it is more tragic than sad”.