EXCHANGE: MOVIE MAGIC

Nicole Dillman seeks a personal view of Germany through a camera lens© Heinrich Völkel

It didn't take Nicole Dillman long to realize she was in over her head. Within minutes of meeting her at a Berlin restaurant, her host father's friend began talking about her country's president. Very soon Nicole, 18, realized she didn't know enough to agree or disagree. »I'm not a big political person. I'm just going to be honest: I don't know enough to argue my point,« says Nicole, recalling the episode while sitting in a Berlin café. »I'm not going to argue something I don't know about. That's just ridiculous.«

Within minutes, Nicole went from a high school graduate selected for a competitive exchange program to the stereotype she dreaded most: the dumb American. »I was like, 'man, I should have studied up,'« she said, then paused. »Yeah, I felt really stupid. I felt plain stupid. I felt like an idiot.«

With time, those moments happen less often for Nicole, who came to Berlin from Rochester, NY, on a Congress-Bundestag Vocational Exchange scholarship last June. In less than six months, the coltish Navy brat with dreams of becoming a filmmaker has learned to adjust on the fly in her new environment. She's learned to ask dumb questions in another language, find her own way and make sure the 3.100 Dollar she saved before coming to Germany doesn't get sucked up too quickly by Berlin's nightlife.

»You can't just stay quiet all the time, you've got to initiate,« she has learnt, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. »You have to. I don't even question it. I don't think about why I do it. I just do it.« That's a tried and true approach for Nicole, who grabbed an application for the program minutes after it was announced over her school loudspeaker. A few months later, she was headed to Washington, DC, for orientation.

Some of the 18 other students that made the trip quickly gave up on the whole integration thing, but Nicole just felt she couldn't. After all, this program was paying for the whole thing. Why not give it an honest shot and really learn the language?

But there were times when words failed her. Like when she saw the television on Sept. 11. The planes going into buildings she had known from her trips to Brooklyn to visit her cousin. Smoke. Explosions. Chaos. Things quickly got worse for Nicole. After unsuccessful attempts to call her parents, Nicole got a call from her boss. An uncle and two of her aunts had died in the World Trade Center attacks.

She fiddles with the cappuccino in front of her, her bubbly personality lost in the bitter memory. »I don't know. I don't know what to do now; I'm just trying to soak into the city and not try to be in denial or anything like that.«