What do you do when your sweetheart of five years dumps you for someone else before your senior year of college? Flee the country, obviously. A Jersey girl through and through, Kat Vespucci, a conservative American college student, escapes a nasty break-up by spending her senior year studying abroad in Berlin, Germany. She really wanted to travel to London, but her parents insisted she learn something about her roots. Having rarely left her home state of New Jersey, let alone travel to a foreign country, Kat is completely unprepared for what lies ahead. Strange European customs, classmates from the former Eastern Bloc, anti-Americanism, German bureaucracy, history she's never heard of, and the persistent flasher who lurks in her neighborhood, all catch Kat by surprise. Meanwhile, she searches for her Uncle Otto, a relative the family hasn't seen since the war.
At first, she feels like a house cat dropped into a lair of lions, yet she somehow manages to land and stay on her feet. Earth to Kat Vespucci is a comic, coming-of-age story about a young woman who does not discover herself and where she comes from until she leaves.