  We discuss aspects of the possible transition between small black holes and
highly excited fundamental strings. We focus on the connection between black
holes and the self gravitating string solution of Horowitz and Polchinski. This
solution is interesting because it has non-zero entropy at the classical level
and it is natural to suspect that it might be continuously connected to the
black hole. Surprisingly, we find a different behavior for heterotic and type
II cases. For the type II case we find an obstruction to the idea that the two
are connected as classical solutions of string theory, while no such
obstruction exists for the heterotic case. We further provide a linear sigma
model analysis that suggests a continuous connection for the heterotic case. We
also describe a solution generating transformation that produces a charged
version of the self gravitating string. This provides a fuzzball-like
construction of near extremal configurations carrying fundamental string
momentum and winding charges. We provide formulas which are exact in $\alpha'$
relating the thermodynamic properties of the charged and the uncharged
solutions.
