Camping on Kamchatka, and Other Tales

Today it was Gi.'s, Ge.'s, and J.'s last day of school before the Easter holidays, and when they came home they were in a correspondingly good mood. Gi. and Ge. had written a German exam, partly or wholly about Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf, which neither had read all the way through; but both were considerably optimistic, or at least cheerful.

Yesterday evening I finished Science in the Kitchen. It turns out that the author was a proponent of vegetarianism; she described meat as a coarse substance that is not necessary to nutrition but is saturated with nasty body wastes, and fish in particular as flesh teeming with parasites. Also, she finds cucumbers barely nutritious and barely digestible unless cooked. On the other hand, she seems inordinately fond of carbohydrates; I barely exaggerate when I say that there is some sort of boiled grain in every recipe. I was wondering about the temperance movement as I read. If one makes an enormous moral issue out of even one glass of wine ("beware the social glass!", as I read in another book), doesn't it make alcoholics defensive, making them more likely to become aggressive and drink more, and doesn't it discourage those who truly make an effort to stop but sometimes relapse? The present-day practice of treating alcoholism (real alcoholism, not just having a glass with meals) as an illness and not as a sin is, in my view, far more reasonable and helpful. Besides, when morality is no longer directed against actions that concretely cause harm, it only discredits all other morality, in my view.

It's funny, I think, how the wheel of public opinion turns. For example, drinking a glass of red wine per day, once denounced as the gateway to inferior regions, is now extolled for its supposed health benefits. Personally, I find the constant changes of views on nutrition highly irritating. First saturated fats are bad, then hydrogenated fats, then trans-fats. First the anti-oxidants in fruits are good, then they are bad if one consumes too much of them. Sports drinks are good, then they erode the teeth. Then there was the Atkins diet and the corresponding preference for meat over grains, followed by its furtive disappearance. And so on and so forth. I wish that everything written on the subject were supported by clear-cut scientific evidence, so that the public isn't like a herd of sheep ignominiously driven to and fro by the barking of the press. I like healthy debate, but I don't like when much of that debate consists of a pack of untruths.

Anyway, now I'm reading Tent Life in Siberia by George Kennan (not that George Kennan, but his explorer forebear). First published in 1870, it is the account of a surveying expedition sent out to Siberia in 1865 by the Russian-American Telegraph Company (for the Western Union Telegraph Company) to prepare for a possible trans-pacific undersea cable. The first trans-atlantic cable had just failed, and before the second trans-atlantic cable was laid there was a window of opportunity for the Western Union, of which it thus attempted to take advantage (unsuccessfully, as it turned out). The trans-pacific sea journey, which took nearly seven weeks, was anything but enjoyable. Mr. Kennan had expected the ocean to correspond to the poetic ideal, sublimely grand, whereas it inspired him only with intense sea-sickness. Then he landed in Petropavlovsk(-Kamchatsky), a village of some two or three hundred inhabitants, some of them xenoi from America and Germany. This village was also an important Russian fortress during the Crimean War. Its surroundings are not Siberian wasteland, as one would expect, but quite green and lovely. To Mr. Kennan, who arrived on shore desperate for land in any size, shape or form, it was nearly like Paradise.

I did an internet search on the Crimean War, which directed me to the Wikipedia article. One article led to the other, and I had an amusingly eclectic read about Florence Nightingale (whose Notes on Nursing I also read on Project Gutenberg), The Little Rascals, the Mexican-American War, the Texas Revolution, the Charge of the Light Brigade, Benjamin Jowett and other friends of Florence Nightingale, and even Petropavlovsk. The humble Russian village now is a city of over 100,000 inhabitants. There were even photos of it in the article about it, with Avacha Bay in the foreground, the buildings clustered on the shore, and the two neighbouring volcanoes in the background.

Here is a funny quatrain from the article on Benjamin Jowett, who was the Master of Balliol College at Oxford:

First come I. My name is Jowett.
There's no knowledge but I know it.
I am the Master of this College,
What I don't know isn't knowledge.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Jowett)

To end on a gluttonous note, for dinner we had a grand pot roast made by Papa with beef, potatoes, leeks, carrots, onions, white wine, etc.. We had baguettes on the side, and for dessert there was Quark -- by which I don't mean the tiny particle that composes the atom, but the food that resembles sour cream -- with cherries.

Piano and Cookery

Today was a lovely sunny day. I went outside twice, but for the utilitarian aim of grocery-shopping. For dinner we had lentil soup, cooked by Papa. It turned out spicy, because I had bought a bundle of what I knew to be either parsley or cilantro, and knowing that both herbs would work in the dish, I decided to let myself be surprised. Also, the soup was identical in green colour and flavour to the one that we used to have back in Canada, on Wednesdays when we visited our grandfather, so it was a nice Proustian experience. For dessert there were blue grapes from South Africa.

Between the shopping and the eating I played for hours on the piano. I took a look at Schubert's sonatas D. 558 (c minor) and D. 559 (A major), because (on YouTube, of course) I had come across a video of Alfred Brendel performing them in 1988. The last movement of the A major sonata was stuck in my head, because it is so nice and also because Papa often plays the beginning of it. Besides this piece of sightreading, I also played the parts of Chopin's waltzes that I usually don't play because I've already given up, tried out new ragtime pieces by Scott Joplin (I played "The Entertainer" about six years ago, and still can't manage the chords now), and sightread another Spanish dance by Enrique Granados. Then I played a few bars of the piano part of Schubert's Forellenquintet, because on YouTube I had also come across the documentary where that quintet is performed by Itzhak Perlman, Daniel Barenboim, Jacqueline du Pré, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman. Today the bits of Beethoven sonatas went unusually well (for once, I played all of Opus 31 No. 2 and 3 through, instead of giving up part-way through), as did Schumann 's Kinderszenen.

On the internet I still read many news articles, but now they're mostly restaurant reviews and other food articles. I take that as an indication that I am a terrible glutton, and that my mental horizon is in some respects narrowing. My lazy assessment of proper news articles is that the news is always the same. There are usually explosions of some sort in Iraq, more violence in Darfur, sabre-rattling toward or by Iran, something about Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama, political agreements or dissensions among the Palestinians, a case of the bird flu, a flood or a boat capsizing, another boatload of refugees off Australia or Italy or the Canary Islands, and a Bush scandal. It's not that I'd rather read lots of "good news," or that I don't think this news is important, but I have the feeling that a great deal of important news is being ignored just because the preceding topics are the ones that touch on the West's self-interest. Besides, in the case of Iraq, the news all appears to be filtered through the Iraq government or the US army, because the reporters cannot go out much, and it is hard to tell what is really going on.

As far as my online reading goes, I have finished with the novels of Mary Jane Holmes, continued with the historical novels of Mary Johnston (To Have and to Hold, set in early colonial Virginia, and Sir Mortimer, set in England and overseas in the time of Elizabeth I), and am now browsing merrily along the authors whose last names begin with K. This time I am reading more non-fiction, so I peeked into a grammar book, and am currently in the middle of Science in the Kitchen (which was published in 1893).

The cookbook has a reference to Louis Pasteur in it, which reminded me of a reference to Louis Pasteur in another book (fiction, though), where the unlucky scientist was mentioned as an evil being who injects poison into patients for his own gratification. It was funny to read in the cookbook -- which is also amusingly quaint as far as kitchen appurtenances and scientific terminology go -- how flour was adulterated by unprincipled sellers, with alum or lime or some other white powder (the prudent housewife would, for example, test for lime by dripping lemon juice on the flour and seeing if it fizzles). Also, I was introduced to the idea that mustard, pepper and other condiments are bad for you. They apparently inflame the lining of the intestinal organs, besides stimulating an unnatural appetite. And throughout the book the author interwove a strong temperance message, lamenting, for instance, that the lovely grape should be "perverted" by fermentation.

The Shadow of Coming Events

Today I am unfortunately not much the wiser from the good resolves that my blogging instilled in me yesterday. The only educational thing I have done, aside from reading sundry news articles, was reading a sixteen-page New Yorker article. The article, written by George Packer, was about Iraqi translators working for the US in Iraq, who are distrusted, marginalized and neglected by their employers and threatened with violence by their fellow countrymen. Altogether the article painted a bleak picture of the situation in Iraq in general, and a bleak picture in particular of the insular ignorance and callous indifference of the largely unqualified American officials who are or were in charge of it -- nothing new, really.

At the same time that I read that, I must confess that I was watching the latest episode of America's Next Top Model on YouTube. I'm not particularly sure why I find the show so interesting. But I must say that, unlike the Canadian and Australian versions, there is a serious love of fashion and of modelling palpable in the American original, even in its eighth season on television. And slowly I am becoming enlightened as to what modelling, at its best, is about. I think it is very much an art form, like music or painting or any other. Appearance -- clothing, hair, makeup, and above all the model's face and form -- is used to create a work of art that can be as rich in terms of aesthetics, mood, and meaning as any other. And the aesthetic is not simply beauty, or attractiveness. There are many photo shoots on the show that do go against my grain because the subject is primitive, or tasteless, or both. But in the American show, at least, it is made clear that character, individuality, imagination, and feeling at ease with one's self are really the most important characteristics of a model -- in short, that mere physical attractiveness is far from everything. On the whole, the personalities of the contestants are usually interesting and respect-inspiring, if not likeable or unusually intelligent. Even in an environment that is unfamiliar, stressful, and artificial, they always collectively manage to leave a strong personal imprint on the series.

Yesterday evening I began writing a short story entitled "The Convalescent," which was largely inspired by my lonely walks to the Rathaus Schöneberg, and, still more, by my recent fever. The first three paragraphs were decent, then the story derailed and at length I decided that it would be more productive if I slept on it. Today felt too soon to take a look at the story again; besides, I must still think up a plot. Unfortunately I usually think of stories in terms of character, "themes," and sometimes setting, while not having the foggiest idea what to do by way of plot. The main point of this story is really the way that the small problems and maladjustments in life provide a nagging undercurrent of discomfort and even sadness similar to a cold or other slight illness, and can bubble over into something still more worrisome. But I don't want to be preachy, and I am very fond of plots. Right now I'm mostly wondering what the troubles of my heroine should be. I've deprived her mother of her job (money worries is another topic) and made her father have a feud with his father-in-law (marred relationships is a third topic), but for some reason I still don't think that's enough. So I domiciled a family of filthy mice under the kitchen sink in her student apartment and gave her a stingy roommate. Now I have a bad conscience and I still don't think it's enough.

Anyway, perhaps I can write something cheerful soon. It's just that I still feel unlike myself, also because I haven't been out to a museum or concert or lecture or anything else (other than the grocery store and the bakery) in Berlin for weeks. Even a trip to my uncle and aunt in the countryside can't wake me up much. One of the nice things about being at the university was that my mind was generally active, and not only was my conscious pleasantly occupied but my subconscious* was also working away at the unresolved problems of my non-academic life. I don't think that a job, or constant pressure to go somewhere and do something, or anything else would be half as effective in keeping me awake as my pulling myself together and setting out a course of study for myself that would also require me to leave the apartment -- or, better yet, studying at a university again.

If I am put on a waiting list for the FU, which is most likely, I will indeed be forced to pull myself together. At least the coming year can't be nearly as difficult and dreary as the year after I graduated. There, for instance, I spent months gnawing away at a chapter of ancient Greek which, at university, I ended up skipping entirely in order to get to the more essential matter. I know few things harder than trying to gather and synthesize knowledge on one's own, without any practical context, without anyone to explain anything or provide a new perspective, and without anyone to set the learning pace. Besides, I think it is fair to say that studying on my own is more difficult for me than it would be for most people; I am neither patient, persevering, studious, clear-minded, nor particularly self-confident. One benefit of my gap-year pit was, however, that university seemed incredibly easy and rewarding by contrast. At any rate, I think I should put a plan in place for the year(s) where I have to wait to get into university again. During my fever one of the things that I realized was that I would probably take another university-less year very badly.

* I use the terms "conscious" and "subconscious" loosely, since I admittedly don't really know anything about psychoanalysis.

P.S.: Today Mama went to the Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair). Perhaps she will write something about it somewhere . . . at any rate I can't report anything because I haven't heard her tell about it yet.

Where Am I Going?

Today will be, I think, one of my more complaining posts. Though I am quite as cheerful as ever, I am once again anxious about the future, and I am asking myself, as I so often do: where have I come from, where am I, and where am I going? The answer to the first question generally consists of going back over my school experience and analysing it, but at this point that whole part of my life seems more like a distant dream than like reality, so the accuracy of the process is highly suspect.

"Where I am" is the more pertinent issue. At present I'm not worried about getting a job or getting into university, because I have convinced myself not to properly think about that until May. What does worry me is that, as far as I can tell, I no longer have any ambition at all. By ambition I mean the desire to learn, and the desire to explore new places, and plans for what I want to do in university and as a career. Probably I am simply demoralized by the long months of winter. But I've been making plans for self-improvement most of my life, and now I don't seem to have any. I think it would be nice to learn another language, or explore German and French literature, or read up on the things in Berlin's museums and art galleries, etc., but I no longer feel compelled to do so. Admittedly I felt compelled to do this kind of thing in the past because I thought that I would vegetate or be an ignoramus if I didn't, which is not a particularly pleasant motivation. And perhaps I have reached a decent point; for example, as far as telling the truth, doing the dishes, cleaning things up in general, not being disagreeable, not eavesdropping, etc., go, I am now quite successful, especially because I have little or no provocation to do otherwise. Besides, speaking three languages fluently is quite respectable.

But, still, I'm sure I could use an awful lot of improvement. For example, now that I am living comfortably up to my own moral standards, I am in considerable danger of becoming intolerably self-complacent. And, as for my knowledge, even in English literature -- even in nineteenth-century English literature -- there are still enormous gaps. In the other fields that really interest me, like history, current events, art, medicine and biology in general, music, archaeology, and gardening, I could and should know far more. On top of this there are the fields of which I should know more and in which I am moderately interested, especially psychology, philosophy, and nearly everything else.

Anyway, now that I've written all of this out, I think I do feel like learning something. (c:

Character and Inspiration

Today it was sunny again, a really smiling day that tempted an unusual number of people out onto the sidewalks. When I went grocery-shopping with Gi. I also saw that the median of the street in front of our apartment was bright with striped red and yellow tulips; further up there are yellow crocuses. I also noticed for the first time that the branches of the oak (or relative thereof) that grows in front of our living room window are full of buds.

Perhaps it's the spring that gives me the feeling that I can write something again, but so far I have no idea for a short story, which I'd rather do. My French Revolution and scion-of-noble-family-living-in-Victoria books are something I'd rather postpone until ideas and information have gathered, but my subconscious and conscious are working away particularly at the latter. For the second book, I've decided to give the main character misanthropic leanings. Which reminds me that I've been thinking that it's safest to give my characters at least one glaring shortcoming each. It's an easy way to make them more interesting, and to keep me from describing them in a bland and idealized way. Since I want my writing to be realistic, I don't want to have any of my characters embody my ideals, though I do want to like them. One problem I have is that I really don't want to put anyone whom I know well into my stories, which cramps me especially because my circle of acquaintances is so small.

I've also found that, as with knowledge of all sorts, that the more I know people, the more I see that I don't truly know them. This is not to say that they deceive or disappoint, but rather, to the contrary, that people have so many more sides to them than one believes, and that they can, for example, show compassionate vulnerability when one least expects it. It's already incredible what different sides of the same personality can be shown in a situation depending on its details. Take a stressful journey, for example. The car breaks down and the driver must hike to the next gas station. The mood, the behaviour of the driver can be very different based on what day it is. On Monday the driver might be in a foul mood; on Tuesday stoic; on Wednesday struck by the humorous side of the situation; on Thursday impatient; on Friday overcome with tears of disappointment and exhaustion. Then many small factors in the environment might play a role. If the day is sunny, the behaviour of the driver might be different from what it might have been if it had been rainy. If another automobilist comes up to help, depending on the impression that automobilist makes, the behaviour will be different again. Small factors in the history of the day and week preceding also make a difference.

That's also why I really dislike it when people judge others based on an insignificant action. Human nature is too complex to be judged based on a small acquaintance. It's a sad fact that people can act in ways contrary to their nature for their whole lives, or nearly their whole lives, mostly because their environment or upbringing is adverse.

Anyway, I hope that a short story idea will come to me soon. I believe very much in inspiration, though I also believe in writing fairly regularly even without inspiration for practice and on the off-chance that something will come up after all. Perhaps the Scarlatti sonatas will spark something, or the opera I've been watching on YouTube (after many clips of Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Renée Fleming, Luciano Pavarotti, etc. I'm starting to see that opera has its good points despite terrible sentimental plots and frequently lousy acting after all). Today, by the way, I found an old black and white clip of Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC orchestra in 1944; the performance of the overture of Verdi's Forza much impressed me.

In terms of the piano, I've been experiencing plenty of inspiration today and yesterday, the source of this inspiration probably being the fever. It feels disconcertingly devilish when I'm playing with 4/3 my usual agility and speed, and fingering snarls are dissolved as if by magic. Yesterday I had one of my "genius days," which only come about perhaps twice a year -- pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Schubert all went phenomenally well, though pieces by Mozart and Mendelssohn and the scherzo in Schubert's B flat major sonata didn't. But today I played "soullessly," so I broke off after a while. It's rather annoying that when I play very well it's a product of the subconscious and not the conscious, and that I have essentially no control over it. I think this lack of control is what gave me the "devilish" feeling. I suppose that if one is a genius one has this feeling often, and it's one reason I'm glad I'm not a genius.

I Become An Ailing Dickensian Orphan

Today is my second full day of a fever-cold combination that has thoroughly outdone my previous achievements in the category, as far as I can remember. While I feel full of energy most of the time, I sometimes feel very warm and perspiry or a little dizzy, my mind is working quickly (I can't say unusually quickly, because "quickly" doesn't describe its usual state anyway), my throat and head sometimes hurt, I cough and sneeze, and my temperature at one point reached 39.4 degrees Celsius. J., for once, made orphan jokes about me, and not vice versa.

But because of the energy, the nice sunny weather, my healthy appetite, the presence of every necessary comfort and remedy, the contrast to more painful physical and emotional ailments, and at least a week of excellent sleep beforehand, the illness is quite bearable. Also, the increased speed at which my neurons are firing mean that my memory, concentration, and ability to play the piano are all unquestionably in good shape, and I've been able to think matters over with greater distance and objectivity than usual. Sometimes, admittedly, the matters had best go unthought-of. I was thinking yesterday evening what would happen if I went blind; the day before yesterday I was worried that I might develop pneumonia. The things that perhaps more reasonably worry me is that I haven't clearly found out how serious the illness is (I think I'm exaggerating its importance), that my mind may be a little aberrant without my knowing it (for example, I've felt like crying and tried not to start because I feared that I wouldn't be able to stop), and that I am worried that people are angry at me (I would have tried to clear this up yesterday already, but I didn't feel clear-minded and strong enough to do it). I was with my uncle and aunt in the countryside until yesterday evening so I've felt rather disorientated too. Besides, I find losing my voice very unpleasant.

Anyway, it was nice today, though. I slept soundly, had a bath, lay down in the living room, played pieces by Mozart and Chopin and Schumann and Bach and Beethoven fairly slowly and quietly, read another chapter of Waverley, ate brunch with Papa, and talked a lot with T. and Ge. There are, it seems, many people in Ge.'s and Gi.'s classes who have colds. But in this family so far only J., Mama, and I have been stricken; Mama went to work anyway, and J. to school. The real event of the day was a work meeting to which Papa went, at a company that converts old computers and computer parts into new ones to be used for specific technical purposes.

Hopefully the next time I post, I will be cured! Then, instead of describing my symptoms for the benefit of a reluctant audience, I might write about Waverley. In the countryside I took a look at the Decameron too, and was much disappointed to find that it is perhaps 90% about women cheating on their husbands, which for some reason I find neither hilarious nor interesting except in a transient sensationalist way (I'm trying to put this as snobbily as possible). So I read too little of it to be able to discuss it. I did read the short tale of the woman who roused a king from his apathetic modus regendi by asking him to give her some of his power to bear the unbearable. Given the clearly violent nature of the regenerated king's rule, I don't know if the ending is meant to be good or not. Perhaps it is simply realistic.

The Adventures of a Night Owl

Today it was a special day in that I had stayed up the whole preceding night. Mostly I watched classical music videos on YouTube -- Gregor Piatigorsky, Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz, Martha Argerich, Evgeny Kissin, Vladimir Horowitz, Emil Gilels, etc. I alternately have bits of Beethoven's Sonata appassionata, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 and a prelude, and one of Scarlatti's sonatas stuck in my head. There was a video in Japanese about the Polish pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski, with whose interpretation of pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier I really like, and whose interpretation of Mozart I like too. Then there was Horowitz's February 1, 1968 Carnegie Hall recital in full; I was struck again how beautifully he brings Scarlatti's sonatas to life. At the same time I read online novels and checked up on an online forum. Also, I began to take a look at photos of as many French castles as I could, hoping to find a closer prototype for my Revolution story. There is one tall, stately chateau with nearly a Scottish air standing splendidly erect on an outcropping in front of the stern, towering backdrop of the Alps. On its website there is a photo of the chateau library, which is essentially my ideal, and gave me the same teary-eyed feeling that some of the most touching music did.

By the time that everyone else unwillingly began to awaken (with the exception of T., who had shared my vigil) I was in very good spirits, though my eyes were somewhat tired and the mirror informed me that I was looking pale. I prepared porridge and eggs, and mentally planned to clean up the kitchen later on. But the awakening sleepers were woefully tired. As for Mama and J., they were and are in the throes of a bad cold. J. usually looks pale and wan, but today he has unquestionably outdone himself. He took Dickens-orphan jokes in good part as he reclined on the sofa. I read out the first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities and the first three and a half pages of Thucydides's Peloponnesian War to him while (or should I say whilst?) attempting a British accent, after which he looked quite cheerful. Then he had to go to school, having had only the first hour off.

I went shopping and amused myself on the internet again and played the piano while the others were at school. The piano went quite well, perhaps because the bad-playing-patch has just naturally faded away, or because I was in a receptive mood for music, or because my mind was too tired for uncertainty about notes. First of all I copied down and analyzed the first few measures of Claude Daquin's "Coucou." This means, for example, that I noted the key, saw how and where the sound of the cuckoo is imitated, and realized that I should probably make the second bar be a fainter echo of the first. Then I played Bach inventions and sinfonias, pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Chopin mazurkas and bits of waltzes as well as polonaises and nocturnes, and bits of Mozart and Haydn sonatas, followed by pieces from my Grade 7 and 8 conservatory notebooks. Also, for the very first time I sight-read (slowly and painfully) all of Chopin's "Heroic" Polonaise, which I have determined to master, though I am still undecided whether it is merely a show-off piece or not.

Then I prepared dinner: chicken soup, rice, asparagus (from Spain, and very pale-looking with a purplish tinge that seemed to turn greenish during cooking), and apple sauce. The "Suppenhuhn," or "soup chicken," that I got, turned out to be a particularly meagre specimen. My battle with it when I tried to separate meat from bone and skin (the skin did separate beautifully, though) was, in my view, a fairly convincing argument for vegetarianism. Papa, who ended up doing the majority of the dissection work, said that the chicken was unusually rubbery. At least the broth tasted good, aswim as it was with leek and onion and carrot and chicken flavour. It had been a peculiar experience to shop before ten o'clock. New stock had apparently been recently delivered to the store, and it was a quintessential consumerist experience to see a wonderful array of products crowding the shelves of which I usually behold only a sad contingent after its ranks have already been much reduced.

Anyway, in the evening Mama and J. weren't much better. J. lay sleeping for a while on the sofa, colourful silk scarf around his throat, pillows behind him, and a blanket over him, with a water-soaked white washcloth on his forehead, with his head at an angle. For some reason I was reminded of one of Goya's paintings of the Spanish Civil War. He was and probably still is quite pale (as was or is Mama), the skin somewhat shiny, the mouth unusually dark, and the hollow around his eyes reddish. The effect was heightened by his very dark shirt. Based on my online novel reading, I might say that he looked like a consumptive, and I was much impressed by the ghastliness of his looks. I admit I made quite a few flippant remarks in the vein of my earlier orphan jokes, but J. doesn't really seem to mind it. And certainly I didn't (and couldn't reasonably) accuse him of hypochondria. Poor miserable little fellow.

The only other thing of note to me that occurred in the day was that someone from an environmental organization was going door to door. I've been worrying about doing my part for the environment, and the person was nice, so I agreed to shell out 100 Euro annually (the recommended donation being 2-3 Euros monthly) for the organization. It turns out from a speedy consultation of the website that the work of the organization is more in the lobbying/eco-friendly-social-gathering direction than much of the practical assistance I prefer, but it is certainly reputable and I haven't felt remorse yet.