Cui bono?

This afternoon the letter from the FU finally came, and I've been accepted! Now I just have two major hurdles to overcome: a German language test on October 5th, and then filling out my immatriculation forms. I'm relieved, but cautious. T.'s letter has not come yet, however.

After I had received the letter, uncle Pu and I went on an excursion to the CD store Zweitausendeins. It's near the Wilmersdorfer Straße U-Bahn station, and near Pudel's old apartment. The store itself is small, but bright with the windows and the white walls, determinedly but not ostentatiously modern, and lined with tables full of CDs, books, and film DVDs. The CDs discriminatingly cover a wide variety of genres, among which jazz and classical seemed the best represented; the books included translations of Bertrand Russell, a volume of or on Kurt Tucholsky, and a children's book which had on its cover a nearly unbeatably tasteless illustration of a lady wearing far too much rouge as well as a red dress reminiscent of pre-Revolutionary France, with a bright pink poodle beside her. In the store windows, which Pudel and I took a closer look at as we left, there were also books on painters like Goya and da Vinci, with lesser-known works on their covers.

Once outside, we wandered along the side-streets in a "nostalgia tour" for Pudel, while I admired the dark green trees and the bright house façades, which ranged from drab and unimaginative modern ones that had assumed a despondent air with the passing of time, to ornate and stately older ones. The stores ranged from a small art gallery through a Chinese import shop and a mystery novel bookstore to kebab stands. When we regained the "pedestrian precinct" at the U-Bahn station, the buildings suddenly became sleek, shiny monuments to consumerism, and -- and this is very important -- instead of the common orange litter-bins, there were genteel dark grey ones. H&M, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonalds, Starbucks, MediaMarkt and Woolworth have each established themselves there. The people who were lolling about or walking past were mostly fashionably dressed and had an air of moderate affluence.

First we popped into the Dunkin' Donuts; Pudel bought me a Boston creme doughnut, which is my favourite kind. While we were waiting I admired the different varieties: "autumnal" doughnuts covered in highly artificial-looking blue- or pink-coloured glazes, brownies, "munchkins" (which I, as a Canadian, know as Timbits), etc. Then we went to a spacious McDonald's, which is furnished pretentiously in a space-age-esque style in black and red. I've never had a McDonald's burger and don't intend to start, so I asked for onion rings (onions, unlike cows and chickens, cannot suffer). The kitchen crew consisted of teenagers and of one exhausted-looking woman with hollow eyes whose soul seemed to have been sapped of vigour by years of joyless labour. As I ate, I perused the paper mat, which proudly informed the reader about the high quality of McDonald's fare -- 90 % of the potatoes originating in Germany, all the lettuces being grown out-of-doors, etc. The onion rings were not composed of rings of onions, but of a ring-shaped slurry of onion; as I ate and pondered, I realized that this is probably for the sake of efficiency, since the cores and the small inner rings of onions go to waste in the traditional dish. And the portion was piffling, perhaps eight medium-sized rings; this, on second thoughts, is good because otherwise one could really get fat by eating them.

Then we went home via the unusually odorous U-Bahn. As we sat in the train a person came by and offered the street magazine for 1 Euro 20, and asked for donations, in the usual low and cheerless voice, with the lack of conviction and senseless rapidity of someone who is uttering a formula she has uttered a million times before, without expecting any response.

Anyway, my mood was not as dampened as one might expect when we reached home again. Even the grey light that had cast its gloom on the scene at Wilmersdorfer Str. had brightened by the time we re-emerged from the subterranean labyrinth.