It was an Italian Street Food Fair, thin strips of white and red and green fluttered from a line draped across the entrance, and the booths sold pasta, hamburgers and pulled pork, and wines, amongst other things, as music played in the background. At the pastry booth I was offered a taste-test of a triangle of cannoli pastry with a pale creamy hazelnut filling that was practically foamy with all the air that had been beaten into it, and I bought one at once.
Wooden picnic tables and benches, the colour of a fishing pier on which the sun has beaten for decades were standing in the courtyard beside an angular pool. I sat down at one of the benches and read more of The Hate You Give, which I decided to buy from Dussmann in paper form to keep because I liked the audiobook so much.
After that, it must be confessed, I walked to the office and put in about one and a half hours of work. The office was dark except for lights that had been mistakenly kept on in the hallway, which I then helped save the planet by turning off. One of the managers sent me an email to re-book a meeting; I presumed that he was just working on a Saturday too, but wondered if he could 'see' that I was at the office. Although I think I shall need to work on Saturdays more often in future, I'd prefer to do so without fanfare or extra payment.
*
I love the route near Treptower Park, with its wildflowers (yellow-flowering mulleins and red poppies, green unripe blackberries, and roses which you can smell sometimes, and so on and so forth) and trees and old brick buildings and even the monkey in a soldier's uniform which is one of the few pieces of graffiti that I think it would be pretty criminal to destroy. The newly hatched residential buildings, the cyclists, the flat waters of the Rummelsbucht and its mess of boats and the tent colony, the long curve of the bridge at Ostkreuz, and the fragrance of freshly sawn wood and poured concrete at the glass-façaded colossus they're building with the lonely chatter or odd clumping about of a leftover construction worker. Also the vast blue sky and the sweeping clouds and the threateningly spiry black water tower that used to store water for steam locomotives in the 20th century. And all the fresh air. I save it as a treat for myself after work, sometimes, rather than forging into the urban dys/utopia of the Frankfurter Allee, and the capitalist temples of Mitte, in the other direction.
*
This morning I woke up disgruntled because I'd dreamt that I'd been asked by the manager to come in for a meeting on a Sunday, together with my sister and the Greek colleague. It took a long time to shake off, because the past week has been incredibly stressful at the office and I suspect that the fact that I've had grey hairs again lately is a physical after-effect of it.
So I 'spilled my guts' to Ge., J., and Mama over the breakfast table. They listened with more patience and sympathy than I deserved. It was a breakfast of coffee and bakery goods: sesame seed bun, pumpkin seed bun, croissants, a Schrippe roll, and a long pretzel bun.
Then I worked away at the piano. Last week I finally bought a score for Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Since then I have been tackling my distaste for the piano part — I like the orchestral parts best, and in any case think that the Violin Concerto is far more musically rewarding. Either that, or I'm just in a bad mood and the innocent piano concerto is its first victim.
Also:
Granados - Danzas Españolas, 1-6, 12
Bach - Concerto in d minor, 1st movement (partly)
Schumann - Piano quintet, first 2 movements, Op. 44
Beethoven - Waldstein Sonata
Anton Karas - Third Man theme
Claude Daquin - The Cuckoo
Brahms - one or two of the Hungarian Dances, 1-10
Rachmaninov, Prelude in c# minor
Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto in D major (2nd movement in piano transcription)
Mozart, Concerto in G major (KV 453), 2nd movement
*
At noon I went to Tempelhofer Feld per bicycle with Ge. It turns out that sore leg muscles, gauging when to shift from 1st gear to 2nd and vice versa, a cyclist who wanted twice as much space as he needed (as I grumbled to Ge. 'I didn't even infringe on his precious lane!'), the broiling sun on my skin, etc., were even better distractions from work than the mammoth piano program.
Recently I saw a documentary about mountain biking in Iceland and now I want to work toward doing something like that. The problem would be acquiring a mountain bike and the athletic ability. 1 hour on flat terrain is tough; 4 hours on hilly terrain likely impossible at present.
I also practiced languages on Duolingo. But it might be wiser to focus on improving my Spanish and maybe reading something in French again. Because of a faux pas I recently made in Greek to a Greek-speaking colleague, i.e. pronouncing Dimokratia 'Demokratia,' I've also been shamed into wanting to pick it up again and improve greatly. I don't know how my English-/German-as-a-Second-Language-speaking colleagues do it, by which I mean speak other languages fluently without having spoken them as young children.
Posts
