Cogitations while Shopping for Christmas

This morning I walked to the KaDeWe department store again, the streets almost kitschily full of Christmas cheer: families with young children no longer cloistered in schools, highly decorated windows in shops that were doing a heavy traffic, winter sunlight falling over everything between the apartment buildings and their shadows, and even Santa Claus on a bicycle.

In KaDeWe the black-suited security guards were solemnly standing like magazine advertisements amongst the expensive jewelry and beyond them there were perfumes, cosmetics, and handbags. Although I tend to buy a scented candle from a French fragrance company once a year, and the saleswomen give me a sample per candle of incredibly expensive perfumes I otherwise wouldn't buy (which, to be honest, I consider as a major perk), this time I am still well supplied from last year.

So, I wormed through the throngs and past individual amateur photographers who were  touchingly forgiving of the doubtful aesthetic of massive sculptures that stood in the lobby; they photographed themselves or others standing in front of the figures. There was a massive orange sculpture of someone I presumed to be a youth actor with a great resemblance to Timothee Chalamet. A tall man entering his fifties stood there, like an army officer forced to pose smilingly next to an enemy soldier who has taken him prisoner, maintaining his dignity, while a woman tried to catch a snap of him. The crowd was so thick and slow-moving that the refrain Getmeoutgetmeoutgetmeout began repeating in my head and my blood pressure shot up.

Then I went up to the men's fashion level. After seeing that the socks were far too small for my brothers' feet, and that the scarves were 80 Euros apiece and not likely to survive the laundry machine (although I have to confess that the amateur knitter in me took notes because I liked the cable-knit patterns), I quickly went up to the women's fashion level.

Being in a department store women's clothing section makes me even more unhappy than a men's clothing section. The fashion labels were fancier than I remembered from the last time I went to KaDeWe. It also felt like all the woolly sweaters were made in Italy, hand-wash only, which made them less practical as gifts for someone who doesn't love fabric care or live on first-name terms with their neighbourhood dry-cleaner. But I liked simpler-designed cardigans and pullovers from a Scandinavian-sounding label that didn't have any of the aggressive, dazzling edge of many others. As a hazard of my job, I recognized a Polo Ralph Lauren Christmas sweater with a bear on it from work.

What cheered me up was the fashion excellence amongst some of the shoppers themselves. There were great and original outfits (sharply cut coats, large and whimsical scarves, rare combinations) there that I've grown to appreciate after seeing mass-manufactured things. The clothing seemed not just expensive, and not flashy, but well-chosen and well-loved. But of course it would have been rude to stare, so I didn't soak in the style as much as I was tempted to. And there were many hoodies, as well, which was fine in the mix although a little monotonous if that's all you get.

Still, I reflected grumpily, as I surveyed the racks, that this clothing that we were all thronging like hungry piranhas to buy was probably made in terrible labour conditions. And I questioned again why I hadn't gone to shop in a small, sustainable, ethical-minded shop.

After wandering around like a sad and lonely little goldfish, I found more or less what I wanted and was just carefully examining it — when a canny saleswoman pounced on me like a hawk and managed to "upsell" me into getting two items instead of one. As I told Ge., I was fairly sure I saw a piece of her soul shrivel and die when I put the merchandise into my grubby synthetic-fibre shopping bag, after politely declining her offer of a neat new KaDeWe paper bag. But, although I respected her professional standards, I felt that I'd done a good turn for the environment. (You're welcome, Greta.)

In the upper floors of KaDeWe, the tea and other china services, white and blue like willow-ware or speckled with flowers or peaceful traditional Japanese, were much more restful to look at because there was no compulsion to buy, choose, or look stylish.

I largely ignored the silverware, crystal, vases, and Christmas decorations, although I like the intricate pale wood candle pyramids from the Erzgebirge that cost a fortune. But I might have bought egg cups had they not been 11+ Euros apiece, which offended my sense of what is called in German the 'Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis (the price-to-performance ratio).

I adore the cooking section: the Le Creuset dishes, for example the little lidded pots, made me squeal happily inside. Although I heavily suspect that not all of Le Creuset's ware is geared toward professional chefs; it capitalizes on the popularity of the brand. Anyway, I also love seeing the shining arms of the ladles and mandolins and garlic presses and whisks and nut crackers and spatulas, even if we have enough at home.

At last I went to the "Fress-étage" or Food Floor. It's been renovated, too. Now, instead of there being just shelves and bins, there are also hanging baskets of Lindt chocolate bars, Niederegger marzipan in myriad forms, Italian cantuccini and amaretti, Reese's peanut butter cups, candy canes, etc. I no longer saw a meat counter nor a fish counter, nor did I see a fruit section or an American food quarter. That said, my tour of the Fress-étage wasn't exhaustive. What I'm pretty sure of is that the newspapers and magazines have moved elsewhere, to another floor, and diminished.

As I perambulated along the staffed food counters that are a popular feature of the Food Floor, KaDeWe employees were handing out cheeses and breads and truffles and cakes to customers from behind the glass guards. People were, as usual, eating the food at tables in intimate groups.

I think the emphasis of the Food Floor is more on luxury than before; the potato chips and the regular noodles and other things that were once there were either no longer there, or no longer prominent.

Anyway, emerging from the shop into the street again was one of the happiest moments of the day. I turned my face toward the sunlight, also hoping that absorbing the vitamin D would help me get rid of the blood iron deficiency that has reared its head again lately. (This time I'm trying a syrup instead of pills, which is more agreeable, but it's no substitute for a balanced diet and also making sure that I have the other nutrients I need as catalysts to make sure the dietary iron actually stays. Which I've partly done, but I'm a little tired of eating whole grain rye bread.) It was a great feeling to have energy again, and bounce up stairs, because I'd been feeling like my legs are like sticks or straws a lot lately, and for one or two days had headaches and nausea.

***

Part II of my shopping trip was more ethical, if only because I visited an independent shop. But I cannot divulge details because they might be revealing to family members!

Part III took me to Dahlem-Dorf, where I popped into Schleichers Buchhandlung to browse the German-language books, admire their English book section in a shelf at the end of an aisle, and skim through every classical music CD.

I also retraced my memories of studying at the university. There was a lovely sunset over the train station's thatched roof, very like a Caspar David Friedrich painting in pink against squiggly trees, that faded gently into a deep royal blue, so the campus offered itself in a flattering aspect again despite the grim winter.

Families — young, old, and middle-aged — were curving around the gardens and the farmyard shop of the Domäne Dahlem farm to reach the Christmas market. Usually the Domäne Dahlem showcases agricultural engineering and parochial history, as far as I'm aware. But for this season it has opened its doors and courtyard to the market.

The market is fancy-pants and tasteful, although I reflected rather grimly that it is likely financed by the exploitation of the proletariat. (Yes, I do become more Marxist-Leninist by the Thanksgiving shopping weekend at the latest.)

Anyway, I was quite amused about the entrance fee. I have heard complaints about the 1 Euro entrance fee to the elegant Gendarmenmarkt Christmas market in Berlin's centre. The general refrain is that we should not be asked to pay to spend money. So I was shocked when I and everyone else in the two short lines meekly paid up the 3 Euro entrance fee in Dahlem.

Inside, sellers were staying as warm as they could in white tents, offering hand-decorated white-and-gilt mugs and jewelry and straw stars that have been bedazzled with sparkling beads. There were three or so stalls with beanie hats and scarves, in a colourful spectrum of warm and cold hues and tints, fuzzy wool; there were jars with amaryllis shoots glamorously rising from the blood-red glass; there were finely decorated cartons in pastel colours.

There was Glühwein (mulled wine, of which some people partook too much), Teutonic sausages, wooden Christmas tree decorations, bottles of unfiltered olive oil that glowed summery green, a veritable artillery of jam jars or pestos or sauces, and so on and so forth.

If you added the wooden stalls and benches and log fires and evergreen twigs of the Kulturbrauerei Christmas market from Prenzlauer Berg to this market, and perhaps tasteful live music, and even more varieties of handmade things, I think it would have been more or less the beau ideal of a Christmas market.

***

After a long while I figured out (as I headed back home from the Dahlem-Dorf train station) why the U-Bahn train signage puzzled me so much: Back in the day, the U3 only went as far as Nollendorfplatz, but now it goes on to Warschauer Straße.

A man was busking with a guitar and singing in the line I switched to later, while in the U3 another man who looked like Tony Robinson from British television (Blackadder or Time Team) was walking around the platform of Dahlem-Dorf selling a street magazine.

I don't know his story, but in general I was reminded that around Christmas in Berlin you tend to see people asking for change in the U-Bahn and S-Bahn and the streets whom you've never seen in the neighbourhood before and who don't seem dirty, smelly, or desolate.

But while some of the people asking for yuletide money have the happy, well-fed glow of unrepentant scammers, which is a blatant contrast to the clear desperation of vulnerable, demon-ridden people whom I see more regularly, I think that a few of these are legitimate.

(For example, I've come to believe that sometimes mothers who are not entirely poor but certainly not rich, dwelling in the 'precariat,' beg for money just so that they can get Christmas presents for their children. If you see a woman who looks like a careworn parent — it makes me angry when I see a mother (of a baby or a young child) who looks thin and gaunt and like the lifeblood has been sucked out of her by parenthood; I think that the other adults around her must be horribly neglecting to help her — with a half-remunerative creative job like the ones in your own city block, whose facial expression screams that this is the most humiliating day of her life, it doesn't take an overly fertile imagination to start putting two and two together to make ... perhaps not four, but at least three point five.)

I was also thinking that even if people are scamming by asking for spare change, selling things in a regular brick-and-mortar store or per advertising can also be a kind of scam. So it would be a double standard to frown on this too one-sidedly.