At the Nadir of the Calendar Year

Yesterday I went out briefly in the windy evening, wet with light and drizzly rain that felt like snow on the face, to buy face masks and other necessaries at a drugstore.

Along the way I stopped at a large florist's shop. While the Berlin landscape in general is not strikingly green at the present moment, there at least tulip bouquets were amply bundled along the sidewalk. Winter aconites were deep, bruised yellow and — as they stood in their earth-filled pots bowing their flamboyant, ruffed little heads — resembled a rank of bishop or cardinal that the Catholic church hasn't yet invented. On a top shelf, pale crocuses were splitting into flower. And at the end, early white and yellow daffodils were bristling.

In the end I bought yellow-hearted, pink primroses that had been grown in Germany (Schleswig-Holstein), along with a terra cotta saucer to catch the water.

Indoors, where I paid, large pots of ivy swung their leaves near thriving houseplants like 'mother-in-law's tongue', a few women shoppers were making their selections, and a wall of shelves bristled with teddy bears made of red roses and rectangular towers made of Ferrero Rocher, for the Valentine's Day shopping bonanza.

I've been an Eeyore for most of the weekend. (Not 'Eyesore,' as the spell check option would have it.)

In between other things, the weather has rather depressed me. And even while sleeping, work worries have nagged away at me. That said, it's been worse, so I have a regrettably unhealthy threshold to measure against.

This morning I arose early because my uncle-and-colleague M. had arranged a walk. In the end, I went to get tested for Covid, partly recharged my smartphone battery with a belated realization of its necessity, cycled fairly safely with a few buffeting side winds from yesterday night's storm, and finally reached the exit of the late 1920s S-Bahn station Priesterweg where M. was waiting.

I had arrived ten minutes late when I saw him standing beneath a leafless bush underneath an equally leafless oak tree outside the station. But he informed me — face at first a little pale and grim beneath a warm woolly winter hat — that I was the first one there. We found out ten minutes later that nobody else was coming, which we understood given the circumstances!

In any case, the park we'd partly come to see was closed until noon due to the weather conditions. So the question was how to entertain ourselves. In the end, I suggested that we just both visit the family apartment, and we stepped back onto the train platform.

Part of the view was nice while we waited for our train. The rectangular lattice-paned stair cases and an intact 1920s cabin, with sky-blue tiles and brick moulding and old-fashioned white-framed wooden door and window frames, for example. The old reception part of the train station, with its unassumingly proportioned bare brick, factory-style and briskly rectilinear, a minimalist clock face on a white ground perched proudly on a tower, was also charming.

Right alongside us a tranche of thick old, white-patched birch stumps, leafless trees standing and fallen, revealed birds' nests, and new and old tangles of gold-green mistletoe, beneath the tower of the park we hadn't entered, alongside the railway tracks, lent a touch of mystery.

To the other side of the tracks, the distant ridge of an unbroken line of 19th-century apartment buildings, now painted yellows and pinks but lost a little in the mist above the garden colonies, lent a touch of history and drama.

And the rail platform was clean.

But the wind was howling and draughty. The trains were running at irregular intervals due to the weather conditions. We waited 15 minutes for ours, and some of those '15 minutes' were rather longer than sixty seconds. (Which admittedly would be dramatically long only in places like Berlin, where we're rather spoiled by frequent 10 minute train cycles even on weekends.)

Also, the billboards at this rail station were dedicated to an anti-sexually-transmitted-disease campaign. While the idea is laudable, garish pictures of bare bottom cheeks and the inquiry ARE YOU ITCHING? were staring at us as we walked up and down to keep warm.

The 15 minutes were spent, in short, in physical, mental, and aesthetic discomfort.

But the train arrived, we reached our destination safely, we left the station and walked to the family apartment. We had cookies and tea, hot coffee and bread buns left over from breakfast; and chatted with Mama and Ge. and J.

Then I read a few chapters of Vincent Cronin's 1960s biography of Louis XIV.

We also had fried potatoes for dinner, and T. came over fresh from an active day where she'd met up with multiple colleagues.

Let's hope things become better also in general.

Back in the Figurative Treadmill in January

It's going to be the year 1943 in my historical experiment next week, but so far my research has been light. I'm still going to observe a Modern Times Appreciation Day instead.

In honour of technical advances I did mop the kitchen floor instead of kneeling and using my hands, last week, and it also brought squeaky results with marginally less effort. (I was also unexpectedly domestic during the lunch hour today. It is apparently possible to unclog the bathtub drain with baking soda, citric acid crystals stirred into water, regular warm water, and a plunger. The fizzing of the base with the acid was undoubtedly the best part.)

I still have an unholy hankering after cooking rationing meals, like the Lord Woolton Pie or the National Loaf. But after the combined despair of parent and siblings about my 'Calvinist' tendencies — and due to a fear of being what one would call 'pietätslos' in German by imitating scarcity where no scarcity truly exists — the hankering has been suppressed.

On Saturday, Mama and I went to a bookshop. The line of shoppers waiting for the cash registers was so dense that I'm keeping an eye on my smartphone's corona warning app, but so far there has been no alert. That said, we were all checked for vaccination passes, tests, or proof of convalescence on the way in. Also, I kept moving while browsing the shelves themselves. I've begun reading both the Swedish learning calendar, augmenting past studies in Duolingo, and the memoirs of former German chancellor Willy Brandt, purchased there in preference to the English-language fiction or non-fiction that feels more convenient to read online at present.

Regarding work, I'm anxious and am having trouble sleeping: reading or watching YouTube videos well past 2 a.m., still staying awake after that and thinking of work even when sleeping, and waking up later on weekends. That said, maybe I will eventually adopt the zen attitude of letting go of wishes and wants, and accepting the world as it is. My former direct manager, maybe in a similar boat, has recommended reading the Stoic philosophers.

It was a windy day, intensely so in the late morning, with unpleasant-looking rain and a constant draughty whistling and roaring even last night, which certainly didn't help my sleep.

This evening the TV city news reported that, while pressures on Intensive Care Units in Berlin's hospitals have lessened due to the more benign symptoms of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, hospital waiting rooms are on the contrary seeing a rise in activity. Happily? oblivious as ever, a long quiet queue of anti-Covid-safety-measure protesters illegally walked down the street on which I live, an hour or two before the show.

Anyway, my two youngest brothers ordered Chinese food for dinner, so I am well fed, and I had my daily exercise. Tomorrow we'll be getting Covid-tested and going to a concert with Mama, in honour of Papa's birthday.  Papa would have been 69 this year.