A Saturday After the Storms

It's the 'year 1947' in my historical experiment, and I didn't dive in too deeply. It was windy again today, although not as stormy as last night. We had three plain croissants and a pain au chocolat for breakfast, alongside hot cocoa.

Ge. went off to help a friend of the family who needed to supervise the removal of a tree that had fallen over in the storms; a crew of firefighters did the principal work.

In the meantime I wandered around the neighbourhood, first visiting the much-frequented bank, where a polite, possibly eastern European man perhaps in his late twenties held open the door. (While people have mixed feelings about this form of begging for money, in my view it allows people who are begging some feeling of utility — especially as it really is hard for elderly people, women with strollers, and cyclists to manoeuvre in and out of the doors without help.)

A few doors down, there's a florist's that I last visited in December. To my dismay, there were no tables or plants in front of it, the display window had been cleared out, a few bare branch wreaths lay in the dimness behind instead of spring flowers. Instead, there was a big blue placard in the window with a poem entitled "Müde" ('Tired'), which a thin young couple were staring at with awe.

After googling, it sounds like the owner of the florist shop supported the anti-Covid-safety protests, to the ire of a few neighbours. It's a pity because professionally it was a great shop: everyone I've met who worked there loved flowers, and also did a beautiful job binding them, even if yes — once or twice when I went there in long-past years, they've been standoffish. To me their closing also proves the severe psychosocial effects of the pandemic.

A fresh shock awaited at the market square. On early Saturday afternoons of course I expected throngs of people. It was empty except for a strolling couple and the market's wooden trestle tables (stacked at the parking lot beside it). It took me a while to stop double-taking, checking if it really was Saturday, checking if it really was not after 5 p.m. ... until I finally realized that, like other outdoor markets in Berlin on Thursday, it was likely shut down due to the heavy winds.

Snowdrops are blooming in a few garden plots now, gold blossoms emerging on an Oregon grape bush, and the crocuses are emerging in greater number: purple and pale yellow. I sent Gi. a snapshot, which took me a while as I am still inept with the work smartphone.

Besides I went to a French brasserie, with its many shelves of white and red and rosé wine, its bottled fig paste and olives, its canned cassoulet, tinned oysters and sardines, crackers, chocolates and biscuits and caramels and nougat, walnuts, and above all a long counter with hams, sausages, and cheese from the hard to the soft (brie). Its stock is not generically French, but instead celebrates the character of different regions. I bought odds and ends for lunch, to be eaten with our weekly Saturday baguette bread — which, I'd forgotten, we hadn't been able to procure this week. (And after that I shopped in the organic food store for lettuces, potatoes, butter, eggs, lemons, radishes, and shampoo.)

We did end up eating the French odds and ends for lunch. We had radishes and lettuce with vinaigrette for the sake of health, and switched in whole wheat toast for the baguette. The tinned mussels in sunflower oil, flavoured with spices, a fragment of bay leaf and a slice of garlic, were soft and tasted like mild sardines. The pesto crackers were mild too. We enjoyed the green olives with the pits still in them as well as the chocolate with fleur du sel, and lentil chips I had also bought at the organic food store.

I figured that returning British soldiers might have eaten French food in the late 1940s, so didn't worry too much about historical culinary accuracy.

It's still lovely to 'travel' via food in corona-y times. (Although fortunately, signs that the Omicron Variant is peaking and we can return to normal soon, are appearing in greater number.)

Midway through lunch, Ge. returned and brought along roasted chicken with French fries that the family friend had sent us. Erasing the planned dinner menu (boiled potatoes, salad, reheated fish and rice) from our imaginations, we dug in enthusiastically.

After that I read part of the New York Times (international edition) bought from a local 24-hour kiosk — these are cultural institutions, the targets of equal opprobrium and adoration, in Berlin — and the T Magazine that arrived in it. T Magazine's international edition also had a nice tribute to Gail Halvorsen, the American pilot who helped spearhead the chocolate and raisin component of the Berlin Airlift in the 1940s. Other reading: more passages of Gogol's short stories. At the same time I listened to a vinyl record of Mstislav Rostropovich playing Haydn cello concertos, and began listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons with Henryk Szeryng. No clothes mending this week, but I did tend my houseplants and dust more bookshelves and ornaments; and post-experiment I lit another lavender incense stick for relaxation.

On the piano I finished playing three Bach 'Duettos' and made my way through about fourteen pieces in his Goldberg Variations. It was nice nostalgia from the time when I listened to Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations (not sure right now if they were the early or late recordings) at Canadian university, and then played them at home regularly in the 2000s. The variations where the left and right hands cross over each other are still rather difficult for me.

The past week at work was, in a phrase, incredibly challenging and turbulent. But it was really good to go outdoors and not use the computer much today. Sanity levels rising!