A Visit to the Leipziger Buchmesse

It's been many years since my mother and my uncle M. have gone to the Leipzig Book Fair. It takes place in spring at the same time as a Comic Con, is a bit of a festive time in the booksellers' calendar, generally has a theme that is often a country, and draws attention from major German TV broadcasters (ARD, ZDF/3Sat, ARTE). These broadcasters and the Book Fair organizers host podium discussions and other events.

This year's guest country at the Book Fair is Austria.

Back here in Berlin, I've undertaken a journalistic project about the Austrian theme. I still need to finalize it, but it meant cycling around Schöneberg and Kreuzberg on Thursday and yesterday to mini-interview librarians and booksellers about their favourite Austrian books. I even pinged the Austrian embassy in Berlin (which replied, via their cultural forum), and a German Literature professor at the Freie Uni (who hasn't replied). To be honest, it's now mentally associated with so much effort that I can barely stand to talk about it any more!

Thematically, however, I felt that the invasion of Ukraine might be the secondary emphasis at least in the literary events. This is the first Leipzig Book Fair that's taken place in person, instead of virtually, since the invasion happened, which may help explain it.

Major prizes have also been handed out to a handful of lucky authors. I'm currently reading one of the prizewinning authors' works: Unser Deutschland Märchen by Dinçer Güçyeter. It is an accessibly written, topically tough book (is it semi-autobiographical fiction?) about multiple generations of a Turkish family, of which a daughter was sent to Germany in an arranged marriage. The plot goes further, but that's as far as I've gotten.

Anyway, this morning I set off to the train station. The family had eaten breakfast; and Ge. had kindly looked up and written down an itinerary for me. At the station I was able to buy tickets to and from Leipzig from a friendly Deutsche Bahn employee who had a pleasant Berliner accent, and who also seemed to gulp a bit at the cost of using the ICE rather than the slower Regionalbahn. She was all set to provide me with a Deutschlandticket [49€ monthly ticket that allows you to travel through all of Germany with the Regionalbahn]; but I was low on cash and my debit card had hit the weekly limit, so I decided not to combine errands.

It was meditative travel weather: overcast sky, a few faint drops of rain but nothing insistent, a clammy-looking mist in the middle distance, and a nice classic impressionistic colour scheme in pastels of faded-red roofs, pale green birches, yellow rapeseed blossoms either 'escaped' and growing wild beside the tracks or filling fields with apparent sunshine, faded earth colours of the building walls, frail dark branches (sometimes colonized by globes of mistletoe) in the trees that don't have all their leaves yet, and speckled white and very light pink fruit tree blossoms.

I liked it very much, and so eventually did a trio of children who were being quietly obedient and finally running riot beside me. It was a somewhat packed train, and as I hadn't reserved a seat I found an aisle where it was easier to be out of the way.

At Bitterfelde I had to change into the S-Bahn, and then we rolled more slowly through the periphery of Leipzig until we finally reached Leipzig-Messe station. We were a bright stream of people, unlike the shades-of-black winter clothing colour palette that I'm used to from Berlin's city streets, because Leipzig's Comic Con is also a favourite opportunity for cosplayers. And while there are two short tram lines leading to and from the convention centre, I joined those who were walking.

It was an intimidating throng that gathered at the doors when we had passed the shallow waters of the large reflecting pool that extends from the glass entrance hall. But we were processed surprisingly quickly, and I was able to buy an entrance ticket (I hadn't pre-booked) with minimal effort. The ticket seller almost whispered to me that I'd have an easier time getting in to the hall if I took the route to the left, so I gladly followed his advice.

A ZDF-3Sat stage was just hosting a discussion where an author explained the background to his novel about Pompei. I listened in briefly, but then wanted to get to the exhibition halls. What amused me was the raised podium that celebrated the winners of the Leipzig Book Fair prizes: there were three or more coffee tables that had the prize-winning books chained to them, and chairs around, so that you could sit down and read them but not run away with them.

It was going to be under 1.25 hours that I could roam around, before I'd catch the train back to Berlin hopefully in time to do amateur journalism at a protest against unsustainable fashion consumerism. So I sketched out a quick mental plan, and headed to Hall 5 in the back and decided to work my way forward while keeping a sense of time, like Cinderella before midnight. I didn't have my smartphone along, having left it merrily charging (out of sight and out of mind) in my room, by accident; and there were no clocks in the convention centre.

Hall 5 was an excellent choice, as it turned out to be where the independent publishing houses were displaying their books. I knew a few of them by name, like Kröner or Unions Verlag, but others I didn't. The booths for self-publishing and books-on-demand were also popular.

Afterward I landed in Hall 4, where the stalwarts of the German publishing industry like Reclam, S. Fischer, and Kiepenheuer had far more sprawling booths. There were also stands for different countries: Poland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovenia — and organizations like an Israeli-German one or the Italian Cultural Institute of Berlin (whose flyer for events I nicked tout de suite).

As I'm unemployed and I only had 20€ at hand after paying for the Book Fair ticket, I felt unable to dip into the books, or talk to people at the stands without raising expectations that I was bound to disappoint.

But I made one exception: I spotted the stand for my favourite music score publisher. I was so delighted that I fan-girled to the lady who, dressed as elegantly as a trans-Atlantic airline attendant, was personning the stand. She heaped 'freebies' (paper tote bag, pencil, postcard, free sample booklet of easy songs for piano) on me when I mentioned that I had tons of the publisher's books at home.

Despite my budget, I also bought a Rachmaninoff Prelude in d minor, which cost 6€ and therefore did not break the bank. I'd felt guilty for playing that prelude from a photocopy for years, so I had the nice unexpected feeling of crossing off an item on my 'bucket list.'

But it felt as if time was of the essence after that. So I passed fairly swiftly through Hall 2, which had another stage that was for the broadcaster ARD this time, and other things that I've forgotten, and passed through the turnstiles and exited the glass entrance hall again.

It was 12:38 p.m. on the display screens at the tram stations, so I was back at the train station in time. The trains were also far less empty on the way back to Bitterfelde, and thence to Berlin.

I came back to Berlin too late for the event, mostly because I needed to fetch my smartphone from the family apartment if I wanted to photograph the event anyway; and because protest events rarely last as long as announced. But I still had a nice quick cycle to Alexanderplatz, and then back home, amongst hordes of tourists; and now I'm exhausted ... but pleasantly exhausted.

(Aside from the Austrian books project I mentioned above, I've been adding daily 1 hour cycling time for university Tuesdays to Fridays, Greek homework, 1 hour weekly volunteer work at the clothes donation sorting place, a journalistic project on sustainable clothing shops in Berlin that is as intense as the Austrian books project, a trip to Kreuzberg/Neukölln yesterday for a cycling protest that a former colleague believes deserves greater publicity, and other things I'm forgetting now.

I also find it hard to get over the shy sides of my character when these things require human interaction.

So I want to create more breathing space again for me to just observe things and let the news come to me; and I am desperate to cover live events that don't require reams of research and where anonymous observation is generally informative enough. A few booksellers expected me to already know lots of Austrian authors when I mini-interviewed them, for example, so I've had metaphorical beads of sweat on my forehead quite often.

But I also need to do far more 'dry dock journalism.' The lack of certain basics will become ever more apparent the more I do things in the field — and I am hoping that being willing to do tons of legwork and seeing things in real life rather than aggregating online content will be a 'unique selling point.'

For example, I ran into a lawyer who specializes in media at a protest where I self-introduced as a freelance journalist - I've been too lazy to look up the formal definition, and I think I'm too used to reading about e.g. a North American media culture where citizen journalism might be more accepted than it is here.

The lawyer's friendly but slightly stern advice made me very much want to dot my 'i's and cross my 't's from now on, so I won't have a cartoon 'Eep!' thought bubble metaphorically pop up again. I started watching videos on YouTube about German media law [by a law professor who cringe-worthily referred to himself in the third person, but I figure that hearing that is a sacrifice that must be made] — e.g. the guidelines about whom I can and can't photograph, when.

I also want to ask if he has a website or reading recommendations if I bump into him again, to be honest.

That said, I'm undermining all of these good intentions of taking more time to relax, informing myself before dashing into the field, etc., by revolving thoughts around my head of trying to cover the May Day protests on Monday — which would be at least mildly stressful.)

Anyway, I'm glad I went to the Leipziger Buchmesse especially because Mama had told me for years I could tag along with her, and I like the idea of carrying on a family tradition— I've just never had the time and money to consider it seriously before!

The First Week as a Gasthörer

On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to Greek classes at the university. Also a Spanish class that I couldn't stay in (there were too many other students who needed to attend and I found out belatedly that the guest auditor programme didn't cover it).

It was a little stressful.

For example: My old Greek professor would be glad to have me back in class, I was pretty sure although we hadn't seen each other since a party at the family apartment in 2018. But no answer ever arrived to the inquiry email I'd sent weeks ago. So I was taking a risk by showing up.

Besides the scheduling is early in the morning (8 a.m.... eurgh), and I feel weird sharing resources with properly immatriculated students who are 10 years younger than me who deserve more of the spotlight. Also the logistical bumps in getting even this far are making me more and more anxious about actually being accepted as a student in November.

Then on Wednesday evening I developed a congested nose, and have had to stay home the rest of the week. So much for launching smoothly into the semester...

That said, although individual grammatical things are spectacularly lousy and it's clear I won't be able to follow along a class entirely conducted in Greek after I accidentally showed up to a first-year class instead of the introductory class, I feel like I'm not behind the others in the introductory class. The work I've put in here and there to keep up with Greek over the years has been useful.

Besides I am beginning to feel that at least in terms of having a tidier room, cooking and baking at leisure again (I prepared ayran with yoghurt, water, salt, and dried mint leaves today), working away on writing and photography projects, taking care of houseplants, and feeling like I have time for family and friends ... my life is beginning to sort itself out again.

It's not the full picture. But I'm a little less hopped-up on anxiety than 1 or 2 months ago, my conscience is more at ease, and I no longer feel when I'm communing with thoughts of my father that I've gone a bit astray or that there's something I'm leaving undone or that I'm wasting my life (I just need to keep going on this new path: not give up).

Travels to Alsace: The First Day

Travelling from Berlin to Strasbourg is not genuinely fast (I think) even though we were taking a bullet-train-shaped, white, speedy Inter-City Express, which peaked at over 245 km/h during our trip.

It was before 10 a.m. on a cloudy morning when we passed the dandelions, red deadnettle, daffodils and grape hyacinths in front of the train station, found our platform, and then eventually pulled out to our first stop: Wittenberg.

Platform at Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, April 11th, 2023

After that: Leipzig, Eisenach in terrain that began to be pleasantly hilly in comparison to the flat floodplains of Brandenburg, Frankfurt am Main with its characteristic cluster of skyscrapers.

View of farmyard from Berlin-to-Strasbourg train, April 11th, 2023

We paused there for 15 minutes, in a riveted, steel-framed hall typical of pre-WWI railroad architecture, with restaurant advertisements on electronic billboards.

The family and I were seated in 1st class, not so much because we wanted to live like kings, but because it was the best way to book seats close to each other. It also serendipitously meant that my siblings could order chili con carne and coffee for lunch, and have it be brought to their seats!

Then we pulled out of the station again, in the direction we'd come, and curved around to the southwest.

But before we left Frankfurt: a train employee announced on the public address speakers that a freight train had been abandoned on the tracks, so we would be rerouted past Darmstadt. The final stop of Zürich was also cancelled: the train would only reach Basel. (But this was more a problem for other travellers; we wouldn't be going that far.) This led to incremental delays adding up to over 30 minutes, and the employee kept checking in on connecting trains at the various stops to see if they'd wait for us or not.

At Baden-Baden, whose railroad station looked nothing like the grand, imperial edifice I'd been expecting given the town's opulent history, we switched to a French TGV (très grande vitesse = high-speed) train upholstered in patriotic blue.

Crossing the border was fuss-free, and we never had to show our passports (or even our tickets, after leaving the Deutsche Bahn), thanks to the Schengen Agreement. We just rolled over a broad arm of the Rhine between Kehl on the German side and Strasbourg in France.

We reached Strasbourg in the early evening.

***

We were booked in a hotel near the city centre, at a bridge over one of the canals, in a four-storey half-timbered apartment building that had been painted yellow and adorned with Easter decorations.

It was possible to walk there from Strasbourg's main train station, the Gare Central, with its restored, early 20th-century, red sandstone front façade almost unblemished, encapsulated in an egg-like bubble of glass.

But it was clear that Strasbourg is a touristy city, with students and EU diplomats as well, and we almost had to use pointy elbows to navigate past the pedestrians and cyclists, who were generally moving at speed. (That said, the restrained use of perfume is popular in Strasbourg and I liked catching in the streets; I was also intrigued that the men generally had neatly trimmed hair, which seems like a lot of upkeep but quite dashing; and I gazed for a while at the bicycle paths and the pillars with green and red lights and the ubiquitous zebra stripe crosswalks to try to figure out how the traffic works exactly.) T. had been there before, and conducted us unerringly to our residence.

Checking in was fast, and then we were in our rooms.

The others were staying in a courtyard room: despite its modern aesthetic, the blue and white wall-to-wall carpet, linen-patterned walls, and coloured photo print of three young girls wearing the massive traditional Alsation headgear in fashion from the late 19th century, all tributes to the region in which we were staying. The exposed, varnished wooden beams of the half-timbering (colombage) were also a tribute.

As I'd only agreed to join the trip to Strasbourg after she'd made the original arrangements, T. had booked me into my own small room, which I grew to like a lot. It had a comfy, white bed. The bathroom was also nice: it had a little sewing kit, a hair net and scrunchy, as well as a wooden tablet with artisanal soap and hand cream and body wash. And I appreciated the view of the street below, with an épicerie and a bakery at the corner, old dormer windows, the spire of the Strasbourg Cathedral, pigeons, a clock that always pointed to 6:05 no matter what time of day it was, the comings and goings at the foot of a bridge, and a nice slice of sky.

*

This first evening we went to dinner in a wooden building in the city centre, right above a bridge where the water was thundering through a disused mill run, with more classic white-plastered half-timbered houses above the cobblestones.

View of Strasbourg street near restaurant, April 11th, 2023

The tables were covered in red and white plaid tablecloths, then a pebbled white layer that looked a little like a bib and which spoke volumes about the experiences the restaurant had been through with spill-prone tourists...

The restaurant's menu featured Alsatian casserole (Elsaesser Baeckeoffe) with beef or duck or lamb in red pottery dishes. It also had varieties of Flammkuchen which is a type of super-thin-crust pizza that is also popular in southern German-style restaurants in Berlin. Choucroûte is part of the typical smells that waft through the streets of Strasbourg: a meal of sauerkraut, potatoes, and sausage. There were also other odds and ends — including the Salade à chèvre chaud (warm goat cheese salad) that I ordered. It's not really a useful or endearing quality, but I've become a bit precious about food and was a little disgruntled for example that there weren't more vegetarian options...

The coffee I ordered as an inexpensive substitute for dessert was nothing to write home about. But I think I figured out eventually as we stayed in Strasbourg that French restaurants seem to offer cheap café rallongé as a regular thing that's about 2.50 to 3 Euros, and then special gourmet coffees that are 7 or 7.50 Euros. Maybe the gourmet coffees are the ones that taste like the ones we can make in Berlin.

We did share two bottles of sparkling mineral water amongst us. I did feel tempted to get sirop à l'eau, but in the end decided against it.

I'd felt prudent for taking along travel candy in the train to France, knowing from past experience that when my blood sugar levels drop and my travel anxiety kicks in, I become like the snobby city person in Hallmark films before they have a Scrooge conversion.

But for visiting restaurants, the travel candy didn't suffice. I considered this one a tourist dive. — Meanwhile my mother was taking undoubtedly a better view: seeing things through rose-tinged glasses, reminiscing wistfully about eating Elsaesser Baeckeoffe at her wedding reception with my father, and feeling happy that she was visiting the right places to get to know her Alsatian mentor/mother-figure's native culture...

Either way, the rest of the family was happy with their meals.

Cycling, Home Cookery, and Indolence on the Day Before Studies

It's the first day of the university semester... but I have no classes scheduled for Mondays! So instead I spent the day as I wished, on unscheduled things.

Breakfast was coffee and orange juice; and I did half a page of Greek and read the Guardian headlines, and then read a book for fun, and tidied my room.

Then I cycled off to a charity to drop off donations that have been in my room for a while. Although I was daydreaming and therefore cycled the wrong way at first, a detour on a quiet Monday morning to the Zoologischer Garten area wasn't bad. But I reflected yet again that Berlin is far behind in the springtime vegetation cycle compared to Strasbourg, where the horse chestnut leaves had already spread greenly and amply and the first lilacs were blossoming!

After that, Ge. prepared porridge with an apple cut into it, and that was our lunch.

Grocery-shopping, as well as laundry, took up more of the morning. The Turkish supermarket was bustling, either due to the time of day or due to people being antsy to have food ready for iftar. (It's the month of Ramadan and, as always, many neighbours are celebrating it.)

Then I went off to volunteer for about an hour, sorting clothes donations. It was pretty quiet, but also easy to become absorbed.

It wasn't the most cheerful weather, but it was still possible I suppose to find aesthetic enjoyment even when there wasn't the rare sunny interval.

For example, I enjoyed cycling behind a mother and her toddler as I got closer to the apartment. There's a wonder-filled Age of Curiosity that young children go through that I like very much, and this toddler was in the middle of it. Her head encased in an extraterrestrial-green helmet was wobbling a little with the motion of the bicycle, as she was not yet old and strong enough to hold it steady as she sat behind her mother. But she swivelled her gaze back and forth, then poked out a finger like a delighted, pleasant little dictator and chirped something to her mother when she found something she liked (I think she spotted the bright gold blossoms on a maple tree).

When I returned to the building, Ge. was returning from a 'wild goose chase' to get our sewing machine repaired. The shop wasn't able to order the required spare part.

In the late afternoon I prepared a lunch of green asparagus with fried eggs, then — from Yasmin Khan's Ripe Figs cookbook — dinner: red bell pepper-and-walnut dip (muhammara), flatbread (lavash) that I did not bother making from scratch, and Greek greens (horta). For dessert, I had bought a mixed salted and roasted nut mix of pistachios, cashews, hazelnuts, and almonds; and sweetened chestnuts. And Ge. had bought tiramisu. It all tasted delicious and I reflected happily that sometimes putting forward effort into spoiling one's self really works. And J. prepared chicory coffee for after the meal.

I'll need to wake up very early tomorrow morning. But in the meantime I may research my World War I story further, or write up an account of the journey to Strasbourg, or do something lazy!

Travels to Alsace: The Prequel

Before the family left for our holiday in France, I watched the French mini-series Les combattantes (Women at War, released in 2022) on Netflix.

Tracing the fortunes of four women, it explores fighting in the forested, mountainous Vosges region of France near the border of present-day Germany, after World War I started in 1914. The Vosges formed the southern end of the French front, which has tended to predominate the imagination of many people who learn about WWI, to the detriment of many other fronts, for example in Gallipoli, or around Austria. (Serbia lost by far the highest percentage of soldiers.)

Caroline is the wife of a minor aristocrat who had inherited his family's vehicle manufacturing company as part of a family tradition, but leaves home to serve as a military engineer. Left on her hands: a factory full of workers who are at imminent risk of being treated as deserters because they are waiting for an official exemption from military service, and half-finished delivery trucks for a local grocer's; her daughter Madeleine, her mother-in-law Éléonore, and her brother-in-law Charles.

Marguerite is a prostitute, capable and chain-smoking and a little fierce, who has driven into town from Paris to find the whereabouts of her biological son. After being adopted out, he has been educated at a prestigious military academy and is now serving as an officer amongst what I think would be termed riflemen.

Mère Agnès is the head of a convent, trying to mitigate the risks to the civilians who live nearby and trying to help the casualties of war (physical and emotional) who stream in from the battlefield — with exemplary gentleness, kindness, and forgiveness.

The nurse Suzanne is fleeing the vengeful husband of a patient who died on the operating table; he wants to prosecute her for a failed abortion. (While I have never read Les Misérables, I think you just need to picture Javert to get an idea of this figure.) In the early 20th century, performing abortions really was considered equivalent to murder by most people, resulting in correspondingly brutal legal penalties, and the series spells this out. The character Jeanne is trying to smuggle her across the border into Switzerland.

But Suzanne feels drawn to her medical work again as she sees the influx of badly wounded men when she is forced to take shelter in the convent. Eventually she makes the decision to risk arrest and death by foregoing an escape to Switzerland, instead assisting the only surgeon, who is the son of a general and deeply overworked as he is the only man capable of triaging cases and performing surgery. (I found the scenes pretty gory. If you dislike blood, guts, and loud groaning, you will not enjoy the mini-series.)

These women are heroines of the series, and one can say that they're nuanced. But I say with all due respect that I've rarely seen a TV series with more one-dimensional villains. Even if redeemed by the plot, they are signaled with the subtlety of a sledgehammer: at least in my opinion, their mean scowls generally give them away. If all villains in real life were that easy to spot, the police would have an easy time.

On the one hand the series departs from tropes like 'a France where only White people ever lived until the 1990s,' or 'a pious Church full of well-meaning people,' or, more trivially, 'guttural-sounding German indicating the brutish soul of the Hun'. — It was quite uplifting for this Teuton to see her fellow country people speaking such flawless French, a tribute to Prussian education no doubt. — It was also good that the filmmakers showed the venality of 'the same side': e.g. sales of cocaine to soldiers who badly wanted to escape reality, even at the risk of an overdose. On the other hand, the screenwriters etc. did take it easy on themselves here and there, taking over a few threadbare tropes like Mère Agnès's wise mother abbess.

The romantic plot for Mère Agnès, I brutally skipped through once I saw which way the wind was blowing. Also I can't say I wholly appreciated being reminded that sexual abuse of children at the hand of other clergy happened in the past as well as the present — because the series was already full of depressing plot lines.

Many historical details seemed correct, based on my past months of research for the story I want to write.

Syphilis was a problem during World War I. Of course the TV series finds new jobs for the affected prostitutes in a kinder way than reality would have done, and as far as I recall doesn't portray the medical effects on soldiers or civilians who contract the disease.

Soldiers were sent back to the front even when they were blatantly unfit due to shellshock or for other reasons.

And so on and so forth.

However the depiction of gas warfare in 1914 is blatantly wrong, as an IMDb website reviewer commented. There must be a storytelling reason for it — perhaps to make clearer that psychologically the nature of war seemed to contemporaries to be growing more perfidious.

Secondly, in battlefield scenes, I think that it would be harder to run dramatically between shells because they would leave gaping holes that would trip up the person who was running.

Lastly, the film does not at all show the perfidious nature of shrapnel...

The filmmakers nodded to outdated social mores of the time, all the while making figures like Marguerite's son rather anachronistically open-minded. But I did think it was silly that the film made the serious injury of one of the characters into a Feminist Moment as the nurse performed surgery to save the character's life... I think that in real life the character would have been focusing on trying not to die and not on cheerleading Suzanne's 'one small step for woman, one giant leap for womankind' sutures.

Mostly the acting is pretty wonderful: it's incredible how the cast sustained so much emotion through very soapy and extreme scenarios that still needed to respect a real-life parallel.

***

Anyway, the film prepared my mind for my peacetime travels to Alsace in two thematic ways:

Firstly, it hinted at the complex history of French-German relations. In Strasbourg [note: not in the film] the semi-recent history was tremendously un-complex, or still complex, depending on how you want to look at it: for one thing the Prussians bombed an entire civilian city quarter to smithereens during the Franco-Prussian War, and for another thing of course the Nazis occupied the city again after Strasbourg was relinquished post-WWI.

Secondly, it showed the beauty of the Vosges region, and hinted at the region's industries and longer-ago history, through the filmmakers' choices of cinematography and locations. It felt shallow to be distracted by summer-lit green foliage, rocky mountain slopes, mysterious forests, soaring vistas from hilltops, a golden hay harvest, etc., during a wartime plot. But the contrast between serene landscapes and mass slaughter was noted by soldiers even during the time of the war, for example as described in All Quiet on the Western Front. The filmmakers shot on location with a genuine sensitivity for what would complement but also perhaps contrast to the plot and its incidents.

Easter and an Unexpected Sighting

It's been an enjoyable Easter Sunday.

I woke up before 11 a.m., and joined the family for an Easter breakfast of raisin buns, regular bread buns, coffee, freshly boiled eggs as well as the dyed ones that I'd prepared while assisting the Easter bunny, and a ton of candy.

Then I had a long nap.

Afterward we strolled off to the park, which was quite beautiful with sunshine, Oregon grape blossoms, hyacinths, blue squills, and tulip leaf stands that were not yet blossoming. In the lawn, a few daisies were speckled like a star constellation. And the undergrowth is so sparse that I wandered around the foot of a massive tree looking at all the rabbit warrens that had been burrowed into the ground. Even in the lawn, thinner holes had I think been dug by voles instead. Many bushes and a few trees already have green leaves, the first 'fingertips' already opening in a horse chestnut tree. But as far as I recall, the splashes of colour from shrubs are still mostly the golden forsythia blossoms.

While Ge. and J. played badminton, I was conducting my explorations and taking photographs. Then, as we were going to leave, they pointed out that Mama had also wandered to the park and was sitting on the steps leading up to a building. So we joined her, then went around two corners to a nearby ice cream shop, to buy waffle cones with two scoops for each of us. It was pleasantly warm but not too hot, so only one family was in the queue besides us and we were in and out more quickly than in the past.

We drank more coffee at home, and chatted a little, but then I cycled to the allotment gardens for the first time in months. Aside from forsythias and squills and hyacinths, I saw late purple crocuses, yellow and yellow-red cowslips, blue grape hyacinths, blossoming fruit trees, tall daffodils, and a lot of people: families and groups of friends who were partly sitting at tables outdoors.

Emboldened by the pleasant experience to stay outdoors longer, I also cycled to Kreuzberg and waved hi to an uncle who was cycling, by chance, in the opposite direction.

Since then, I've played the piano a bit, read a New York Times article about the life of Benjamin Ferencz (last living prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials until he died on Friday, over 100 years old), and cogitated further about amateur journalism.

I believe it makes sense to learn shorthand, but the course that I found in Berlin (aimed at personal assistants rather than journalists) would cost over 900€ and be online-only. So I'd like to return to learning from a late 19th-century online copy of Gregg's Shorthand. Besides I read journalism manuals yesterday about how to handle press conferences, interviews with famous people, interviews with 'regular' people, and vox pop ('man on the street') interviews.

The next story I'd like to write will require vox pop interviews, I think, so there will be opportunity to practice... (Although a German manual was very sniffy about the genre.)

In general I've googled 'feelings that are normal to have after quitting a job,' have given myself a pep talk, stayed up happily late immersed in a Netflix mini-series that took my mind off of things, and have enjoyed the company of relatives to the full. Yesterday I had a long walk around Tempelhofer Feld with the two youngest brothers, talking out the remaining worries I have about my work team, which was quite therapeutic especially as they are engaged listeners. And now I feel better.

During the walks/cycling today I reflected that I want to follow an idea in one of Maria Edgeworth's books: one way to approach gambling is to just decide on a certain sum of money that one feels comfortable losing, and then to keep playing until one has lost that amount. To apply it to my case, I will keep looking for a part-time job, but try not to panic about finances until my bank balance has shrunk by (almost) a third. Until then, I can register as unemployed and invest my past earnings in training and equipment.

In any case, the family leaves for France on Tuesday, except Gi. who prefers to stay home, and although the prospect of continual rain is a little daunting, it at least means that I'll be thinking of other matters!

The Bumpy Beginnings of Liberty

It's my first day out of the company where I didn't meet up with any colleagues.

It was rough. I woke up before 8 a.m., a usually unheard-of early time, then went back to sleep for an hour or so between 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., and have still been stress-sleeping (i.e. thinking about work while sleeping). After waking up I was thinking with tired pain about all the errands that need doing (contacting university professors, registering as a job seeker, getting a Covid test ahead of the evening choir...) and worrying that I wouldn't be able to do anything ever again now that I don't have the impetus of all the tasks that happen in the course of a working day.

On the one hand, explicitly giving up the responsibility I felt toward a hundred-odd colleagues, of whom most have become deeply unhappy so that lifting spirits has become harder and harder, is such a relief that I feel absolutely giddy with it, like Atlas transferring the world to Hercules' shoulders. In the past weeks it became especially heavy as I've been playing a sort of 5-dimensional chess in which I tried to guess at how to leave without causing colleagues to panic, gave little lifts to morale here and there (through focusing on colleagues individually and personally and giving specific and well-deserved praise), and squelched all of my own feelings of frustration, anger and overwhelm to be as constructive as possible. While not being able to sleep very well or eat very well. On the other hand, doing things for others is a much stronger motivation in life than just focusing willpower and ingenuity on my own ends, which is like crushing a peanut with a sledgehammer.

I mean no disparagement of the company, but I've been deeply torn for months between loyalty to a company that also made me sign a non-disclosure agreement, alongside the abstract ethics of being an employee — and my absolute fury at the emotional toll that company changes have taken on colleagues, and fear for their psychological and emotional health. Especially with my own team, I turned into a regular 'momma bear' during my last days and felt like I would happily beat anyone up who made them unhappy. I didn't know whether telling people that I appreciated their work and pointing out why, would encourage them to stay longer than they'd otherwise have done because they'd finally feel that someone is acknowledging their effort... but that later they'd regret not leaving earlier, for example. It definitely might save the company's bacon for a while, but it would not save theirs. Anyway, in the end I haven't encouraged anyone to leave (just encouraged one person to leave sooner, or take sick days, if things turn nasty — which might admittedly be skirting the law). But I have given whichever information they asked for about how to leave.

That said, these past weeks my youngest brothers and mother have been magnificent, my aunt L. wrote a nice note to cheer me up, many teammates including uncle M. have been lovely, my coach/therapist also lent her sympathetic ear, and former colleagues have sent messages of support. So it's never just me propping up others.

In the meantime I've been pursuing my amateur journalism with more zeal and vigour than discretion. After jamming a firewire plug into my desktop computer to try to transfer photographs from my smartphone, it looks like my ethernet socket is broken. And I was almost as frustrated as my dad became when things didn't go well on his computer, when trying to set up a Wordpress account so that e.g. editors could check my bona fides. I researched the websites of photojournalists like Lynsey Addario and wanted something close to what they had: a simple sidebar listing perhaps 5 sub-pages, a very pared-down look, a few attractive images. No dice. It's also embarrassing that I couldn't link to a single published article, blog post, ... under my own name.

What I've realized is that when it comes to starting a job, I have very little to no self-esteem. I just don't believe I can do that task or job unless someone else tells me so, and it's making me very scared about finding the next thing. This is definitely sad for a thirty-seven-year -old adult. Even no longer feeling that I'm leading a team has dinged my self-confidence to the degree that I feel comparatively mopey and inept when running errands, like shopping; of course that makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Anyway, I went to choir practice this evening. The school where we practice was closed down for the Easter holidays, so it was pitch-dark again as we left; and yet again I stepped down four-odd flights of stairs feeling that the spirits of generations of pupils and teachers were waiting to pounce at me from the shadows. That said, I passed a church spire on the way home: the gentle lighting of the façade, the oblique glow from the nearby apartment windows, the first golden sprigs of blossoms on a tree, the outline of the branches of another tree, the whimsical clouds, and the pale moon, were all very poetic and reminiscent of late 19th-century German paintings.