The Tale of the Machiavellian Doner

For the past three nights in a row I've traipsed out to a nearby bridge with an excellent view down railway tracks to the north, to try to see the Northern Lights, after seeing dramatic photos from Brandenburg where other skygazers have sighted the phenomenon induced by strong recent solar flares.

My brother Ge. came along only the first time, making sarcastic comments at intervals. (His presence was still welcome, however, and I thought his comments were funny.) J. was more sanguine and has come along every night – but he has also held me to a strict time limit of 5 minutes' waiting and been generally skeptical.

The result: we've seen a few airplanes, the crescent moon, the Big Dipper, the Fernsehturm, and a cloud veil. But altogether I feel that the enterprise was always a little doomed, like Linus of the Charlie Brown comics waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive on Halloween.

*

For Greek class I still probably need to catch up on more pages of an early 20th century text we're reading. It consumed a few hours this morning and will likely consume a few more. I naughtily skipped the lesson itself again.

There was a dentist's check-up today, too.

We likely won't be seeing each other again until mid-August! A few headaches in the past day or two are likely due to sitting out in the sun too long. But if they persist it might be necessary to make an appointment earlier after all, to check if there's something wrong tooth-wise.

Thanks to my brief stints in the waiting room, I also finished reading a small, hardbound volume of Greek myths and legends that a friend gave me for my birthday last autumn.

*

Journalistically speaking, I'm taking things easy today because of my recent sun exposure and because choir practice is also scheduled for the evening.

But I will likely research Ethiopian politics or history more: I have contacted a professor in Berlin and I will be having a conversation with him the day after tomorrow. He will also let me drop in on his seminar on Friday!

Yesterday evening I made a first inquiry about renting a co-working space, so that I can have a journalistic 'office.'

*

On Sunday I went on a tour of the neighbourhood with 16 other people – a Member of the European Parliament, an MEP candidate, a member of Berlin's legislative assembly, and a Berlin state secretary amongst them. It had been advertised through a poster on my apartment building's front door.

It's a while ago, but made for a few anecdotes.

The tour's aim, aside from endearing the Social Democratic Party to voters, was to make the EU more accessible by pointing out buildings and programmes that are linked to European Union initiatives or specifically to funding: a community centre, a school, etc.

A friendly rapport was established from the outset. For example, an older lady held onto my shoulder as she hopped up to sit on a railing alongside me.

I did feel as if the MEP struggled to patiently mingle amongst the Little People in an occupation that didn't require her to juggle three different dimensions at once. As she held ad hoc speeches, she regally ignored the anxious mien of the Berlin legislator who (despite her foot being in a cast) had put the main legwork into running the tour and was timekeeping.

That the MEP had fixed principles in the policy she wanted to achieve, was clear; she was also intelligent enough to thank her extremely hardworking Berlin colleague at the end. But her demeanour emphasized to me that one doesn't get ahead in political life without making devil's bargains at the expense of everyday kindness.

Although I also had a faint impression that she approved of me ... perhaps because I made no motions to speak to her. As I'm usually the one who feels snubbed in these situations, it was a welcome reprieve; I don't want to be ungrateful.

It also sank in for me as we began passing posters with her face on them, how epically weird it is for political figures to navigate the world as a political figure.

The state secretary kept almost completely silent behind his sunglasses. He only broke the silence twice to describe 1. a brick building, 2. a European children's soccer tournament. (Which I'd already been planning to attend as a spectator.) His partner joined the tour, and he briefly lit up at that.

It was a delightfully comedic tour in less subtle ways, too.

Above all: a fellow 'civilian' perhaps in his forties had been loudly advocating for his pet artistic projects. He asserted that any politician who disagreed with him was a selfish incompetent, and engaged the MEP in a lengthy exchange that showed no signs of stopping. He left in a huff part-way. A grandmotherly lady had politely walked up to him, looked him in the eye, and said that he could hold his own guided tour if he wanted to keep speaking all the time. (Without disliking the troublemaker at all, I was still agog with admiration for the woman.)

In the tour, I may have been the only person under 40 by the end who didn't seem to be an SPD party member or staffer, and who was a dual citizen. I was wondering if whoever distributed the tour posters had really distributed them randomly, or taken a look at the names beside the doorbells to see which buildings had more 'German' ones. Based on later evidence when I wandered around the neighbourhood and looked to see if posters had only been selectively placed, I presume the former.

Either way, given our demographic it was a shock when we were treated to döners at a reduced price at the end. Perhaps this is stereotyping, in which case I apologize.

*

The döner bonanza was the SPD's initiative to endear itself in the neighbourhood: the 3€ vouchers were being handed out to any passersby who engaged with the election info stand. It did lead to more interest than the Linke party's traditional stand on the opposite side of the street.

In the end I was the only one to take advantage of the offer from the tour group. (I did pay full price for the döner, though, for the sake of journalistic integrity.)

The SPD staffers and politicians were mostly clustered at an information stand, beside a nearby Commerzbank. There a videographer or news cameraman partook of the frenzy, and a police van stood stolidly beside it. The police officers who watched at the margins were deployed for good reason: the recent attacks on political figures and staff. But when I passed them, their faces suggested saints undergoing a particularly boring medieval punishment.

The politician who had had the döner inspiration (it's a reference to something involving Olaf Scholz, but I haven't bothered to research it) popped over to make sure that everyone in the queue at the döner shop had a ticket. He didn't seem to take it amiss that many of his eager audience weren't of voting age yet.

A few mothers of the children looked like they couldn't believe their luck – they could stay within budget, while also giving the children a treat that they were begging for. And they were certainly of voting age. So perhaps his strategy still worked.

One child was queueing all alone behind me. He looked pitiably bored. I told him he could go in front of me, which he gratefully did. I regretted this gesture of compassion eventually, however: three little friends materialized out of nowhere, thronged beside him in the queue, and ordered ... not just food, but also drinks.

The men working in the döner shop were spooning out 6 or so different sauces upon customer request, cheese, and diverse salads; keeping the döner meat skewer in action; engaging the cash register; taking people's orders; and checking that the döner buns and the vegetarian döner patties were toasting properly.

It was a sunny day; the men must have been warm.

I could practically see the thought bubbles where they were fantasizing about having two more employees.

So I don't know if they benefited in every sense from the political gimmick. But they were efficient and made the best of things. They were also kind and courtly to the children who took longer to order.

When I had ordered and paid, I wandered off with a well-stuffed döner, and sat in a nearby courtyard to eat it. It was a satisfying meal, toasty warm, and a fitting reward for a long day's semi-work.

(A reward I had also picked up on the walking tour was a vegetarian cookbook from precisely the period I am researching – 1900 to 1929. It was propped on a windowsill of a residential apartment building for anyone to take.)

I reflected that I have learned more about my neighbourhood. Also  – contrasting this adventure with reading dry documents about the European Supply Chain Directive in the past year – I've never enjoyed researching European politics more.

Glimpses of Maytime Protests in Berlin

Yesterday (Friday) morning I went off after a minimalistic indulgent breakfast of vanilla ice cream and rhubarb compôte, to the Unter den Linden area to observe a protest outside the Foreign Ministry.

The protest was about the situation in Ethiopia again. The slogans that the crowd chanted were very vague, and the event would be lasting another 4 hours, so I settled on the steps of the Friedrichswerdersche Church to absorb the atmosphere etc. before deciding if I'd introduce myself, ask more specifically why the protest was happening, and take photos.

Tiny ants were scrabbling over the stone steps, and tourists speaking German or French went in and out of the church through one door, which was ajar, or looked at the elaborate bas-relief scenes on the door that wasn't ajar.

At least 7 police officers were standing around in lighter summer uniform: a big contingent considering that there were only around 20 protestors. One or two more officers were on guard as always at the ministry entrance.

I began reading a book that I've bought to do background research on Ethiopia's history, and rather unwisely kept sitting on the church steps although it was squarely in the sun. (At least I had sunblock along and was using it.)

After a while I heard a putt-putting sound. 5 police motorcyclists came rolling up just to where I was, and parked in formation. Their senior officer stepped off his bike and began to tell the others his plans of where to conduct the protest march later, so in between focusing on passages in the book my ears were twitching. I have a fascination for security protocol and tactics, so I was hoping to overhear things.

The motorbicycles would have made a striking foreground for a photo, if I found the right angle, focus, etc. But since I hadn't introduced myself to the protestors and didn't want to 'creep' on the police, I didn't even attempt it.

After a while I changed my position, took 2 photos of the crowd from a distance for record-keeping purposes, and then decided to leave. I was worried that it was unprofessional not to wade in and ask questions. But I didn't want to risk again becoming a mouthpiece for ethnonationalist propaganda about a situation I'm not terribly well informed in.

In general, not just with Ethiopia by any means, I worry about covering protests where I have the feeling that protestors think that fighting and war are glorious, and that a few deaths, rapes, or tortures inflicted on the other side either 'didn't happen' or are just the eggs in the proverbial omelette. I don't think this helps anybody or makes the world a better place, and there are other protests that just feel more helpful.

I've tried to give the benefit of the doubt once or twice, because it isn't always easy to 'prove' my impression — only to find corroborating evidence later that suggested that I could have just followed my instincts.

***

On Tuesday there was a hubbub at the Free University.

I'd skipped a morning Greek class because I would have been 1 hour late, and instead was trying to catch up on all of the homework for it, as well as meditating what to do journalistically that day.

Then the local news website ran a story saying that police were dissolving a pro-Palestinian protest camp there.

Two different accounts (maybe both are true) exist: 1. that the university administration had right away ordered the police to dissolve it; 2. that the university administration and police wanted it dissolved because anti-Semitic words and phrases had been spoken.

It's old news to me but maybe not to everyone that the Berlin police has been dealing with potential anti-Semitic speech at protests about Israel and Palestine by banning specific phrases.

e.g. "From the river to the sea." A debated phrase and theoretically could be used in a peaceful if rather impractical sense. But police take the more pessimistic view and presume that usually it means that the person who uses the phrase would like to see Israeli citizens displaced by violence from the area around the Jordan River.

One shouldn't say anything that means that Israel isn't allowed to exist as a nation-state.

Flag-burning is out.

And there are a few other things that, if protest organizers do their job, are clearly listed at the beginning of an event.

I don't know if 'F*k Israel' has been banned, but I've definitely heard it in two protests (on and off campus) recently. At the first protest, the demonstrators were also saying 'F*k Germany' while, based on their fluent German language skills, being German citizens or at least residents; so I didn't see it as especially hateful, just rude, in that context.

Generally a protest can be shut down when these words are spoken, but sometimes individual people are just removed from the protest and everyone else can continue.

In my personal point of view, and I have to stress that when I'm in journalistic mode I don't take a stance on this, there is nothing wrong with applying a few rules here.

I think it's nonsense to say that words aren't deeds, when protestors use written messages and chants as tools to transmit their message. (Either words have power or they don't!)

Admittedly maybe one shouldn't only be applying rules in the framework of pro-Palestinian protests.

*

Last year I observed a Nakba protest where one speaker said amongst other things that the 'land was soaked with the blood of martyrs' and that Palestinians 'would be ready for the next Intifada.'

She was very young and, to be clear, this was before the Hamas massacres in October.

But I didn't like how her words trivialized, not just the deaths of Israeli civilians, and Israeli soldiers who after all are often conscripts, in past intifadas; but equally the Palestinian lives that had been taken away, and the grief of their families, without achieving lasting justice and quality of life for Palestinians.

I wasn't impressed by the Jewish demonstrators who'd organized the event, either, for being silent about it.

That said, I'm becoming an old lady. Not everyone has been around long enough to remember the regular tragic news reports about buses full of dozens of unarmed people being blown up, etc., as well as the other bloodshed during the second intifada.

*

Anyway, I cycled to campus to observe the situation. The camp itself had I think already been disbanded.

Because fire alarms were ringing in all parts of the building complex (the Rost-, Silber- and Holzlaube) around it, I decided to obey the law and not to try to enter it to get a good photo of the courtyard.

As police and firefighters were roaming the building, apparently nudging a few students to leave who'd decided to ignore the alarms and keep working, I felt this was a good decision in the end although it wasn't very satisfying from a photographic standpoint. Later there were rumours in a newspaper that alarms were triggered by pepper spray, but otherwise everyone assumed as I did that the alarms had been released on purpose.

Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protestors were roaring away near the Thielallee (the Berliner Zeitung reported that the protestors were more mad at police than at each other). They were just being told to disband per police megaphone as I left.

More students sat/strolled near the building/leaving after doing quiet study indoors. Blue-and-black-uniformed maintenance men stood outside the Habelschwerdter Allee entrance. Firefighters emerged after their unenviable voyage through the labyrinth of Rost-/Silber-/Holzlaube corridors. Everyone looked at ease.

Of course, the students were likely feeling blissful because their classes were cancelled. But I also wondered if there was widespread sympathy for protests against the high death toll in the Gaza Strip. (If I were a proper journalist, of course I'd have asked.)

I was also kind of relieved that universities were becoming a locus of public discourse and protest again. Because when I studied at the Freie Uni, before Instagram activism became a thing, it seemed as if nobody were really engaged in social or political issues at all, just neutrally pursuing their academic careers.

At 7 p.m., the university president released a statement talking of dire damage to 40 fire alarms.

Either the building maintenance staff, who seemed to be I'll add wholly unacknowledged and unthanked for it, had done a vast clean-up job; or he was telling fibs.

Because: the next day I had a class, also walked around a few more hallways on Wednesday, and didn't see any damage whatsoever.

Anyway, all of the above has to be read with a pinch of salt. I made one or two mistakes in my assessment of the situation before, and this is just a 'best guess' portrait.

What's galling is that I'm quite happy to be caught up in trivialities like these (also like just having scruples about how to report on deaths in Ethiopia, instead of doing the reporting) and to ignore the essentials. When in the Gaza Strip the deaths continue, an elderly hostage has died, and the famine and the destruction of homes seemingly has no end.

*

While it means that the concert I'll be attending soon at the Barenboim-Said Academy won't count as balancing my pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli reporting after all, as many Israelis would likely interpret the academy as a one-sided pro-Palestinian institution, it was a relief to read what Michael Barenboim told RBB in an interview about the protest.

"[...] ich sehe nicht gerne, dass einfach massenhaft unschuldige Menschen umgebracht werden, auf dieser industriellen Skala schon gar nicht." ('I don't like seeing that innocent people are just being killed en masse, even less so on this industrial scale.')

Fitness for the First Week of May

It's been busy, but the first things I'll mention as they're quite painless is that I've been making sort-of progress on the goal of training well enough to pass a firefighter fitness test, and that tomorrow is Ascension Day so there will be no university.

The fitness test has four pillars.

Originally the first pillar was running a certain distance in 12 minutes. But I'm thinking of just generally either making sure I can run 1 km without stopping, or tackling 5 km in intervals of walking and running.

I've been replacing running training with cycling to a degree, just because I do cycle to commute and it would be too tiring to run on top of that.

On Saturday I had the less-than-bright idea of doing 15 second running, 45 second walking intervals, for 20 minutes... on the slopes of the Kreuzberg. For 7 minutes, roughly, it was OK. But after ascending another very steep path where I began to feel near-nausea, it sank in that this wasn't going anywhere. It was also busy in the park: generally when beginning a training regimen, my ego shrinks away from an audience.

The second pillar is sit-ups. I have a fairly curved spine: it will take effort to get to the point where I keep my feet firmly on the ground. I've also forgotten how many one was supposed to do, in which time frame; so I am picking 25 sit-ups.

The third pillar is push-ups. Today I did 15 on the highest incline at a calisthenics park on the Free University campus. But the aim is to do 12 full-body push-ups without an incline, and without long pauses, in the end.

The fourth pillar is trekking for over a mile with a weight. Here again I've forgotten what the weight and the exact distance are supposed to be... I'd want to make sure I'm quite fit before I try it, but perhaps an analogue would be to go up and down a long staircase (or the Teufelsberg?) with telephone books in a backpack.

Anyway, this is probably boring to read about. But after decades of not being conspicuously athletic, it's exciting to me.

***

I need to look over my calendar again to see what else has happened since the last blog post:

Journalistically, I've looked into death in the Middle East and Africa, tensions in Berlin, and taken a few photos for today's anniversary of Germany's capitulation near the end of World War II.

— I think a man shouted 'Lügenpresse' at me when I was wielding my smartphone and notebook, near the German parliament, recently. (I have to accept that it's a matter of time before someone shouts me in the face or physically attacks me. It was driven home today by the news that a former mayor of Berlin was whacked from behind by a man with a known psychiatric illness.) —

Besides I've been cycling around, gathering dozens of photos about the Euro Cup and the European Union elections. It's that time of year where it's hard to take a bad photo: brilliant blue skies, leafy trees with aplomb, beautiful roses and chestnut tree blossoms, and grass without the parched austerity of late summer.

There have always been accidental discoveries while cycling too:

It's not news by any means, but yesterday a crew at a construction site had lost control of a garden-type water hose. It was thrashing about spraying water everywhere underneath a truck. I went over, perhaps needlessly searching for a cause to rescue, seized hold of the hose, and directed all the water into the street drain. Then the construction workers, who'd been laughing at the dancing hose and their own inability to reach far enough across a wooden construction fence, finally maneuvered (as they'd been planning) to kick shut a valve at the base of the hose. 

Less lighthearted: two police vans, a fire truck, and maybe other emergency vehicles near a local park; there was no smoke column nearby and I hoped for the best.

In private life, I've met with former colleagues again after a long hiatus, also met with former teammates in the Wedding part of Berlin, and am putting together plans for another round on Sunday.

Then there are the intense choir rehearsals, and more 'doodling' on the piano: passages from  Tchaikovsky piano concerto, Bach-Gounod Ave Maria, Scarlatti sonatas, Scott Joplin ragtime, and sometimes bits of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, the Bach-Busoni chaconne, some Albéniz or Granados thrown in. It's quite surprising and rewarding to have enough time to make some progress on longer and complex pieces that I couldn't concentrate on while employed full-time.

I've sent off another job application in the meantime. Today I also scanned a QR code of a clothes selling job description where I'll probably have to be honest that I am sort of marmite when it comes to social situations: either I really work or really don't work for people.

As for university, after 2:30 a.m.ish I finally came close to catching up on Greek homework. There's still a long way to go. But either way the professor was touched and pleased that one of my classmates and I had actually prepared...