Shopping and the Thundershower

On an impulse I announced last week to my colleagues that I would be playing badminton at 2 p.m. on Tempelhofer Feld, and that they were free to play too. As far as I could tell a thrill of bemusement and interest ran through the company, since my sociability is lamentably scarce. The weather was one central concern, and one colleague also doubted if he would come if one of our rare 'team events' — this time held in a beer garden at the Hasenheide park — on Friday would lead him to sleep in too long.

Yesterday I realized that at home there is only one badminton shuttlecock that the siblings and I have been using, which is threadbare at the nose and intact but grubby in the feathers Although there are tattered remains of other birdies that might still manage to fly in a traditional arcing motion.

I decided to go to a shop in Mitte instead of the Schlossstraße. There it turned out that SportScheck, where I wanted to procure aerodynamically reliable badminton birdies, was in the elegant grey and glass hulk that is the Mall of Berlin. It towers near Potsdamer Platz, hoping to catch the tourists who have just taken selfies in front of the fragment of the Berlin Wall or walked from the Brandenburg Gate, and the Canadian embassy.

After entering the chasm between the 'West' and 'East' side of the mall, I consulted the closest signs with the shop brands plastered on them that I could find to see what side was relevant for me. The brands were also elegantly labelled inside the correct side of the mall once I found it, and I spotted the shop on the first floor above ground level.

It's difficult to retell properly, but once a few years ago my brother Ge.'s cell phone alarm kept ringing jauntily, because it was time for him to go to an early shift at his apprenticeship. It was in Ge.'s and J.'s room, and J. looked like he was asleep. But then he said in a small, exhausted voice, 'I'm in hell.' Being in a shopping mall impressed me similarly. I was less than glamorously dressed and coiffed, and feeling warm because of the weather and the walk from the Kulturforum station. (I got out of the bus early.) Working in a consumerism-related company also makes me sensitive about rampant capitalism, since there is plenty of time and occasion to Think Deep Thoughts about it; and at present I'm in a very money-saving frame of mind.


Boring Tale of Idiocy:
Then I failed to see SportScheck on the ground floor. I went to the first floor, found the birdies near the tennis racquets, and then wondered where the heck the cash register was. After roaming outside of the shop to the ground floor, where the cash register was per a sign, I looked behind the escalator and realized that there had been no reason at all for me to roam outside the shop in the first place rather than taking the internal escalator down to its dépendance on the ground floor. I had been a bit silly altogether. There I paid for the purchase. Also, I considered being less hoity-toity about — to phrase this harshly — brainlessness or rustic traits in tourists in future, for fear of being a hypocrite.

***

Later J. and I walked to Tempelhofer Feld. It was warm and the clouds were merely a tender grey haze on the horizon, and it was breezy enough that it wasn't too unpleasant. I thought my legs were being burnt to a crisp in the solar glare, but it turns out the leather of my ankle boots was chafing against my skin and irritating it. There was a wooden boat, Frygg, on a trailer in front of the perturbing Nazi architecture that houses a weather service these days, at Platz der Luftbrücke. (Where the Berlin Airlift is celebrated. I tend to look at the large, knobbly, leafy plane trees, which are nice, when I am there.) As I told J., I hoped the boat was the good kind of Norse revivalism and not the bad kind; the context at least was dubious.

We were almost an hour early for the rendezvous. So we sat on a white-and-red striped concrete bench and talked, and then walked around the peripheral runway to the field right in front of the central hangar; Berlin Tempelhof, Elevation 164 feet, written above; and a midcentury silvery airplane tucked, with its tail sticking out and a star on the fuselage near the tail, into the shadow within. Purple clover and other wildflowers fragrantly speckled the grass and I already regretted the impending trampling; but the butterflies looked happy and rested on the extra badminton racquets in the duffel bag. We took out the badminton racquets and began to play, which was complicated and often fruitless due to the wind, so that we could almost never get a rally going. Then Gi. and Ge. joined, and we did get a rally going because Gi. sensibly positioned us so that the wind did the least damage.

The other colleagues had wisely decided to stay at home, but a single colleague arrived, on his bicycle; we'll call him Katrick. It was game of him to come at all, considering that rain and thunderstorms had been forecast. He watched us with the occasional chuckle of enjoyment, and we chatted a bit, but he had no desire to join the rally.

Apparently pedestrians on the Tempelhofer Feld tarmac were amused or perplexed, too. A lady pedalling by turned around from her vehicle to dramatically shout, as far as I could tell, 'Der Wind ist zu stark! Es geht nicht!' (The wind is too strong; it won't work!)

For 30 to 40 minutes, our efforts went (athletically speaking) poorly, but agreeably. The first rumble of thunder came and went — also the second. Then the rain that was predicted began to drop. We disbanded, and J. and I went off by foot. The sky grew darker and slate-greyer. After
a peaceful interlude the torrential rain, lightning and thunder began.

In short order I was drenched to the skin. Even J., the imperturbable, remarked that his clothing was not as rainproof than he had expected. At home, I eventually saw that I have red sunburns on my forearms, and a milder reddening on my nose and cheeks, too; and I was so exhausted after a while that I took a nap. But it was very much worth it.

I haven't mentioned Papa so far; but when there are stretches where I don't feel particularly glum, I feel that I should embrace them. (Not because the thought of Papa makes me feel glum; quite the opposite; but of course there is a lot of baggage connected to the death itself, and looking at photos or thinking about his earlier life and reading old e-mails gives me the frankly difficult impression that I am losing the father that he used to be as well as the person he was at the end of his life.)