News from the Berliner Sauna

In the U-Bahn I am reading only the Dilemmas of Lenin for a while. This is due to the temperatures because when I travel to work in the mornings it has already been 27°C lately. And then it rises to 30° or 31° during the day, and settles down to a dissatisfying 20° at night. The past two nights I have woken up between 2 and 3 because of the heat and awkward mosquito bites at the ankles. These are not conditions in which I feel fit enough to read the philosophy of Aristotle or the physics of Schwarzschild. In the case of Aristotle, I admit that this avoidance seems weak-spirited since he worked out all of this philosophy in the heat of Greece without complaining (as far as I know), which is surely more demanding than reading it.

Although this type of summer heat has been one of the preconditions for many a rebellion and revolt in the course of human history, I am reading the book without feeling any burning desire to start a communistic revolution myself.

This week has been strange in general. On Monday morning I had an errand in the embassy. I went there before at the beginning of the year and wasn't let in, so I am quite anxious now whenever I go there that I will be barred again for reasons I don't understand.

On that evening I was going home, but then I wasn't able to switch to the second U-Bahn line that I always take. At least 3 transit personnel were standing at attention at a barrier of tape at the foot of the stairs to the platform. I was part of the bewildered crowd milling around at the foot. Eventually one of them barked at us that the train wasn't coming and that we should use the Straßenbahn or other transport methods. Later I read that someone had been hit by a train; I am not sure about this, but it made sense to me that the train employee who practically yelled at us was under the stress of trauma. There were ambulances with personnel as well as police scattered around outside the entrance above ground, although I wasn't sure whether the police were there for other reasons. i.e. It was a tourist hotspot and it made sense to have police there to prevent handbag thefts and drug sales.

So I decided to walk home, for an hour and a half. Eventually I did feel like weeping a little because it was tiring after a day of work and the tension of going to the embassy (although that went well). But, still, I had a weird, lonely tour of Berlin Mitte. And I passed the embassy again...

On Tuesday, it was Mama's birthday, so uncle M., T. and I went home by the S-Bahn and then when we got home, he and uncle B. both chatted with Mama. (I was in the room at first, then retired shyly to my room, also feeling disgruntled because of the heat.)

For Wednesday, a colleague planned to have a beach volleyball game at 8 p.m. near our place of work. I agreed to go, but went home after the end of work and before the volleyball. But while I was going home, the train I was in stopped at a station and didn't pull away again. I guessed that there was a mechanical problem with the doors, which presumably weren't registering properly whether anyone was still entering the train or not. Whatever the problem may have been, for safety's sake all of us passengers had to leave the train. I was already running late to the volleyball game. So, rather than wait for this train to be fixed or for the next train to arrive, I walked to the next station and caught another connection home. Then I took about ten minutes to change, pack a snack to eat, and go out again. In the end I was around half an hour late.

The sport itself was enjoyable. It was also more rigorous exercise than it seemed, stomping around in the sand, because a few of my muscles decided to hurt after half a day or so had passed. And there's a bruise on my right arm that I consider a minor badge of achievement. The main problem was that mosquitoes were biting me. These bites have come back to haunt me and they're the same ones I complained about at the beginning of this post. The other quibble I had was that I was shocked that a few of the male players had their shirts off, which I thought was more than I ever expected to see of my colleagues and perhaps a trifle exhibitionist, although in an innocent sense. Sometimes I surprise myself with my intense Puritan instincts.

Anyway, although at work I had a plentiful store of ice cream, I feel that this weather is bound to make everything seem like a fata morgana, wavering and blurred in the heat. And it has been weird to me to be away from home during part of the past two weekends, rather than 'recharging' silently in my room and perhaps going on smaller expeditions either to shop for things or to swim or walk or play with the siblings.