Street Marketing in Winter

This morning I ate breakfast — buttery croissants and a baguette that my mother and brother fetched from a French brasserie nearby, eggs and coffee.

I wasn't feeling especially spry and therefore dreaded the bicycle ride to Prenzlauer Berg for my voice/business coaching. But letting go of my pride and going down a gear to make it easier to pedal helped. Along the way I went to a corona test station, to make sure I wasn't putting my coach at risk of infection.

It surprised me that the Christmas market at Potsdamer Platz was open, since I'd thought that the market at Breitenbachplatz was one of the few outliers — a market that opened despite the high Covid incidence.

Back at home, I went grocery-shopping at an outdoor market. The market guards in neon-green vests appeared to be keeping a more alert eye out than a few weeks ago when the corona incidence wasn't as high. One of the guards saw a seller waiting for me to put produce in the shopper bag I'd brought along, and told the man that he should have offered a bag to me. 'She didn't need one,' he answered, and also for environmental purposes I agreed (the plastic bags that are handed out freely at the market strike horror into my soul a little). Still, I was touched by the thoughtfulness.

I had thought that I had arrived so late that most shoppers had gone. In fact one man with a wizened face was dragging a wheeled platform piled high with empty cartons onto the ramp of a truck near the entrance, deepening the impression that it was closing up. But there were elbow-to-elbow throngs of people, one to two rows deep, further in.

Kohlrabi had appeared on the stands since it is winter, alongside Hokkaido pumpkins and a lot of persimmons (sometimes sold as 'Persimmon,' other times as 'Kaki'). The usual bunches of mint and parsley were on sale. Then potatoes, ginger root, lemons, green pepperoni peppers, winter-themed bed linen sets that were surrounded by a throng of interested women, flatbreads, pineapples, pale watermelons, yellow cantaloupes, the customary bolts of cloth, eggs, dried spices, meat, Turkish delight and tahini halva, sunflower seeds and olives in varying colours, cauliflower heads, tons of tomatoes, etc.

It felt wonderful to be amongst so many people. I didn't linger and generally didn't stand too close to anyone, so it still felt safe.

Earlier I bought an amaryllis bulb, and now my youngest brother is the happy owner. Every year I want to put boughs in a vase to celebrate the feast of St. Barbara on December 4th — not just for religious reasons or nostalgia, but also because I like the symbolism of blossoming twigs in winter — and yet I usually forget. But I hope the bulb is a fair equivalent.