Monday, December 25, 2023

A Christmas Promenade in Kreuzberg, etc.

It's been a cloudy Christmas Day with gaps of sunlight - even that is a relief after a few rainy and snowy days and nights.

We ate Christmas breakfast: bread rolls with cheese, mezze and Mediterranean dips from yesterday evening, etc. To go with those and the usual chocolate and gingerbread and Spekulatius, we had coffee, and taper candles were lighted on the tabletop. Only brother Gi. was sadly missing, as he is in quarantine in Brandenburg.

As presents there were a Christmas stollen and a book from one of my mother's professors, Greek Christmas cookies from one of my professors, a bag of assorted sweets from a family friend whom my mother met through her former bookshop, malt whisky fudge, more chocolate, and origami papers for T. (Besides I'd bought myself a book from the shop where my aunt S. works, a few weeks ago, and began reading it today. It feels quite self-affirming to be a good gift-giver to one's self.)

Earlier than the usual last-minute timing on December 23rd, the tree has already been selected, bought, and hauled by Ge. and J.  for a few days. J. did the decorating. As we have at least 5 moving boxes full of ornaments from our paternal grandparents as well as our own stores, only a fraction will fit on the tree every year. But the blown-glass balls with trapped bubbles, in marine cobalt blue, pale blue, and green, are obligatory; so are the two strings of fairy lights.

After breakfast and the admiration of presents, the youngest brothers, my mother, and I went for a walk to Kreuzberg.

Snowberries were stippling the darkness, light green buds have appeared on the tips of lilac twigs and in a sprig of yew or hemlock in early preparation for next spring, flocks of birds flew around, and other people had also come out for a Christmas stroll. In the sky, foreboding grey clouds alternated with glimpses of clear blue sky, and pools of pale sunlight occasionally brightened the scenery. The fine branches and ornamenting seed pods of the plane trees were very pretty against the sky, like antique ironwork.

The visibility was so perfect today that not only towers, domes, chimneystacks, and building cranes were sharp regardless of distance, but also the dark ridges of the low Brandenburg hills that ring the city.

I was photographing constantly. Maybe next year I'll have gathered skill and will use the hybrid digital-analogue camera that was my high school graduation present, instead of my smartphone?

Back at home, T. led another intensive session of learning a Christmas song in 4-part harmony, which she introduced this year. She sings alto, Ge. tenor, J. bass, and my mother and I the soprano part. I haven't been a proper soprano since I was a child, but it's getting a little easier. First we rehearsed "In the Bleak Midwinter," then "Prepare the Royal Highway" (which was more familiar to me as an Easter song, when we went to a German Lutheran church in Canada when I was very small). Today we finished struggling through Mozart's "Ave verum corpus" (which we'd forgotten had very grim lyrics until we started rehearsing it) and then breezed through "Angels We Have Heard on High."

In between I brewed a pot of herbal tea, mended the sleeve of a dress as a sort of Christmas present to myself, and it was all very cozy.

In honour of the day I've put on hold the book research (about Berlin from 1900 to 1929) that I've otherwise been madly undertaking as the university holidays set in.

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

The Ups and Downs of Early December

It was a brooding, November sort of day, but weak sunlight in the afternoon as well as a pale purple sunset were a welcome change of pace from monotonous rainfall.

My Greek class was cancelled, so I went on an unnecessary trip to campus. But I analyzed the bulletin boards before leaving, took an impromptu architectural tour on the way home, and generally enjoyed myself. The ice and snow have of course melted from the streets and sidewalks, and it's a relief that it is safer to cycle again.

Greatly impressed that I'd managed to wake up before 9 a.m., when weirdly I've found myself struggling to wake up before 11 a.m. throughout the past month, I went on a few errands.

At the zero-waste shop I stocked up on pasta, chocolate, dried mint, apples, and vegetables. The Mediterranean cookbook I'm working through has a hispi cabbage and roast hazelnut recipe next, but aside from the cabbage, pumpkin was on the shopping list too for the sake of a pumpkin eggnog recipe.

The pumpkin eggnog was fine. The youngest brothers certainly appeared to appreciate it. But the pumpkin type at the store had more of a watery, squash-like flavour and colour, so I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about the result.

Then I went to an organic food store hoping to find Christmas delicacies, but it didn't have many aside from Christmas punch and tea blends.

Working briefly at a Christmas market selling lanterns two weeks ago has made me re-think the value of money again. A 20€ bill that I'd have earned by sitting at a laptop last April, now represents 1.5 hours of standing while trying to engage with dozens of strangers, remember the sales pitches, keep the booth presentable, process and respond to ongoing coaching from my boss, and gift-wrap the merchandise quickly and accurately.

Anyway, now that my amateur choir's Christmas concert is over, I can devote time and energy to journalistic outings again. But there's also a big Greek homework backlog to reduce; I've done a bit of that this morning.

Besides I'm thinking of recording myself at the piano, as the Christmas concert has nudged me back into regular playing.

The plan to give myself daily Christmas presents, mentioned in the last post, fizzled out a long time ago. But on the whole I feel pretty happy and I think it served its purpose.

I've also put myself on a diet because of recent depressive episodes. More fruits and vegetables, more water, more protein; less sugar and processed food: I figured that these guidelines certainly wouldn't do much harm, and I do feel more awake.

That said, I think the depressive episodes likely come from 'crashing' after a few intense weeks of covering pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protests.

Thursday, November 23, 2023

November Hermithood, Mediterranean Cooking, and Books

It's Day 4 of my Christmas project of giving myself one 'intangible' present per day. First day: sleeping in until noon. Second day: not feeling guilty about waking up too late for Greek class. Third day: washing some of the dishes that need to be hand-washed and had piled up. Now I don't really know what to do for the fourth day...

The weather today is atrocious but appropriate for November: grey, few leaves on the trees but admittedly not as bleak as January through March, and now that it's nighttime quite brisk winds and dripping rain.

A glimpse of light is in the news: the ceasefire agreement in the Middle East.

Today I cooked fava beans and zucchini fritters from a Mediterranean cookbook, as I haven't eaten many vegetables lately, and for fruit have focused on apples, oranges, and pears. It was nice to have something fresh again, but it was definitely enough work that I don't consider it a present.

Tomorrow I'll resume cooking recipes from a Christmas book: after a delicious but very boozy glögg (I flambéed it twice but I still felt slightly floaty after drinking only one glass), I'd made a 'Hot Mexican Chocolate' yesterday of dark chocolate melted with cinnamon and whisked up with warm milk. But I thought it would be best to let a day pass before moving on to mulled wine.

Altogether I've had cabin fever these past days. It was a huge relief to get my bicycle back from the shop where it was being repaired, so that I can go out and about more. The impediment to full mobility is that the bicycle has a subtle leak in the front tyre: cycling about an hour today was fine, but the tyre does deflate in a 2-3 day time span and requires pumping up again.

And I'm a little anxious that I'll be somewhere in eastern central Berlin in an exciting protest only to find myself rolling on the wheel rims all of a sudden. I can fix this myself, of course, and didn't want to ask the bicycle shop employees to look at it. Ge. sagely and firmly advises buying a new tyre. I could also try the trick of inflating the tyre under water and seeing where air bubbles appear, then patching it.

Anyway, once I'm outside more regularly, I'll be quite happy not to be stuck with my own circular thought patterns any more!

For my former work team, on another topic, I'm admittedly worried. Only one of us has been asked back to the re-formed company, at least for the foreseeable future; the effect on morale is correspondingly depressing. Of course everyone is a grown, independent person and I shouldn't fuss when they're finding their own paths and survival techniques as we all have to do sooner or later. But... It's especially tough I think for people who have been with the company a very long time and were very dedicated.

In the meantime I'm sorting through National Public Radio's list of the best books of 2022, and seeing which ones have ebooks I can lay my hands on. It's absorbing, and I'm already looking forward to their lists of best music albums and singles, too. But as for the best books of 2023, I'll leave those for next year.

Sunday, October 29, 2023

A Snapshot of Garden Life Just Before November

This afternoon I cycled to the allotment gardens again.

The plant life is settling back into the ground as always in late autumn, figments of leaves (green and red and yellow, with pale underbellies like fish) and pink rose petals plucked off the trees and bushes and shrubs and melting into the grass, gravel, and earth, against dark wooden posts and tree trunks, garden sheds and evergreen trees. But instead of the vinegary scent of rotting apples or other whiffs of decay, the air was relatively fresh and I only caught an occasional trace of rose blossoms.

Besides the rose haws and late flowers, orange berries, Virginia creeper leaves, and late red apples that had partly fallen on the grass — tattered and drying late purple asters and the odd hidden nasturtium blossom in flaming colour, were adding life to the scene. A bird flew overhead to a hidden congregation of crows.

2023 was not a great year for grapes due to the better rainfall and scanter sunlight. They were more sour and less flavorful than last year, and began to sag in September; now a lot of them seem to have dropped from the vines instead of enduring, round and sweet, late into winter's frosts as they did last year.

In one of the garden plots, the pumpkins that were hanging from vines like orange lanterns have disappeared; so I think have the beans, and the ginger blossoms are shrivelling after being bright and beautiful for several months. But the dark, long kale is thriving, and the chili peppers planted alongside it in the same raised bed have ripened.

Leafy tree species are, of course, losing leaves at different rates. One species is almost entirely bare; but the spiry thin cottonwoods are largely green, for example. The amply leaved oaks beside the gardens, with their high-arched autumnal warren of shadows and tree trunks and rain-wettened asphalt path beneath, suggested a Thoreau-era New England in early autumn, even if (almost?) all of their acorns seem to have been shed already.

Other people worked, went for walks or bicycle trips, or met with friends, in the garden enclosures and the paths; but they were lost amongst the shrubbery. The brooding grey sky exuded the same heavy, sound-dampening feeling as the sky after snowfall.

Passages of poetry (that I've probably quoted before in this blog) recurred to memory.

Keats:

The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Byron, where my 'sea' was instead the wind in the trees and the distant roar of cars:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
⁠By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar

I came home with three red apples more or less the size of walnuts, more like Christmas tree decorations than like edible fruit in appearance.

Scylla and Charybdis, and Studies

For the second weekend in a row, I've been practicing amateur journalism skills by going to protests about the Israel-Hamas war. It's been challenging to keep my own feelings in check, also as in Germany this war has brought up longstanding stereotypes about Middle Eastern neighbours that I personally find deeply offensive and unfair. The German press coverage also makes my amateur journalism far more uncomfortable: pro-Palestinian protestors have no empirical reason to trust me; as a result, I have not conducted any interviews or photographed many people's faces. But I figure that having more opinions about the war is not going to help anyone, so it's not hurting anyone if I shut up about mine; and at least I personally feel quite safe at the protests. So I just vent freely to my siblings and my mother, and attempt to be outwardly neutral.

What's going much better is the next university semester. While I still haven't received a final response to whether I am accepted for full-time study or not, I like the Plan B that I've implemented: i.e. another semester of guest-auditing modern Greek. This year, the fellow students are native German speakers who don't insist on speaking Greek 100% of the time. So, regardless of how class compositions may look in future semesters, it gives me a chance to wholly follow what's being taught and discussed, and to steadily acquire enough knowledge to handle Greek-language classrooms in future.

That said, a fellow student has a Palestinian parent, and she hasn't been showing up to classes in the last week. I didn't fully understand what was discussed, but it sounds like she's distressed by the university's public stance on the war. As she's the only fully enrolled student in the Greek programme for our year, this means that missing classes will really be a disadvantage to her university career, although our professor is flexible and sympathetic.

As for the weather, the transition to fall has been abrupt, and 'suddenly' there have been a lot of gloomy days. The Tiergarten had dramatic yellow foliage yesterday, interspersed with rust red from the chestnuts or horse chestnuts, and temperatures have dipped near the freezing point repeatedly. Last night the switch from daylight saving time happened. While I felt remarkably early-birdy for waking up at around 8:15 a.m. this Sunday morning, I figure that soon I'll backslide.

On my schedule today are three protests, plus hanging out with my family. Potentially at a restaurant, to celebrate my sister's well-deserved acquisition of a Bachelor's degree, after fulfilling the last formal requirements.

Saturday, October 14, 2023

An Early Autumn Outing at a Forested Riverside

The last few posts are not cheerful. I've realized retrospectively that there are a few more things that have made me uneasy lately (the cooling of the construction industry that my youngest brother is in, flights of military jets over my neighbourhood, ...) that I forgot to mention...

But, on the bright side: the smaller company I used to work for before it was bought in 2021 is likely going to be reestablished. It's impossible to feel truly happy if one always has this consciousness that, even if I myself escaped our Employer Overseas by quitting, a lot of my friends are still metaphorically straining under the whip and yoke of the workplace every single day while I frolic. It's also difficult to feel truly happy if suddenly they're all unemployed and thrown upon the mercies of Berlin employers (good and bad). But now that a new set of opportunities is arising, the constant ache and grief of the past few months is healing rapidly.

***

At around noon I met with two former colleagues and godfather M. to traipse around the walking and hiking paths near the Nikolassee and the Havel, at the western edge of Berlin.

On the way, acorns were firing like little bullets from beneath my bicycle wheels, patterned with their graceful curving leaves in the forest floor once I was walking in the forest itself. Elm or beech leaves, and maple leaves, in yellows and reds, were also spreading and peaking on the ground. Brown squelched horse chestnut hulls carpeted some of the bicycle paths, their shining dark brown fruits spilled here and there, or crushed to green powder underneath car tires.

And the tree canopies were mostly still intact, curving over the sidewalks and streets and forest paths, piled as copiously as the vast and quickly-changing clouds (white or grey) in the sky. Often splashes of sunlight streamed across the paths, often splashes caught in the upper leafy branches. And although a few dead trees seemed to testify to losses from summer droughts, and many twigs and branches had been shaken to the forest floor by gusts of wind, the overall impression was: green.

The weather was so good for boating that the loud sputtering of the many sails was audible from the shore — louder even than a fire-engine-red speedboat — the grey surface was choppy, and foaming white wakes trailed from the sterns.

There was an elaborate set-up of hiking paths, information panels (also at an 1840s stone memorial with the same Gothic nubs you might see on a church spire, that had been refurbished in 1945 and commemorated a legend, overlooking the lake), bus stops, benches, etc. for humans. And black sheeting to help keep frogs from meeting a swift and smashing demise by hopping onto a semi-busy road beside the shore. But not so many other people that one constantly felt accompanied.

A group of swans was putting in a 'pit stop' on a grey sand shore. A raven flew overhead, I think, when we paused on a bench (to eat pastries and rest) overlooking an idyllic riverside copse; it made its echoing clicking calls, while dragonflies hovered over a horizontal tree trunk. And a few crows I especially noticed at the beginning. There must have been a red squirrel or two, but I didn't fully pay attention. There were, relievingly, no frog or mouse corpses glued to the roads as I'd seen elsewhere in and around Berlin. And although a few tree roots looked a bit blackened or even charred, it didn't seem as if there'd been many losses due to lightning strikes over the summer.

And although I felt too much like I needed to conserve energy to speak much with the other hikers, at least I listened to the conversations. It was a lovely outing.

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Foreign Affairs and the Lemming Instinct: A Rant

For the past months I've been feeling more and more uneasy about the balance of world politics. I don't know if it's a presentiment or if the world is just surviving as it always does, as contradictorily bad and good.

The sea change in the rhetoric about asylum seekers and migrants, who in my view are caricatured in the Berlin and national German news more and more as a threatening mass. (Quite ignoring the reality that, as two or more speakers at the UN General Assembly mentioned in September, there are more conflicts in the world today than there have ever been since World War II. — The more conflict, the more people fleeing conflict. It's not that people suddenly 'decide' that they want to be refugees. — And that countries around the world, even the poorest, have accepted millions of refugees too; it is not just the European Union and the United States.)

The weird inertia about evacuating people from Afghanistan who are endangered for being women or too 'pro-Western.' Afghanistan being kept in a worsening limbo as countries refuse to work with the "de facto" Taliban government. Apparently refusing because of the Taliban's bizarre policy about women's professional lives and education, which based on General Assembly speeches many other governments in the world seem to see with genuine bewilderment — a policy that also concerns me because it's a huge economic self-own.

The impulse in last week's Bavarian elections to vote extreme right primarily (55% of AfD voters identified this topic as important for them) based on 'concern' about accepting more refugees and migrants. — As if migrants were having the worst effect on quality of life, instead of global inflation due to the War in Ukraine, or climate change-related droughts and other natural disasters, for example. And thereby thrusting young and old, men and women, poor and (well, probably not rich) alike back into the arms of people who will torture, oppress, and kill them. Why not turn into a fascist state at once?

The wielding of eco-friendly home heating legislation in German political discourse as if it were a terrible civil rights oppression. Many countries around the world, affected more badly than Germany by global warming, wish they had as much public money to devote to reducing emissions as Germany does. But also the (in my view) counterintuitive impulse in countries like Germany to produce more and more climate-friendly cars and power plants and heating systems etc. etc. instead of focusing on reducing demand.

The continuing war in Ukraine. The impossibility of shipping its grain to countries who do want it (tons) as opposed to countries who don't want it (Poland, ...).

The downfall of Twitter and the megalomaniacal whims of Elon Musk.

The baffling support amongst American voters for the reelection of the US's 45th president, despite the sleaze that's radiating off of him like a mile-high nuclear fireball.

The peculiar support in business and politics for the United Arab Emirates and especially Saudi Arabia, despite the cloven hoof and horns that peer out whenever one considers the treatment of migrant workers, women, political opponents, people who lived in the path of 'eco-friendly' neo-cities before they were shot to death while protesting, Eritrean migrants crossing the border, and journalists.

And a lot of the unease I felt was already peaking even before Hamas tore down parts of the border wall in Israel and began massacring civilians.

Regardless of whether a cataclysm like a nuclear strike happens or not, justifying my foreboding, Martin Luther King Jr. Day did make me think that I should not whine about all the obstacles to civil rights and political rights today. If he could resist an establishment where policemen were genuinely out to crack his skull, like John Lewis, and much of the political elite that supposedly represented him probably even wanted him dead, and if he could still improve his country under those circumstances — why should I, as a woman who faces little-to-no oppression from my government, give up hope?

It's important to keep trying to live (if one has the privilege of trying it) in a way that shines a beam of light into the tempest.

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Stage 2 of Observing Lay-Offs: Anger

Three days after the lay-offs at my former employer, I'm reliving a few of the reasons why I'd resigned from it in the first place.

The first night afterward I had trouble going to sleep, thoughts racing, and then woke up at 5:30 a.m. I listened to an audiobook for a while and then was able to rest again.

The next day, intense irritation and anger on behalf of my family and friends took hold. I didn't find myself squinting whenever I thought of the lay-offs as on the day before, but the impulse to take out my boxing gloves and pads and take a few whacks to relieve my feelings grew.

Fortunately at least I was able to see more of Gi. and T., since their garden leave had begun. Like most other colleagues, they were busy taking care of signing and submitting the firing paperwork to the company; then the paperwork for the federal German job agency (Agentur für Arbeit) began.

I thought back longingly to the relaxing journalistic routine I've established over the past month, including a larger article that I've been working on and that I'm proud about so far. But to be honest I think I'll need to give myself very flexible working hours until Thursday. The laid-off colleagues and friends and family have been organizing what they need for themselves efficiently, and my sage advice based on my own Agentur für Arbeit experiences was limited. So I've considered myself more or less merely on standby to help if needed.

But I've found myself mindlessly snacking throughout the day, tensely strung, and nervous. And now I'm finding myself thinking of getting therapy again, endlessly listing coping mechanisms to myself that might make me feel more balanced and relaxed, and thinking that I'd better cut out the sugar because that will worsen my anxiety and general state of wellbeing. In other words, changing my entire lifestyle to cope.

What's more, I'm sick of asking other people to manage my feelings for me, including my younger brothers who've seen my crankier side again. I'm worried again about not treating people fairly because I'm so stressed, constantly beleaguered by moral qualms and doubts.

And it feels highly inappropriate to ask for help or sympathy, when 1. my own departure from the company was long ago and it was something I'd arranged on my own schedule, and 2. others are worrying about supporting children, arranging visas, etc.

I keep on reflecting that the upper levels of the company are not full of evil people.

Nonetheless, the company took skilled colleagues from all over the world, with a healthy social working culture and a sense of purpose in their work, a highly prestigious client list, and a regular profit. They turned all of these assets into a massively incompetent and ill-conceived blimp of a project that was such a profitless money sink that I at least couldn't really blame them for shutting it down. (But they should have reassigned the employees.) The leaders, in short, were plain stupid and uninformed.

That almost every single colleague has reported that their wellbeing has suffered over the past months or years is also telling.

And I keep on reflecting that I'd resigned from this f***ing company precisely so that I would never have to feel this degree of emotional ill-health again. I sacrificed my financial security, my ability to guarantee my family financial security, and my fear of never proving myself professionally again, to make it happen. I also sacrificed many regular social contacts in the workplace and have therefore often been tremendously lonely since April, to be honest. And yet I'm temporarily back where I was six to eight months ago.

As my father would say, when a piece of technology drove him past the boundaries of his endurance: damn it all to hell.

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

An Axe Falls at My Former Employer

It's been an interesting day: in the morning I woke up early as the telephone rang, to confirm details of my mother's hotel stay in France. Until the early afternoon I was working on a journalism article.

Then the telephone rang again: my sister, telling me that all of my ex-colleagues who were still at the company I used to work for have been laid off. (Except for a skeleton team of around 10 who will be keeping the lights on until next April.)

My former team, always gossipy, has been chatting heavily for the rest of the afternoon, and so has the family.

And I don't know exactly how to feel about it... Except that I am annoyed that my friends have had their job security ripped away, but relieved for those who wanted to quit the company anyway. Unsure whether to feel relieved on behalf of those who have been suffering work-related mental health problems and now have the option to take a well-paid garden leave before they can find a next job, ... And not very surprised because valuable colleagues had been axed before I'd left, which to me implied a scarcity of resources or prioritization of the wellbeing of the company.

And to be resolved to never put people in the same position that my colleagues have been put in.

It's also unpleasant to know that three of my close relations have been made jobless at the same time. (I'm also not really a fan of the Fast Capitalism that has led to this in the first place.)

Although at least T. will stay in the skeleton team.

Now I'm not sure how to help without intruding, although I'm also curious to see which support systems will grow up amongst the 'current' colleagues.

Monday, August 21, 2023

Archaeology and Star-Gazing

The time since the last post has been happily eventful.

Finally I treated myself, when the weather permitted, to a walking tour of one of Berlin's archaeological sites in the city centre.

It was a lovely combination of bright weather, diverse site that spanned the Middle Ages (wooden latrine) through 18th century clay cellar tiles to an incredibly 'utilitarian'-looking air raid shelter from the 1930s/40s, delighted tour guests, and delighted tour guide (a heritage preservation expert who's taking active part in the excavations) who seemed to really love explaining and publicizing more the things that his colleagues and he had been discovering.

Like Heraclitus's thoughts about life being like an ever-flowing river where you never step into the same water twice, the site as this tour group saw it will have disappeared in a few weeks, most likely. The cellar tiles will be lifted to investigate a potential latrine, 19th century well likely dismantled and carried away after being documented so that a future real estate project can occupy that area, parts of the site backfilled provisionally so that they are ready to become part of an 'archäologisches Baufenster' in the real estate development — i.e. that parts of it will be preserved and displayed e.g. behind a glass window.

It was free, I didn't mind the sunburn on my arms, and the outing was generally a bit of a dream come true.

I'd been longing to go there for years. But work meetings were scheduled in that time block. So I'd been cycling past it week after week on the way to voice/business coaching/therapy sessions or to the office, looking longingly at the fence. And admittedly I almost cried with happiness when I finally cycled to it and not past it: I reflected that I was finally going not to suffer in the office, or to seek help because of work or bereavement or feelings of heavy responsibility, but to genuinely have fun.

*

And since that outing I've been spending a lot of time indoors (and partly the Victoriapark) reading books.

A few of the books are related to my historical book project. But then I realized that the subject matter was becoming far too heavy for me and that 1. I needed to get out again, and 2. I needed to do something cozy and nice.

Reading about archaeology as a preparation for my possible studies in October was better but still not entirely stress-free.

So I've decided to take a break and re-read novels I'd enjoyed as a teenager.

As I told my mother, I feel like I haven't had a real summer vacation with few responsibilities and genuine freedom since I was a teenager. But now I am.

I also took time to watch the annual Perseid meteor showers out of the rear courtyard window, for example, feeling like I'm paying attention to and enjoying the months as they pass instead of enduring them in a fog.

Maybe I can really complete a job training, and become qualified in a field that's both germane and new to me. Maybe life will take an unexpected turn that still suits me beautifully. In little glimpses, like stars through the clouds, I'm beginning to like my life again.

Monday, August 07, 2023

Sunday - A Dramatic Breakfast, and Oppenheimer

Yesterday morning I met up with one of my aunts in a café near the family's apartment. I'd never been there before. It has I think a fin-de-siècle/1920s aesthetic, its half-moon windows and its branched lamps certainly looking like a later design influence, but its use of heavy carved wood and its opulent air feeling older.

As for the service... Altogether I had the impression that there are regular customers whom the staff are happy to see, and it didn't appear to matter whether they arrived in t-shirts or in business attire. But otherwise it's been a long while since I've felt so snubbed. While I fought with feelings of humiliation, my aunt was a little irate — for example when the two of us were belatedly presented with a single tattered menu, when a second, nicer-looking menu also lay nearby.

Two elderly ladies came into the shop, one quite brisk in pastel pant-suit but the other looking as if a breath of wind would sway her, and we were both shocked that she was left clutching the post at the end of a staircase for support, while the staff ignored her.

We agreed that there might be a reason for the service being the way it was and wanted to give the benefit of the doubt. But as we did not know that reason, the effect wasn't great.

At least it was very nice to spend time with my aunt!

Also, the food was nicely presented. Medium-hardness cheese, fresh cheese and soft cheese like Brie, golden-brown fig jam, were served with bread rolls. Arugula leaves, sprigs of red currants, a wedge each of honeydew melon and watermelon, an apricot, and a lettuce leaf, lent vitamins, freshness and colour.

And I liked the perfectly brewed tea with fresh diced ginger, a small half lemon slice, orange slices, and mint leaves.

***

In the afternoon I had another engagement, this time with a former colleague and her husband, T. and Gi. We met in front of the Kino International near Alexanderplatz, on the Allee that the Soviets had built in an incredibly short span of time after World War II. And there we watched Oppenheimer, as rain sprinkled gently outdoors.

I had reservations going in, as I think that generally Hollywood does a terrible job in portraying intellectual labour or growth, and I felt a bit proprietorial about early-to-mid 20th century physics because I've read a few books about it.

The first scenes were also a little bizarre: it's not giving anything away to say that as a student the physicist had poisoned an apple to avenge himself on a tutor. In the film the aftermath is skated over and I was wondering how the man became a scientist instead of a serial killer. So it was a relief to read afterward in Wikipedia that Oppenheimer had indeed been sent to see a psychiatrist after that episode.

Anyway, after roaming around European universities (we'll still count Cambridge as Europe) during Oppenheimer's student years, and establishing that Oppenheimer revered Kenneth Branagh Niels Bohr, we land back in the United States. He imported quantum physics to CalTech and Berkeley, and attracted a circle of fascinated students and colleagues, like Ernest O. Lawrence. He also had pro-union views, supported Spanish Republicans in the Civil War, and let the Communist Party hold events at his house — his brother Frank and sister-in-law Jackie, and his girlfriend Jean, were however more committed to Communism than he was.

At the same time Oppenheimer was famously fond of having affairs with women. The women in the film, I'll entirely agree with the critics, are not very well drawn. Jean Tatlock introduced Oppenheimer to John Donne, worked as a journalist for the Communist Party, trained as a psychiatrist at Stanford Medical School, and was also fighting her own mental illnesses. She also had a family who presumably cared about her — including the father who found her after she died by suicide.

Firstly, Christopher Nolan wasted all of that material by not mentioning much of it. Secondly, showing her climbing all over the physicist nude in bed and asking him to read one line of Sanskrit to her from a book she found in his shelf — surprise! that random line of Sanskrit was highly apposite to the film's themes — seemed like a weak way to express the intellectual exchanges in their relationship. (I also found the age gap amongst the actors a disconcerting casting choice, unintimidated and egalitarian though Florence Pugh's portrayal of her character may have been.)

His wife Kitty... I found it refreshing that she was portrayed as a reluctant mother — refreshing both because it's true, and also because it feels slightly more empowering to see that she was morally ambivalent in her own private ways while Oppenheimer was making hay of their marriage in more public ways. But I was annoyed that by the end of the film she was used as a mere dramatic device, as a stand-in for the audience, to sympathize with or question the actions of Oppenheimer; and I think that it became clearer from mentions of events in her life, than from the plot of the film, how complex she was.

After returning home from the film, I came across a 1980s docudrama with Sam Waterston (very good) as Oppenheimer. In that script, Kitty tells Oppenheimer cheerfully that he can really profit from the war. Of course it was an abhorrent thing to say, but I felt that the actress was given more to work with in that one revealing line (pragmatism, a reverse side to her ideals, brutal frankness, and a strong streak of misanthropy) than Emily Blunt got from the entire Nolan script. And I think in general she also had far more substance than the film divulges.

Anyway, during the war, Oppenheimer was gradually cleared of suspected Communist sympathies, and put at the head of a mission to develop a bomb based on chain reactions amongst the splitting of atoms. In an interesting choice, he decides that his favourite rural retreat in New Mexico would be a great place to develop weaponry, and a town is quickly purpose-built at Los Alamos under the aegis of the army engineer Major General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon).

As for the scientists Oppenheimer meets, Einstein and Bohr are both rendered as bland cut-outs, maybe as a conscious choice to portray how revered they were. Revered to the point that I was relieved that Einstein didn't wear a red bobbled hat and say 'Ho, ho, ho.'

It was tremendously difficult to keep track of who was who amongst the other scientists. Hans Bethe and Enrico Fermi were familiar names, others not so much. But in the end it all came together, especially during the new scenes at Los Alamos, and they also had their distinct personalities. The angst felt amongst some of the scientists at being displaced from their home countries, and the trauma they must have felt, did not really come out in the film. I think that there were hints of diverse casting, and Lilli Hornig was spotlighted as a female team member; but eminent physicists like Chien-Shiung Wu didn't appear at all. But the film also does a good job of presenting a sense of community, not just within the scientific groups despite their arguments and disagreements, but also with the families, soldiers, and visiting dignitaries in New Mexico.

Edward Teller was of course a controversial figure, to the general public and to his fellow scientists. Here he is presented as sulky, single-minded, and obsessed with his own ideas (especially the H-bomb). I think in the interests of fairness but also because he's been heinously instrumentalized in anti-Semitic tropes that no conscientious filmmaker would want to support, his portrayal is still balanced out by the film. He was not unaware of ethical problems with weaponry, as exemplified by conversations he has with Oppenheimer; and he was motivated more by his scientific aims to which he tried to stay truthful, not by personal hatred. (Which, of course, Kitty Oppenheimer and — by extension — Nolan do not consider an excuse for Teller's Cold-War-era testimony ... even if Robert Oppenheimer did.)

As the efforts at Los Alamos led to the 'successful' Trinity test — the overall success of Los Alamos being tempered by a strange mixture of conscientious secret-keeping and egregious security breaches — the film juxtaposes the stirring consciences of the scientists, their determination to 'bring our boys home' and see World War II end through the emergence of an 'unanswerable' weapon, and their gung-ho satisfaction at their professional achievements.

— Quite apart from this particular film, reading about preparations during World War I and World War II by politicians, civil servants, resistance organizers, and scientists, it is creepy to see how their huge intelligence and acute insights are honed into superpowers by the pressures of war — and then generally weaponized to kill. What if we bent as much mental and physical energy for good? I suppose that was the aim of the League of Nations and later the United Nations, but of course that energy usually peters out. —

On the surface, Oppenheimer is as gung-ho as anyone. In conversations with politicians he falters when it comes to representing his fellow scientists' views and ruling out the use of nuclear weapons on Japanese civilians. (He was only consistent in openly wanting the US to be honest with allied governments, even Stalin's, about its nuclear weapons stock.)

It's also clear that being the leader of a horde of colleagues on a project of this importance is a severe strain — while other decisions are entirely out of his hands, but still have a bearing on his work.

Nolan satirizes the decision-making process of the military heads by presenting a conversation where Kyoto is ruled out as a nuclear target 'because it's culturally important to the Japanese' and a military head had gone there on his honeymoon. It's based on historical fact, although apparently the Secretary of War went to Kyoto not on his honeymoon but on a separate trip.

After the bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer is haunted by visions of the explosions and their aftermath amongst the victims, and seeks out any information he can find even if he ends up looking away from graphic film footage. Nolan made the choice not to intersperse real-life footage or to show Japanese civilians dying, instead superimposing hallucinogenic scenes of incineration, radiation poisoning, and grief on the civilians and military personnel in the United States. I think this is ultimately a respectful choice.

(But I don't think it is the best course of action to commemorate the perpetrator; it's better to commemorate the victims. When I was maybe 10 years old and a Canadian schoolchild, I found a book in my school that told the story of a girl who suffered from radiation poisoning after the bombs dropped on Japan, and I seemly to vaguely remember her eating miso soup and folding paper cranes. Focusing on stories like this is I think is the best way to prevent reducing the victims of the bomb to a vast statistic of grisly deaths.)

Aside from wrestling with these ethical implications, Oppenheimer's work at Los Alamos had reached a fork in the road in general. Even before the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were questioning whether the defeat of Nazi Germany hadn't made their work redundant. In the film, Oppenheimer seems both eager to still be involved in the debate around nuclear weapons and 'in the know' about how they will be applied, and also eager to close a chapter — using the terminology of the time, he suggests as if it were a foregone conclusion that now the terrain around Los Alamos be 'returned to the Indians.' But it quickly becomes clear that his government has no intention of abandoning atomic bomb projects, and the pivot to the Cold War twists the immediate aftermath of the previous War.

And as the 1950s creep nearer, the choice not to pursue Edward Teller's plans for a hydrogen bomb full throttle begins to be interpreted as pusillanimous neglect of America's military interests. It also turns out that the Soviet Union has developed a bomb and it's strongly suspected that Los Alamos contributed to it. Klaus Fuchs, whose eventful Wikipedia bio bristles with (literal?) red flags although his lack of sympathy for the Nazi government was beyond doubt, had leaked secrets to the Soviets, although reading up on it after the film it appears to be unclear how much influence he really had on the Soviet nuclear programme in the end.

But just as Oppenheimer observed that politicans' attitudes toward the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb were hardly as respectful as he'd assumed they would be and that these bombs were considered as handy diplomatic tools even after 'victory,' the same 'if you have a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail' phenomenon appeared in America's domestic security as well. Under J. Edgar Hoover and through his mouthpiece Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the hyperactive eyes, ears and imaginations of the agents within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, practically everything and everyone seemed to be 'subversive.' This included Oppenheimer.

Lent an impulse by a vendetta that Lewis Strauss, the chair of the Atomic Energy Commission (Robert Downey Jr., who I agree was every bit as good in the role as people say), harboured against Oppenheimer, a humiliating closed-door hearing aims to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance just before it was due to expire anyway.

Nolan softens the suspense by not exposing the audience to anything other than the overarching logical and moral truth of the McCarthy era, for example through the lens of a disillusioned young staffer. At the same time, Nolan does depict the maddening irrationality of the Red Scare era and also tries to do justice to the victims of McCarthyism while showing how it drove incredibly bright and talented Americans like the French literature professor Haakon Chevalier into exile and out of their chosen professions, for years or decades. But I think there's a plot hole (for lack of a better word): it is hard to believe that Oppenheimer and others would really be as emotionally well-adjusted and nonchalant in their everyday interactions as they appear to be in the film, e.g. picking up telephone receivers without a second thought, if they know they're being tailed and spied on.

But Nolan also spells out that — while the emotional blow of being accused of treachery after exhausting one's self in a vital military project would have dented anyone — Oppenheimer made himself more vulnerable than he had to be in the hearing because he wanted to face some sort of accountability for his role in the development of the atom bombs. Of course this paranoid anti-Communist kangaroo court was hardly the appropriate forum for an examination of nuclear ethics. But Oppenheimer seemed to feel he had few other venues — for example, his earlier attempt to claim 'blood on his hands' in a meeting with President Truman fell on unsympathetic ears.

Another book-end to the film's plot, as the chronologically disparate plot threads finally coalesce into a sensible guiding binding, is the congressional confirmation hearing of Lewis Strauss. While Strauss's persecution of Oppenheimer was certainly a reason why people might not want to confirm him, I've read some of the other testimony in Google Books. And I practically flipped a table in vicarious rage when I read that when Strauss was Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission:

It was known then that when Mr. Strauss adopted a viewpoint and was subsequently voted down by the other members of the Commission he would nevertheless refuse to accept the majority opinion of the Commission. In fact, I have been told that on certain matters regarding which he felt very strongly and which pertained to the military applications of atomic energy he would, after such an adverse decision had been made by the Commission, actually proceed with discussions in the Pentagon giving the impression that the Commission had reached a decision consistent with his own views and so leading to considerable confusion and embarrassment when a short while later the official communication of the Commission policy would reach the appropriate people in the Defense Department.

I've experienced that kind of scenario once or twice myself, and it is truly enraging. But at the same time, I rushed to Wikipedia after the film to check if Strauss was really out-and-out villainous. As expected, he had good sides and bad sides; for example, when the US had a strict quota on accepting refugees from Germany, he still did what he could to rescue more Jewish civilians.

Oppenheimer's betrayals of others get short shrift in the film. It is clearer that Oppenheimer's friend Chevalier eventually falls victim to McCarthyism' due also to their friendship (it was a bittersweet relief to find, in a later documentary film, that Chevalier still felt a sense of friendship for Oppenheimer). It is especially painful as the film points out how deep the friendship had gone, for example that Chevalier and his wife had babysitted Oppenheimer's son when Kitty was unwilling or unable to do so. What is less clear is that Oppenheimer pointed out former students who were in the Communist party. For example, per Wikipedia, he called Bernard Peters "'a crazy person' and 'quite a red'" to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

As I wrote with regard to Jean Tatlock and others, the truth is often so much more fascinating and stimulating and unexpected than any fiction. I'm sure that many other viewers have scurried down the same rabbit holes in Wikipedia and elsewhere that I have scurried down. But I'd also highly recommend reading books from the Japanese perspective and books about fellow scientists, as much as watching Nolan's Oppenheimer.

*

As for the message for the movie theatre audience, I'd say the film confirms that we should probably pause and think every now and then about how lucky we are that the surface of the Earth wasn't annihilated decades ago.

But rather than artificial intelligence, I think that the most salient historical parallel for us going forward is global warming:

If crops are parching in heat waves and 1/3 of the world's population must move away from the Equator, the humanitarian toll of overproduction and overconsumption may be equally large.

Weirdly enough, and again according to a certain online encyclopaedia, Edward Teller already spoke about and shared other scientists' concerns about greenhouse gases and global heating in the 1950s.

*

In the meantime, Gi. and T. and I went off to Potsdamer Platz, feasted on doughnuts there, and then went our separate ways...

A Trip to the Former GDR Countryside

On Friday I volunteered for a last day before the organization's summer break. Fellow volunteers ordered in pizzas for lunch, and there were quite a few visitors as well as a mountain of donations. The only things missing were the new supplies that are sometimes ordered in: the towels that are donated to the organization are not always in the nicest condition, and the visitors love the fresh individually wrapped ones that are sometimes available upon request from the storage room.

*

Saturday was busy as well!

In the morning, I met with two former teammates in the basement restaurant of Kulturhaus Dussmann. We ate cake and talked beside the pool at the base of the waterfall, then passed by the granite? sphinx — I noticed for the first time that the edge has been nibbled off the rear — on its bland white plinth. And we re-familiarized ourselves with the layout of the shop. Roaming through the rock and (in M.'s case) jazz CDs, briefly the vinyl records where I looked at the classical music including a 1960s recording of Martha Argerich and Glenn Gould's later recording of the Goldberg Variations. And then the DVD section.

After I cycled home, J. and I took the train to the town in Brandenburg where Gi. lives.

It wasn't the long trip I'd been dreading. The fields and woods were quite charming especially as the summer golds were mingled with the green grass and foliage preserved by the copious rainfall lately. I also felt that botanical re-wilding initiatives in Berlin and Brandenburg are figuratively bearing fruit: yellow-flowered mullein stalks and other native flower species were beautifying the disturbed areas beside the railway tracks.

We rattled over the cobblestones from the railway station, and then pulled up in front of Gi.'s 1950s 'Plattenbau,' an East German apartment building with slender walls and staircase and props at the entrance, but in my subjective view still something of the idealism of the early 'communist' phase. Red teardrop street lamps offered a pop of colour, as did the leafy trees that had partly likely been planted when the apartment buildings first went up.

Gi. served us cake and coffee, and we looked out onto the treescape and buildings from his balcony. A tall, beige apartment building from before World War I bore the faded grey outline of a painted Persil laundry detergent advertisement: as I was musing, it either had to post-date the reunification of Germany in 1990, or pre-date the occupation of the Soviet Army in 1945. The second option is likelier. The sky was reasonably overcast, but we didn't fear imminent rain or thunderstorms.

Then we toured the town: its medieval and Renaissance core, through its Prussian town buildings and older one-story residences and pompous school with sun dial and busts over the entrance, to workers' terrace housing from the Twenties and industrial architecture also from the Weimar Era. Then, of course further GDR-era housing complexes.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel to criticize GDR architecture as barren-looking. But the public architecture from the early 1990s had in my view — but I don't want to be too mean — a depressingly questionable aesthetic as well. As if a young and naive architect who'd been raised in a concrete box had looked at a triste fast food drive-thru off a highway in western Berlin, and decided that these cheap materials and garish kindergarten colours were the aptest design reference for the new capitalist era, regardless of their building's intended use or surroundings.

Of course I was also intrigued by the deserted houses where the weathered wooden blinds were rolled all the way down, for example. They looked like they were either going to wrack and ruin, or waiting for renovation.

We wound up at a boba tea café. So I had boba tea for the first time: milk tea with gel capsules, instead of tapioca bubbles.

Then J. and I travelled back to Berlin.

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Light Rain by a Canal and the Women's World Cup

This afternoon T. and I went to a picnic for a former colleague.

I was quite delighted not only to get to meet their family, at a peaceful location underneath old trees beside a canal that was frequented by birds as well as kayakers, people on floats, and a quiet, massive tour boat. — A grey, single-arch bridge that probably predated the First World War, passed nearby. And although I suspected the existence of a lot of 'Baulücken' (building gaps) caused perhaps by damage during the Second World War, the isolated pre-war apartment building blocks that poked up through the green tree canopy looked thriving. Beside us, an old tree had been dissected with a chainsaw and the raw orange surfaces were glowing against the rain-fed green grass, perhaps a casualty of the recent high winds. But it didn't make the scene too depressing. A playground full of children nearby added to the nice ambiance, even if I barely noticed them consciously.—

I was also delighted that almost the entire team of the former colleague showed up, bit by bit. Also, a former colleague from the design team appeared, whom I had not seen in person since perhaps 2020. 

The host had brought a loaf of bread, cheese, cider, and mineral water, along with a knife and a cutting board, and seemed happy and relaxed. Two friends had brought along chocolate cupcakes, berry-flavored and ginger-flavoured. There were bananas, and one of my former teammates brought her excellent caponata. One of the host's former teammates brought along lots of cutlery and plates, as well as more food. And a former colleague who was recently on a grand adventure in one of Europe's big mountain ranges showed up, brisk and good-humoured, with marinated tofu, a macaroni salad, and sticky rice.

I'd wanted to bring along homemade scones with different flavourings... but just as I was about to roll out the scones and bake them, I saw that an insect had housed itself in a cocoon inside the folded top of the flour packaging. (I had also shockingly miscalculated how much time I needed, having forgotten that the dough resting times needed to be added to the total.) Rather than risk bug contamination by bringing the scones to the party, I just brought along nothing and then felt guilty.

We were rained on a little, but not too badly, sheltered in the end by the generous shade of a linden tree.

And it turned out that two of the people who hadn't met before had both lived in the same South American city in the past, and both now live in the same district of Berlin.

T. and I had to leave early, as we had another commitment in the west. We had a dinner with two uncles and our aunt who is visiting from England, to belatedly celebrate my mother's birthday. Gi. also graced us with his presence, having made the long trip from Brandenburg.

***

Altogether I'm in far better spirits than I was this morning, when I fumed a bit about the outcome of the Colombia vs. Germany game in the Women's World Cup. (Given how badly the German attempts at goal scoring went wrong even when we had a few pretty convenient free kicks, I had to eventually accept that Colombia deserved the 2:1.)

The game also had a weird ending as it ended (more or less) in a worrying medical intervention. Which put my previous grumblings into perspective.

Friday, July 28, 2023

The Aquatic Archaeology Tour That Wasn't

I think the idea of volunteering for two days per week so that I stop obsessing about 'not doing anything' and 'not being good enough to be hired[/admitted to a university'] has turned out to be good.

It's always been an impediment in small parts of my life that I'm not especially street-smart but am incredibly sheltered. But people in the charity where I've now volunteered for about ten hours seem pretty forgiving of that.

It feels like I can't escape clothing: I've been folding, sorting, draping, and tidying it, as well as refilling shoes into a cupboard. But I am also sweeping the floor and picking up bits and pieces that fall on it (tape, torn cardboard, blanket filling feathers, dust bunnies, ...), checking that the bathrooms have enough hand-drying towels and enough room in the wastepaper baskets, .... Which is unlike my previous job and volunteer experience. And bringing oversized tote bags; and answering questions of people who have come for the clothing, bed and table linens, shoes, and household utensils. I learn a lot, and it gives me blessed peace from my thoughts.

But I will admit that I had a pretty stout confidence in my knowledge of languages ... before I started volunteering this week. English, German, French; enough Spanish and Portuguese reading comprehension to read entire books; and modern Greek; and a little ancient Greek and Latin, seem like enough for anyone. Plus the smattering of languages I'm picking up in Duolingo.

Now that I am volunteering: one parade of linguistic failures after another. Mówisz po polsku? a lady asked me (I think). 'Nein.' ... Ukrainian? Russian? Despite my having learned a few basic phrases, I haven't got a clue. This morning I said 'ша́пка' ('hat') when I meant to say 'су́мка' (bag). .. Turkish? Not enough to talk with Turkish-speaking fellow volunteers. ... Arabic or Farsi? I can understand Alemanya, arba'a, Türkiye, and wallah. ... It's easier to communicate with gestures, or bits and pieces of German or English if the people speaking to me know them. But I've also started asking fellow volunteers what this or that person wanted to say, because they are great at filling in the blanks, and teaching me what to understand and do the next time.

It's not just linguistic mistakes. I also brought a bundle of the smallest size of baby diapers to a woman and child who was well into toddling age — the mother laughed kindly, and let me know which size was actually needed.

***

Anyway, today I was also supposed to be receiving the tour around an archaeological site in Berlin, so I did half a volunteer shift and then cycled off during lunch.

It rained fiercely by the time I began cycling, however. It was slightly horrible commuting weather. Car tires throwing water from the asphalt on Spandauer Straße onto the bicycle path, and a vast muddy brown 'river' at the corner facing Brandenburger Tor. And my pale cotton trousers were so soaked that they clung to my legs and knees, and were coloured pink by my skin visible through the fabric.

I arrived at the meeting place. The archaeologist (?) who'd be giving the tour came up through the construction driveway to me and a waiting mother plus two children ... and told us that the tour was cancelled. The site wasn't secure enough for us to walk in, due to the weather. Deep puddles, mud, etc. made it too unstable.

So I ended up going home early, feeling a little guiltier for cutting short the volunteer work.

Sunday, July 23, 2023

A Market and a Tea House and an 'Angry Walk'

For once I had a lively social calendar this weekend, at least by my measure: walking around a market in eastern Berlin yesterday, and going to a tea house today, both with a relative and a friend.

It was cloudy when I arrived at the tea house, and the hosts half-anxiously piled together the seat cushions at the wooden tables outdoors, underneath a rainproof shelter. Then a wind arose, violently swaying the umbrellas, and all the other guests who'd wanted to sit outside fled indoors. But in the end, aside from two or three drops of rain, the weather was still so agreeable that the group I was in stayed outdoors. We drank tea, in my case honey and ginger and cinnamon (freshly crushed bark, I think, rather than powder) and sunflower seed, out of glazed pottery cups with pleasantly belly-shaped lids. And we chatted in French, which had also been the point of the meeting — in my case lapsing into English every now and then. For dessert I ordered a rice cake that had dates, chestnuts, pumpkin seeds and other things in it; there was no red bean popsicle in stock at the moment. And I really enjoyed the whole outing.

The market the day before also reminded me of my peregrinations to markets in my own neighbourhood. Eventually I want to return because of the woven baskets that were being sold there; I was wondering whether to buy one or two of them so that I could make gift baskets for friends or family in future, but had to concede to myself that my room is so crowded with things that it would be irresponsible to turn it into a gift basket storeroom as well. What was also a specialty I couldn't find in other markets was the puff puff that T. donated to me off her plate: a nice gooey sphere, maybe made of tapioca or manioc starch, that had been deep-fried.

Because of my recent research into early 20th century history, I photographed some of the older architectural elements in and around the park where the market is. I also managed to accidentally catch a bird (pigeon?) in mid-flight that was 'frozen' in a pose like a plastic facsimile.

And that outing, too, I enjoyed, and felt less wilted and sad afterward. (It's also healthy sometimes to hear one's self talk and realize that one may be a little more self-pitying than necessary.)

***

In general I'm thinking that I need to get more involved in journalism again, because it keeps me cheerful and engaged.

The job search has had to be relaunched.

Right after I'd finished voluntarily writing my Greek final exam on Wednesday, and was still feeling bowled over by the effort of studying for it and the experience of writing it — my telephone rang. My would-have-been hiring manager said with deep regret that (because more positions opened up in the same team) the application cycle that I was in has had to be scrapped. I can re-apply in September or October.

I was, to be honest, a bit frustrated and angry — not at the hiring manager, though, whose reluctance at having a god-awful hiring circus again so soon was compounded by reluctance at having to backtrack with me.

So I went for a walk in the Domäne Dahlem, hoping that the sky-blue chicory flowers and the fields and the berry bushes, and the historically interesting elements, would soothe my feelings.

But I felt too stingy to shell out for museum entry, although I plan to go there again for research purposes. The sun was also beating down, and the signs recommended pushing one's bicycle instead of cycling on the grounds, so I felt like I had to take this slower mode of transport.

To be fair, I did chuck the rules out the window at the end: the rear entrance that was officially open according to the sign on it, turned out to be closed. While I was going back the full length of the field in the heat in order to escape from the front entrance, I decided there was no way I wanted to do all of that on foot again.

Keeping to the rule of thumb that I learned as a teenage car driver in Canada i.e. steering straight ahead will lead you safely through most slippery and slidey situations, I managed not to fall off the bike on the loosely sandy paths.

At least the mulberry trees had berries in them, trumpet-shaped yellow flowers and globular fruit glowed like beacons underneath the leaves of a vast squash field as a row of corn stood sentry behind them, the chickens were pecking manically, and a horse that disdained human company pranced around in an earthen field far away from the fences.

Back at home, as well as eating a popsicle to soothe my spirits further, I decided that feeling like I'm not doing anything is by far the worst part of still being unemployed. So I wrote an email asking to join a weekly archaeological site tour soon. And I wrote to a charity I've known about for years, asking if I can volunteer for them 2 days per week. (Result of the 1st email: I have a date! Result of the 2nd email: I have an interview on Tuesday.)

As for the renewed job search, I was kicked out of the job agency's website through a series of minor miscommunications. But by Wednesday it should be fine again.

And I haven't received an answer about the apparent bug I reported on the university application website on Wednesday(?). It also wasn't fixed when I checked on Friday. So I'll need to follow up again there.

All of this is, I'd say, not exactly good for my spirits at least in the short term.

But the original sense of security from someone genuinely wanting to hire me is still lingering a bit.

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

An Adventure at the Job Agency and Further Afield

This morning I had an appointment at the job agency, and had become very anxious about it. In the end, everything was 'alles halb so wild.'

My supervisor at the agency actually began by apologizing: I'd already had an immediate appointment when I'd submitted my unemployment status applications and this actually covered much of what we'd talk about today.

It also turns out that it hopefully wasn't bad that I hadn't cancelled the appointment from my side. — Last Thursday people who interviewed me months ago called me back and asked if I'd still be interested in working for them in autumn. So if they manage to sort out the higher-level permissions on their side, it looks like I have a genuine job waiting for me. — But my supervisor seemed not to think I'd been wasting his time if I already had a job; he noted that opportunity down, also that I'm planning to study.

(I'm still nervous about my university application. The Freie Uni has outsourced their processing of foreign students' applications to a third party provider whose service is absolutely driving me up the wall, e.g.if you click on the 'help' button, nothing happens 😡. And I think I will need to apply for a different combination of courses from the one I'd actually wanted. The smooth process I'd experienced in 2011 has led me to totally miscalculate how much effort and time needs to be invested this time, and I'm about ready to seize a pitchfork.

And I believe that the student counseling centre on the Freie Uni campus is now on a summer break until August... a few other deadlines and circumstances have also contributed to my anxiety lately. That said, my instinct is that my situation is still comparatively fortunate and I shouldn't ignore the high level of privilege I have, financially and socially.)

I'd also mentioned my ethical concerns about keeping an unemployed status and receiving unemployment money (once I finish the paperwork) considering the prospect of my autumn job. The supervisor said that this unemployment money was insurance that I'd painstakingly paid into for the past 7 years, not welfare money, and that I need have absolutely no qualms about taking it. Which comforted me a lot.

***

On the way home, I stopped by the side of the road to look at a yellow painted one-family home that had likely been built in the inter-war period.

It was being renovated thoroughly: The ground was scooped out all the way to the foundations and the trench shored up with dusty wooden beams. A little blue bulldozer was parked to one side. The new windows had branded stickers on their inner frames as they sat awkwardly within the exposed original, wooden outer frames, hewn into the white plaster underneath the paint. Reddish, dried-out ivy clung like dead spiders' legs to the wall as the stems had been killed off. Black plastic sheeting covered part of the roof. The lamp at a side entrance looked like a traditional gas lamp; the door had been framed in brown tiling. The square, featureless, dark, windows looked 'dead,' like the ivy, however, and I found it quite ghostly even after I spotted a small reassuring sign on the fence that suggested that the building was last in use — and may be in use again — as a kindergarten.

Altogether I found that area intensely creepy. It seemed like a 'wonderland' of proto-Nazi architecture and ideology, especially with streets bearing the names of Hun generals etc., and all the earth tones of tan and brown. And it seemed to cater to the working class without the clarity or generosity or idealism of the Bauhaus school. But I couldn't deny the appeal of the gardens, the old trees, dusky Oregon grapes, Italianate cypresses, and a shaded cobbled path with stairs that ran up a hill into a park I'd never been to before.

I became lost after a while and kept looking at maps in bus stations to reorientate myself.

Then I dove into a huge terrain of allotment gardens, colourful in the purples and yellows and all the other colours of late summer, a Swedish and an American and a German flag, etc. The further into the gardens I roamed, the street noises were increasingly muffled as if under a pillow. I heard the distant sound of an airplane, perhaps the ruffling of the wind, the twittering of birds, one or two insects, and aside from that — a soft silence. Above, a striking blue sky with big, white, fluffy clouds, and strong sunlight.

Then, at last, I was on my home turf. I stopped by a French brasserie, bought a fizzy lemon drink, green tomato jam that I spotted on the shelf (ever since I read about green tomato preserves in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, I've wanted to try them), and a pain au chocolat.

And then I was home again — tired and (as it turns out) a little dehydrated from cycling around so long in the sun and from speeding on the way to the appointment (I got lost at the job agency building, but after asking 3 or 4 people managed to end up in the right waiting room at exactly the minute of my appointment) ... but happy.

Sunday, July 02, 2023

Rambling Notes on an Eye-liad (Please Excuse the Pun)

Thursday was a little more exciting than expected.

On Tuesday I'd woken up with a mildly bloodshot eye and it hurt when I put any pressure on it. (The other eye was fine.) As a result, I went to choir practice feeling a little disreputable-looking but not unduly concerned.

Wednesday, also felt a bit self-conscious about it, saw that there was an angry splotch of red underneath the eyelid where blood vessels seemed to have exploded, and was beginning to worry if there was an infection.

Thursday, woke up with the eye still painful, feeling bleary, unable to open my discolored eye all the way, and now quite concerned that it might be a broader issue.

So instead of going to university, I cycled off to hospital, feeling a little stupid as pollen and other tree debris might fly into the eye in question and just make things worse.

The emergency department, fortunately, was entirely empty and serene. I pressed on a bell beside a mysterious closed hallway. A disembodied voice asked why I was there, and when I explained, asked me to sit in the waiting room. It vaguely reminded me of something — now I think, without any satire intended, it's the scene in the 1939 Wizard of Oz film where the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Dorothy have their first audience with the titular figure.

Soon a doctor or nurse in blue robe came along and told me he'd be right with me. Once he'd started up the computer in a small dark office on the other side of the hall, he asked me what was up. He was quite understanding especially when I confessed that I was embarrassed to be going to the emergency room for something non-urgent that I'd have taken to my general practitioner if I had one. He took a brief set of notes, checked with an ear thermometer that I wasn't running a temperature (36.3°C - normal, he told me reassuringly), and accepted my health insurance card.

Despite the recent health insurance paperwork 'adventures' because of my quitting my job and not having the paperwork entirely in order, all seemed well and the coverage continued.

The young lady in the office opposite who took down my emergency contact info on her desktop computer and otherwise made sure my file had the required data was also friendl,y and wished me good luck. She sent me via an elevator to the walk-in eye clinic on the 5th floor.

After losing my way a little, I found the clinic, taken aback when entering to find that in contrast to the very quiet rest of the hospital, the waiting room was full.

As I came from the emergency department, I was allowed to go straight to a registration office instead of drawing a wait room ticket.

The doctor or nurse at the desk reminded me a bit of a strict suffragette but not in a bad way. She fixed her eyes on me and asked a few probing questions as to why I was concerned about my eye. (She didn't see any discoloration, she stated, but she'd trust me to know the colour of my own eyes.)

Then I waited in the hallway, quite pleased to see and hear the patients and medical staff being polite and friendly to each other despite the crowded conditions.

And finally I was called into room 2 (it being an eye clinic, the room numbers were pretty huge and very visible) and given an eye test. The numbers and letters were all so small I could barely (or not) read them, and if I didn't feel pretty confident about my eyesight I'd have panicked. The puffs of air that apparently tested my eye reflexes were less perturbing. I thanked the doctor or nurse and then popped out again as quickly as I could so the other patients could be handled sooner. The notes she handed me about my eye tests had '16/18' written in them, and I reassured myself that this couldn't possibly be a bad score.

After waiting maybe another hour — skim-reading Molière's Le Misanthrope, mentally re-plotting the ending of the play, and helping myself to the mineral water that had been set out for patients — getting more nervous and less able to focus as time went on, but reminding myself how fortunate I was to have such easy access to health care professionals with good-quality equipment ... I was called into room 6 for the actual evaluation.

3 medical students in white coats were sitting on, as far as I recall, rolly chairs in varying heights alongside the doctor, all turning to look at me, half sheepish and half curious, as I entered the door.

The doctor asked questions instead of examining me right away. She also seemed to wonder why I was so concerned about my eye. Had I really not had symptoms like having my eye 'glued shut,' for example? Feeling a little defensive, I mentioned the popped blood vessels, swelling around the eye, etc. I added that I'd had the idea that the vision in my left eye was a little more turbid lately, but I might be hypochondriac — and was quite relieved when she said that my eye test results had been great.

At any rate she agreed to examine me. So I propped my chin up on an apparatus again. She took a look through a magnifying lens at my right eye; no problems there. She then nudged down my lower lid on the left eye and checked it. Also fine. Then she looked at the top of my left eye, and immediately expressed lively interest and got the other students to take a look.

In about 5 seconds flat she said that she agreed with me that I had an eye inflammation. It was episcleritis, it's something that happens periodically, and it isn't a problem except in rare cases where rheumitis(?) is involved. Then she told me she'd prescribe me some eye drops, and that it was also fine to use a tear-drop solution.

So I visited a pharmacy for the eye drops on the way home from the hospital. At home I administered the first round of medication, after chatting with Uncle Pu (who had come by to do a 'victory lap' with his new certification of Austrian citizenship) and Ge.

But I was pretty exhausted from my worry about the eye, cycling to and from hospital, skipping my class, hunger from not eating breakfast, guilt about not feeling up to working on my journalism or job applications, and standing in the waiting areas for over an hour instead of prudently taking a seat in the less crowded areas. So I took a nap afterward.

And since then things have cleared up quite nicely.

I think the cause of the whole kerfuffle was that I've never cycled so regularly before in an area with lots of tree pollen and other bits and pieces falling into my eyes, and something must have gotten lodged. But it was quite unfamiliar to me to have an eye irritation on that scale. And I was probably right about the turbid vision; but it's evidently caused by my eye trying to rinse itself, clouding the cornea; it's not caused by any deterioration of the retina etc.

Anyway, the other reason why this hospital visit was remarkable was that, aside from dentistry and aside from getting two Covid shots, I haven't been to a doctor since I was a child. I've only been to the hospital because others have been sick or injured — I remembered the emergency department at this particular hospital from a visit with J. when he fractured a bone in his arm.

Today I've spent the whole day relaxing, so don't have much news. But, in terms of gossip: yesterday evening I sent off a job application to the Deutsche Bahn. There's a big part of me that wants to throw up at the thought of working in a large company again, but I felt that I can't afford to ignore all the roles that are suggested by the Agentur für Arbeit.

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

A Trip to the Cafeteria, Trees and Sonatas

Yesterday I received an email from Berlin's press and information office: the press conference this afternoon — about a new report by an expert commission that's looked into the legalities of releasing the biggest private Berlin real estate companies into public hands — is for accredited members of a specific press council only.

This meant that my schedule was lighter, although I was mildly disappointed that I couldn't attend.

After pedalling along a route that was (in stretches) thickly carpeted in yellow and green linden leaf petals with fringes of dark rainy moisture, I arrived ten minutes late for my 8:30 a.m. Greek university class. We had already begun the next chapter and were reviewing vocabulary about the Greek political system on the national and municipal level.

Wednesdays there are always two back-to-back classes. It took almost all that time until I was finally awake...

At quarter to noon I roamed back to my bicycle and was gradually pushing it out of the sheltered area when I saw my mother strolling in my direction on her way to the cafeteria. Are you in a hurry? she asked. — I was not!

So we went to the cafeteria together, each had a bowl of lemon pudding, she sipped a coffee while I had a hot chocolate, and we compared notes about our studies and our plans for the rest of the day. It was a nice interlude!

And then I cycled back home.

I wondered if the lilac leaves alongside the path were truly bigger now that this summer's drought has given way to a few thundershowers, or if I was imagining it. It also became clearer to me that the winds of the thunderstorms had damaged the plane trees along the way: drifts of leaf litter clumped around drains like heavy though small clouds, shattered tree fruits and broken twigs lay underneath and beside the parking cars.

Ge. was at home when I returned, we briefly chatted, and I gulped down a snack before heading off to Tempelhof Airport, where I spent what I think was an hour sorting through a bag of donated children's and adult women's clothing.

There's always a risk of 'looking a gift horse in the mouth,' but I hope it's all right to gossip a bit about the donations:

Many of the children's clothes didn't seem to have been laundered properly, and had a disagreeable smell. I draped them off the edges of huge sorting tables to air, while I sorted the rest. The ones that were still stinky by the time I wanted to go home, I regretfully tossed into the textile recycling bag.

The donation site has also seen a heavy influx of thin, white, disposable plastic boiler suits from the UK. The ones that are smutty and no longer in their original packaging, I threw away. But the rest I added to a pile on one of the 'odds and ends' tables.

After that I returned home and, catching up on email and the news, sent off another job application. In between I played the piano and practiced singing. Feeling quite smug at the job application achievement, I worked well past 9 p.m. on one of my book projects, which is about social history.

But a whole chapter of grammar exercises needs to be done before tomorrow morning's Greek class, which I entirely neglected...

On the piano I've begun looking at a volume of Scarlatti sonatas that I probably only looked at once before. A few sonatas are already in our other scores, since Scarlatti wrote tons of sonatas and they're often thrown together in different constellations. I wished very much that I'd begun practicing the 'new' sonatas when Papa was still alive, as he'd have liked them. We listened to Horowitz's recordings often, though, so maybe he didn't miss out on much.

Here is one of my favourite 'new' ones:

https://youtu.be/Bd0TRy41Fxg

Friday, June 23, 2023

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life?

I've had a few bad weeks. Going to the Finanzamt and learning about the income threshold for freelance journalists put a big damper on the main thing that was making me happy about the direction my life was going in. After my voice coach told me that nobody really cares or tracks if a freelancer earns 22,000€ in their first year, however, hope revived again. And now I feel fit and cheeky.

The weeks were also tedious because I launched a project of reading newspapers across the spectrum from the local kiosk, cover to cover, to study where I could publish my work, which style they publish, etc.

These newspapers are generally ones with experienced rather than beginner journalists, one nature magazine was literally on its last legs as I happened to buy the last issue they'll ever publish, and not a single periodical is asking for more submissions. So all that reading indoors was quite tedious, didn't bring a direct benefit as I also wasn't practicing my own writing during all that time, and I felt guilty for spending money on newspapers when I'm not earning any income.

That said, I might still buy one newspaper or magazine per week because I do find it useful to learn which German newspapers have an editorial tone or direction that rubs me the wrong way or raises a few genuine red flags.

And a few of the articles gave really useful insights into topics as far-ranging as Türkiye's elections through independent farmers in Brazil to Guatemala's judiciary. So I took lots of notes, and I enjoyed the well-written reports.

On Thursday I went to the local library and saw that they don't appear to stock journalism manuals. They did have one relevant book in the information technology shelves — I've forgotten if it was about social media or data in journalism — but I felt that doing anything computer-sciencey again was Too Soon.

I feel that the best self-education (besides just reading news websites that I enjoy) comes from Google Books previews and YouTube instructional videos about how to interview people, the economics of freelance journalism, what investigative journalism is, and so on and so forth. Those are worth every minute, and the best use of time when I am too exhausted to cycle anywhere, or the weather isn't cooperating, or I'll have an engagement that would overlap.

In-person reporting is even better.

***

I've also set up a schedule, to prevent the blurring of work into personal time.

From the moment I wake up in the morning, except on Sundays, this is work or university time. I breakfast, go to Greek classes or do homework or both, research and apply for jobs, work on my book projects, check my email, read newspapers or magazines, watch livestreams or tutorials, take notes, work on articles, practice typewriting — anything like that. In the early afternoon, a lunch break. And then I keep going until past 7 p.m. unless I'm feeling tired or sick. After that, it's leisure.

***

What's also surprised me is how much I adore taking photographs.

It's something I can share easily, which may be more reliable than any written description I can offer, and that's likely much less boring to the reader. It prevents any inequality of information between busy people who don't have time, and leisurely people who do have time; between people who happily read many books and those who can't; and people who might be distracted or depressed and people who have peace of mind.

I also adore taking photographs in the moment: narrowing in on a motif, trying to frame it in a novel or traditional way, making lots of split-second decisions about which details to include and not include, maybe also pondering what atmosphere or emotion I'm going for. And then uploading the photos to my desktop computer and cropping them down to their essentials afterward (although I run a lot on instinct here, and the cropping doesn't work as well if I'm tired or not in the right mood). I always ask myself 'Which details do you need to tell a story?'

But I don't feel very interested in barging into professional photographers' terrain.

I also feel inhibited about being part of the massive photographical overproduction that's rife on the internet.

For example, I'm willing to have an aesthetically shoddier product if it means a more ecologically-friendly sized file that's still a decent quality. Not everything has to be museum-quality.

Also, while I crop and adjust pixel size, there's no way I want to meddle with saturation or anything else.

I think that we can embrace honest ugliness rather than overlaying it with a filter.

And I'd rather have one really good photograph than fifty shots that might not be worth the pixels.

***

That said, I've slowed down because my Greek classes have been overwhelming. Sometimes the job application process, or the paperwork around being unemployed and not officially a student, also drags me down.

It's not often that I have enough energy to go out in the evenings to interview people, cycle somewhere, or take photos.

And the other problem is that not being in a real or virtual workplace with others means that it's harder to bounce ideas off of other people, but easy to get caught up in brooding thought-spirals.

***

What I should add is that it's still an immense privilege not to be working at the former company any more. Everything from my sleep, through my happiness about no longer needing to implement people management policies that make me feel like a terrible person, and the opportunities I've had to see friends and family without shuttling back and forth between them and work meetings, to the amount of time I spend playing the piano, has improved drastically.

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Freelancing, Greek Snacking, and May Sunshine

It's been a while, but there's not that much to tell...

I've met with seven former colleagues since leaving the company, and it's been nice. At the same time there is still an 'echoing' quality in my day-to-day life now: I'm still more used to being more sociable, and at the workplace was probably in contact with fifteen or so people per week.

When talking with people and going to events for my freelance reporting, it's still kind of lonely (which is apparently why some professional journalists prefer being employed in a newsroom). It really is unlikely I'll ever see them again. But of course I like going out and understanding the world I live in better, and altogether the freelancing feels like what I was born to do.

I did an interview for a part-time job in tech support, which I did amazingly badly at. While I haven't gotten a final rejection yet, it's probably time for me to move on to the next application.

Volunteering is what I'm doing to feel like I'm working alongside everyone else — sometimes I did get the feeling that freelance journalism is more fun than I ought to be having, and only in the past week has it begun to feel like a real full-time employment of it own. That said, the supply of donations for Ukraine has temporarily dried up, so when I last went to the former Tempelhof Airport hangar, I was told that no help with sorting donations was needed at present. I could call a telephone number to check in whenever I liked.

As for the Greek class, it's nicer even that I'd hoped, and the amount of progress I'm making is amazing. Showing up for class regularly, and having made a little effort over the years to keep up the language, are paying off. And now that I know more Greek people in Berlin and have gone shopping at a Greek grocery store etc., I can really see myself applying the language.

At the Greek grocery store, the last time I bought halva, tahini with lemon flavouring (as addictive as Nutella, to me), sesame candy sticks, oregano potato chips, and more banana jello mix.

But I'm also starting a routine of shopping at a zero-waste store once per week. While I'm really enjoying cooking for myself again and trying new delicacies and just enjoying life in general, buying so much food in packaging seems unsustainable. Besides the store is nice and I want to support it.

As for the financial realities of freelance journalism, the impression is gradually sinking in that the market in Berlin is saturated. It feels difficult to publish anything. While the press seems to be supported infinitely better here than in North America, and it's also a luxury as a consumer to have the good assortment we do, I think it's also a dwindling market. So I guess I was just naive and overoptimistic.

In real terms, I need to accept that I may end up not publishing anything outside of my own website unless I begin to write marketing copy. It's not that bad and I'm hoping a part-time job will help me keep going without professionally publishing anything; but if I produce something truly excellent when freelancing, it would be nice to be confident that a professional editor will also see it and acknowledge it.

Thursday, May 04, 2023

Full Steam Ahead in Greek and Amateur Journalism

It's been as busy a time as ever.

*

On May 1st I went cycling off to make photographs of a peaceful morning demonstration by some of Germany's largest trade unions, metalworkers, music teachers, chimney sweeps, and rail workers amongst them.

I was a little in hokey awe of the open and pluralistic nature of the event. For example the Mayor of Berlin (whose policy and demeanour I'm generally not in favour of, otherwise) also walked in amongst the tents of a Volksfest in front of City Hall (where the procession ended) without revving up an armoured tank and wearing a cavalry helmet to do so. Maybe I'm too easily impressed by this point.

And while we were processing around Berlin-Mitte, I looked up at the crane at the top of a high-rise building, which workers use to clean the windows. And by a train of thought association, I was impressed at what union workers and manual workers do to keep the city and the country running.

I interviewed two men who have been in legal limbo for years after seeking asylum in Germany.

In the evening, I didn't cover the bigger Revolutionary Demo. It ended in organizational chaos when it was stopped early. But the police and the city government were pleased by how quiet it had been this year.

Instead of trying to write an article, I just posted photos with detailed explanations.

*

I haven't finalized my article about Austrian literature. But there's a draft and now mainly I need to work on an illustration.

As for the fashion industry article, I need to research it more and to find a hook that's more compelling than 'this is activism that happened 1 week ago.'

Besides I need to be vigilant around conflicts of interest when I write about fast fashion: certain industry actors who are, for example, refusing to sign onto safety legislation in Bangladesh, are ones whose customer requests I helped fulfill in my previous job.

That said, I visited an art exhibition on the workers of Rana Plaza and their families, today, and took photos. So one further step is complete.

I think I was fooling myself a lot about the role I was playing in the fashion industry in the past job — although, to be clear, I'm not judging anyone else or saying they need to have the same threshold. It felt morally superior, compared to the average mass of consumers, to intellectually see and understand the waste in the industry.

But it's not just an environmental question. Looking at photographs of the dead bodies of workers who have been killed while protesting their working conditions, manufacturing clothes that maybe I helped sell online, really hits you like a brick.

*

If it's not too fetishizing, I was thinking while walking around Kreuzberg today that I'd like to do a series of photographs about workers. (To be clear: just with my smartphone; I don't use an analogue or hybrid camera yet while I'm practicing.) There's something soothing about watching people put cobblestones back into place on a damaged sidewalk, or a plasterer at work in the hallway to an inner courtyard, or someone kneeling quietly beside the stream of passersby to redo the paint on a low garden wall.

It was also a beautiful day in general. Lush green grass lighted up by the sun from behind, mystical white globes of seeding dandelions, shy little bluebell flowers, lilacs just bursting into blossom, thoughtful white rhododendrons hiding in the shade, unbelievably hued Moulin-Rouge-red roses, and sleepy-looking horse chestnut flowers about to 'wake up' with another day of May sunshine.

*

Yesterday evening, I was tired and wanted to stay at home. But instead I went to a glossy events venue in East Berlin to watch a question-and-answer session with Barack Obama.

He's been fundraising for his foundation by holding mass events in three European cities, although the Berlin press has generally been emphasizing heavily that it doesn't know that this is where the money is actually going.

I found the event quite depressing.

As a reader of news and as someone who'll be affected by world events, it was depressing generally. But it was also depressing personally.

Hopefully I don't seem self-aggrandizing by drawing any parallel, but the former President's mood about American and world politics at the macrocosm level reminded me a lot about my mood about the company that I used to work at.

He was as pessimistic and exhausted as I've ever seen and heard him, he looked ten years older than he is (but maybe mainly because he was tired of travelling), and he seemed to be trying to deal with no longer being able to influence things that he'd find it important to influence while things are heading to hell in a handbasket. The motto 'Change Over' that was broadcast before he stepped onto the stage might have been a clue of what would follow.

But I don't blame him for not painting things in rosy colours! The world doesn't resemble a François Boucher canvas.

*

As for my Greek (guest auditing) studies, I'm making faster strides than I expected. A month ago, I could barely string together 5 words. Now I can write and speak entire paragraphs. The professor and fellow students are consistently lovely.

But I'm still not optimistic about being able to handle courses that are taught only in Greek in November, without a major additional effort, like travelling to Greece or getting private tutoring. (Tutoring which I'd want to share with the fellow students, who I think are anxiety-inducingly overoptimistic about how easy it is for someone who's been learning modern Greek for 1 year to make the jump).

Saturday, April 29, 2023

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!