Four Hours of Hell: Cashiering at a Grocery Store

On Wednesday I went to the second job that I booked via the student app: four hours as a cashier in the basement of a mall in one of the tourist hotspots of Berlin. At home I'd reviewed the instructions for cashier work in general and the two or three different PDFs for this grocery chain in particular, although I felt fairly sure it was impossible to remember it all. Locking up my bicycle, I found the grocery store sooner than I feared.

The first step was to familiarize myself with the fruit and vegetable section so that it would be easier to ring up the produce later, which was a quick process. The second step was to meet my supervisor. A brisk, petite woman with her hair in a ponytail, she was communing with the dairy refrigerator section in the back when I found her. She escorted me to the employee break room. We passed through a storage area with trolleys, shelves stacked to the ceiling with disposable gloves and other supplies, and a loud machine built into the wall (pipes, toggle switches?, etc.) that I took to be a roaring air conditioner, and greeted a colleague. The narrow hallway was lined with bottles of water, which my supervisor invited me to drink from, and jackets with the store brand for the employees arranged on hooks.

The break room itself consists of a kitchenette with a wood laminate counter and a heap of grey polo shirts at the far end and a packaged Christmas tree stand stowed away at the near end, white cabinets above and below, and a sink in between. Blue storage lockers fill another wall — some of them labelled with names and roles, and others not. Papers pinned to a bulletin board explain hazard symbols, how to report inappropriate behaviour like harassment, a psychological service available for employees who are stressed by difficult encounters with customers, etc. Behind a pane of glass, a graphic of a tree rhapsodizes about the values of the grocery store chain. Taking into account the low table that fills the remaining corner of the room, I doubt that many more than 6 people can fit into the room. But it felt collegial.

Not sure if I should wait in the room until fetched, I decided to anxiously wait. After a while I took out my pens and my 'cheat sheet' of notes about cash register work, ready for duty. Finally I went out into the public area of the store again. Across the aisles, the cashier whose shift was ending made eye contact with me and waved me over.

In a little office, we started the handover. As a senior employee kept a practiced eye on a computer screen with her back turned to us, the supervisor asked me to weigh out all the coins and bills that were in the black cash box that I'd be using. Then she ushered me out of the office and over to the till, the previous cashier left with alacrity, she handed me my cashier ID card, and I sat down on the rolly chair prepared to serve the first customer — who was already hovering.

My supervisor showed me one or two procedures, told me to ring using the switch at my lefthand side if I had any problems, and then strode off. Fortunately the Francophone colleague at the bakery counter — a tall young man perhaps in his twenties who I think was called José — was able to ring up purchases that didn't require weighing, as I found out in the course of my shift. Otherwise, for all intents and purposes, I was the only cashier in the shop.

I passed the first two or three loads of items across the scanner as if I were an alien acquainting myself with earthling objects, not sure if the bar codes would be read in properly or not.

But after that the main problem was navigating all the buttons for weighing fruit and vegetables, deducting the 30% discounts, accepting forms of payment that weren't cash or mainstream credit/debit cards, scanning in coupons and loyalty cards or keying in customer reward app codes, and figuring out how to process a bottle returned for deposit that hadn't been accepted by the machine in the back of the store. Customers asked if there were disposable spoons, and I could only guess that they were at the round bar table; they asked if I had a bottle opener, but I didn't.

I wasn't able to tackle all of that properly. I usually asked for help from colleagues, explained concisely enough what was needed, and got it. Once my supervisor swooped in before I needed to signal her and helped out; another time, the shopper was in fact an employee and she helped me out. In the one case that I rang twice and nobody came, there was a brief dispute at the bakery counter afterward ('why did you leave the one employee by herself?'). But people were very forgiving to me specifically; the supervisor who'd seemed uncertain at the beginning started intermittently smiling at me.

On the bright side, my upbringing in Canadian manners became a superpower: I automatically fished up a polite greeting and smile for every customer no matter what catastrophe was going on. Counting out change was also straightforward as I was used to doing so as a shopper myself. Finally I found myself embracing the customer service side of things and liking the customers.  Figuring out if they spoke German or English or neither was like a game. But also semi-consciously noting the different shopping styles; guessing at which jobs or travels they'd come from; classifying them as health and fitness aficionados, businessmen, heads of families, young women 'adulting' by making themselves nutritious meals, partiers with wine or beer or mojitos, cheeky teenagers splurging on small treats, tourists getting themselves pots of honey or other items they couldn't get at home, etc.

On the other hand, after a while I thought that the same customers were shopping again: it felt like they were repeating in an infinite loop. I only came up for air again two hours later when finally nobody was standing at the till for a minute or two, psychologically battered and feeling like I had been swimming for hours against a current as water kept flooding into my mouth. I looked at the clock, shocked that it was only shortly after 6 p.m.

(During that quiet time, as the online training suggested, I took a spray bottle of disinfectant and cleaned the till with a cloth... which I realized later was actually only intended for the computer screens.)

Twice the line of customers grew so long that stirrings of discontent were audible. Besides I made a few mistakes with customer reward apps where I think I didn't properly give the discount because I thought that just scanning the card was enough. Once I failed to realize that a bottle was for deposit and then, long after another customer pointed it out to me and I'd finally figured it out, was unable to get away from my till to tell the customers that they could get money for it. In other words, I shorted the customers.

But the worst thing I did that day probably cost the company a large pot of money in one go. A customer who had bought food for over €70 apparently did not confirm her purchase by pressing a green button twice as she needed to (or perhaps there was a technological malfunction in the online data transfer?). After she and her groceries had disappeared from the shop, I saw that the EC debit card payment process was incomplete and running out of time. I did have the presence of mind to ask my supervisor to archive that set of purchases in the till, so that I could ring up the next customer. Unfortunately I did not have the presence of mind before that to swing around and check the screen of the card reader, pressing the green button myself if that was what was needed.

Finally at 8 p.m., my colleagues and I checked repeatedly that all the customers were out of the shop. The senior employee and José had already signed out for the day. I handed over the two bottle deposit receipts that I'd gathered over the past four hours and my supervisor hauled out my cash box. Then I awaited with fear and trembling in the office as my supervisor jotted up the totals of the electronic payments, the bottle deposit, and the cash box at the computer. She shook her head over something and redid a calculation. I was worried that I would have to pay the €74 that I'd accidentally cost the company out of my own pocket — so I'd owe the company money instead of being paid for the past four hours. But then she turned around with a broad smile and told me that I had €1 more in the cash box than expected. It didn't really make sense, because two or three customers had told me to keep the change, but it was always only 1 cent or 2 cents. Still, it was a relief.

After I'd changed back into my street clothes, the supervisor joined me looking far more relaxed and ready to go back to everyday life. She even said that I'd done great, especially considering that it was my first day, and that she expected to see me again. With the €74 metaphorically stamped across my forehead like the scarlet letter A, and my guilt over the times I'd accidentally shorted the customers out of money, I candidly said that it had felt like one catastrophe after another to me. She laughed, and led me out through a warren of corridors into the outdoors, locking up the shop behind her. And I cycled back home in a daze.

***

When I passed through the apartment door, I felt like I'd journeyed through a few circles of Dante's cosmology into something more Paradise-like. But even at home, I was so stressed (and the air was so warm and humid) that I could not properly go to sleep until past 3 a.m. The feeling of buzzing energy had passed when I'd eaten dinner that the family had prepared and when I'd done a few progressive muscle relaxation exercises. It also felt weird to complain as a grown adult with her fair share of privileges about a common job that many teenagers, and many adults who have fewer privileges to cushion the stress, do.

But I was still quite worked up. My conscience was uneasy about all of my cash register mistakes — which felt like theft — and I was stuck on a loop of being constantly afraid of doing something wrong. An additional twenty or so minutes of yoga did not change that. Once, when I did doze, customers appeared on the other side of a phantom till in my sleepy imagination again. It took what felt like a few minutes to get rid of them.

In the event, I didn't get more sleep than four hours. At 7:15 a.m. city maintenance workers started using a chainsaw to lop branches off a bush outside the apartment and I couldn't get back to sleep again. In fact, I didn't properly go to sleep again until after midnight.

In between I've done hours of research about translations of Nikos Kazantzakis's writings into English and two trips to libraries, piano playing, leisure reading, housework and grocery shopping, and sunset strolling with my sister.

Partly the past weeks have been delightful and I've hopefully conveyed that in this blog.

Yet to be whiny but open, this is not  — given the facts that I still need to earn more money this month, finish three essays, finish reading the book that my Greek professor wanted me to finish reading, and get my spoken Greek and written grammar up to snuff for the exam at the end of this month — the relaxing summer holiday that I was hoping for.

Let's see if it changes for the better tomorrow. One of my brothers and I'll take the train to Austria for a short trip, joining other family members who are traveling by car, returning on the 12th.

The Friendlier Face of Bureaucracy

On Thursday I set off into the near 30°C temperatures to the Gesundheitsamt in order to watch two instructional videos about food safety and certification, and then to receive a certificate.

It was organized on the fourth floor of an office building. The interior was cool enough that it wasn't a hardship to walk up the flights of stairs instead of taking the elevator. First we were sorted into a waiting room. Amidst the pleasant wooden furniture that reminded me of a pediatrician's waiting room in the early 1990s, I became aware that the other applicants were younger than I was (some of them likely even still in school or recently graduated). Then we went one by one to the office to pay the 30€ fee and verify that our name and birthdate were accurate.

After that, we took our seats in a room where the videos were screened. Rows of chairs, two leafy potted plants taller than I was whereof one was alive and one dead (like the comedy and tragedy masks in theatre), a desk fan that had the seal of the City of Berlin stuck to its centre (presumably to discourage us from smuggling it home under our coats and calling it our own), blinds covering the open windows and a faint hum of traffic wafting in, and a coffee table or two, completed the interior design. We were something like 20 people at the end.

The videos were painless. Admittedly some of the acting in it had a touch of ham in scenes that required agonizedly swiping at a perspiring brow and clutching the solar plexus. The first one told us which foods were the most perishable, which illnesses and health conditions are dangerous, and how to behave if we feel sick or have an open wound. The second walked us through our certificate and told us that we needed to get it sealed and signed by an employer within 3 months, in order for it to be valid for the rest of our lives.

Finally, we returned to the office to receive the certificates. The ladies in charge were warm and friendly: one of them came up close and half-touched my elbow to greet me, and another wished me success as she handed me the paper.

Delighted to be ready early, I went back home at 11:30 a.m. — long before the temperatures rose to 38°C toward the evening. At home I was even more delighted to find that the student app seems to confirm the food safety certificates on our behalf. So that essentially I have fulfilled and will fulfill a basic precondition for food and service industry jobs for the rest of my days.

Since the bicycle transport work I haven't done another job ... yet. But I have made progress on university coursework: researching the Greek-Russian literature essay and reading the Kapodistrias biography. And, relieved to have so many chances at work where people actually need and want me, I have felt quite cheeky and good-humoured.

A Tragic Pride Week, and Student Job Life

It was a strange weekend in Berlin considering the attack at the Christopher Street Day parade events on Saturday. Most of the main parade was already over when the news came late in the evening. Since I'd stopped checking local news for the day, mostly, I first spotted it on the Guardian's website. I had thought of attending CSD (albeit this time for amateur journalistic purposes), the same as last year; but I would have been long gone by the time the violence happened. It was unsettling to hear helicopters near Potsdamer Platz late into the night — between midnight and past 2 a.m. — and then for long stretches the next morning. Usually we hear them when there's a visit by a head of state who requires heightened security measures, but this time I presumed that police were using them to look for suspects.

As for the reaction in Berlin, it impresses me that the organizers of the CSD parade have repeatedly stated that they do not want the attacker's self-affiliation with Islam to lead to any stereotypes, generalizations, or hatred toward Muslims. What I just wish is that the press's coverage had focused less on the perpetrator, which from what I understand of criminology raises the probability of copy-cat attacks. It also didn't feel nice to be subjected to a livestream of predominantly Crime and Punishment updates, instead of reactions from the LGBTQ* community and, say, the flowers that were being left at the Tiergarten park where the attack happened.

*

On Friday I'd gone to a Pride Week demonstration, a smaller one, for amateur journalism purposes.

After reflecting on going to the CSD parade last year and what felt right or wrong about being there as an ally, I concluded that I'd felt out of place because I go out of my way to not express my personality when it feels socially risky. Whereas out-and-proud attendees are taking a lot of risks.

So, despite the general preferability of wearing neutral clothing when doing amateur journalism, I put on a baby-blue sweater, a flowered scarf, and lipstick this time. Besides I approached the organizers of the Pride Week demo to make doubly sure that protestors wouldn't feel uncomfortable being photographed, because I can imagine that you can begin feeling like a zoo animal if lots of strangers take snapshots of you without asking because your clothing or make-up look unusual to them. It felt like the right decision and I felt very at ease.

For comparison, a professional journalist was there alongside a camerawoman, and conducted a stand-up interview with the organizers later in front of the glass and steel Paul-Löbe-Haus where German parliamentarians work. She wore (as I seem to remember) jeans and a striped red-and-white sweater, i.e. a little colour but nothing splashy.

Besides the gay community at the protest was diverse in terms of clothing styles and cultural affiliations: some were drag queens who went for old-time glamour, others preferred slim 90s-style party gear and stiletto heels, a few into animal masks or leather, many dressed down in t-shirts and shorts or jeans, and so on and so forth. So perhaps I'd have fit in just fine with my old amateur journalism uniform of dark blue slim jeans and black long sleeve shirt.

Another reason I enjoyed the event was that — unlike many foreign-events-related protests I've been to — there was little tension of the kind that people usually emanate when protesting against totalitarian or otherwise extremist regimes.

***

This morning I went to the first student job that I've booked through the app. Waking up at 7:22 a.m. was a minor ordeal, the transit took 50 minutes but all the transfers went beautifully smoothly, and it was not too bad that I was a little geographically disorientated and not 15 minutes early at the place of employment because my supervisor hadn't arrived yet. It was out in the sticks of eastern Berlin, but well within the city limits with GDR housing blocks, a huge Höffner furniture big-box store, a smattering of plane trees if I recall correctly, and the characteristic East German tram lines. In the end the job was far easier than anticipated: with a fellow student from southwestern Germany and the supervisor, we moved a few dozen rental e-bikes in boxes from a truck into storage cells, then labelled them with the email address of the customer. After two hours we were done. What I also enjoyed were the interactions with the others at the facility.

A few burly movers were shifting household furniture for a lanky white-haired man in a logo'd jersey sweater who did some of the labour alongside them. And the truck driver who had driven the e-bikes from a factory in France, his large vehicle having a Polish license plate, didn't speak much German but mentioned that he did speak Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian (and maybe Hungarian?). He had a vein of humour, was easygoing, and patiently pushed the cartons one by one where we needed them for over half an hour. We also met a thin facility manager in a dress shirt with the professional air of a 20th-century train conductor, brisk but friendly, who took care of opening gates and checking in with my supervisor. And a receptionist at the entrance, despite being engrossed in a telephone call, waved in a cheerful way when the fellow student and I left.

None of the men were shocked or condescending because I was a woman doing manual work. It's also a sign of a good dynamic that when the fellow mini-jobber and I met up again at the nearest tram station, it wasn't remotely awkward.

We finished two hours early, so I'll probably get half the pay for the projected four hours. But I was actually happy to be let off the hook. On the way home I indulged myself by going for a walk in the sparkling sunshine between train stations. After lunch and a little internet time, I took a long nap.

Beautiful British Columbia: Our September 2024 Holiday, Part Eight

Uncle Pu retraced another journey from his past, and took us to the ghost town of Sandon. From the highway the first signs of it we saw were an elaborate system of tall white buildings and passageways at the creek's edge, constructed I think in the mid-20th century but still operational. Klondike Silver Mining Co. or a similar name was written on the side. Densely embedded in the evergreen trees, with slender railway tracks teetering along the hillsides, as this area was, I was amazed yet again that anyone had been able to navigate from Vancouver to here in the 19th century, let alone set up little or big mining outfits, before the arrival of post-war highways.

— As it was, even in 2024 road maintenance crews were working between Slocan and Sandon in conditions that did not lack adventure. Workers in high-visibility vests were scaling steep banks beside the road, chainsaw held in one hand, to clear tree saplings, as cars like ours passed beside them. Other work crews had been renewing the asphalt. —

The visitors' part of Sandon, at any rate, is upslope of the Klondike Silver Mining Co. complex. Perched beside a creek on a declivity that had already put paid to a few chapters of the town's history by collapsing it in an avalanche, the creek itself also flooding the town in the 1950s, wooden frameworks were exposed where the riverbanks had eroded underneath the buildings. Whether these frames were mining apparatus, like supports for a flume, or slope stabilization attempts, I was too ignorant of engineering to know.

Riverbank fortification beneath Sandon, B.C.
September 14, 2024. All rights reserved.

Sandon's visitor's site started with a modestly sized veranda'd house and then a string of Canada Rail train wagons behind a locomotive, which accompanied the road up to a parking lot. Behind the tourists' cars, which had US as well as Canadian license plates, there was a gift shop. It was in a building that looked very much like a drug store emporium or general store out of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book. Two stories high, impressively towering above the river like a lookout post, it had a certain flat rough-and-readiness to it that did suggest quick construction to accommodate a mining boom, as well as mysterious windows with uncomplicated plate glass panes that would give ghosts a fine view. My youngest brother popped into the gift shop and emerged with a black-and-white postcard, after chatting with the owner.

In the parking lot area, a collection of trolleybuses had been parked that traced the history of British Columbia's public transit during the mid-1900s: pastel beige shells, drivers' seats where one could imagine a uniformed conductor politely speaking in a British accent with his passengers, empty rows, an accordion door, displays on the fore of each vehicle revealing whether the bus had been in service in — for example — Stanley Park (Vancouver) or some other neighbourhood or town.

Old mining(?) structures at Sandon, B.C.
September 14, 2024. All rights reserved.

Odds and ends of old, rust-tinged equipment were scattered around. Above the gift shop and the buses, one or two business buildings that predated the First World War had been lovingly rebuilt. Their façades, like the shop, hinted at the first decades of Sandon, when it had been thriving with hotels, sports venues, brothels, telephone office, post office, an Opera House, and men on the hunt for mineral ore. Specifically these men were extracting galena, which — so an online encyclopedia informs me — is an ore that yields lead but also silver. But Sandon was also an internment site of Japanese-Canadians during World War II.

Information sign above river at Atherton Block, Sandon, B.C.
September 14, 2024. All rights reserved.

Further up, two or three historical houses that had belonged to engineers or other staff (and were inaccessible to prying eyes as they are still in use, if only for storage) sat below a very old hydropower house from the reign of Queen Victoria. Still operational over 125 years later, thunderously loud to the point that I could not hear the guide explaining the history of the site to my brothers from where I was standing, it still feeds electricity into the BC Hydro network. Below where I stepped out of the station again, frothing water went crashing out below the turbine's screw, to rejoin the river. Piles of dark grey rubble nearby looked like fertile terrain for archaeological foraging, but I realized soon enough that I didn't have the necessary knowledge of materials to 'read' the spoil heaps.

The guide told my brothers that old mine shafts and tunnels hidden in the hills around the ghost town are often searched out by prowling visitors. A few of these tunnels are accessible and safe enough; others are less accessible and hardly intact. Needless to say that my imagination could hardly have been fuelled more. I'd have happily poked around — if amongst other doubts I weren't afraid of creeping someone out by trespassing on their private property.

View of Sandon, B.C. from the power house
September 14, 2024. All rights reserved.

I was in a stinker of a mood, however. (Which is also why I took only about 12 notes on the site and may have made a lot of mistakes in the past few paragraphs.) So it was a relief to drive back toward New Denver, by way of Kaslo. We passed many faintly haunted corners, like Zincton, a ghost town established in 1892 that was tenanted by miners of zinc ore, just like the name suggests. What we saw of it was a hushed, marshy green pond steeped in trees. We passed a sign warning of danger — explosives — avalanche control ... a wooden boat in antique shape ... a Mudslide Area ... and a cross-country skiing sign.

***

Church in or near Kaslo, B.C.
September 14, 2024. All rights reserved.

STEAMSHIPS, like gold miners in 19th century garb standing ankle-deep in the pebbles of a British Columbia river or a Victorian housewife wearing a crinoline while boiling hard candies for a party over a coal stove — as well as largely unchallenged racism and colonialist brutality — seemed like a figment of Canadian history that I could read about but never see.

That said, Kaslo brought brighter facets of this lost world back to life. Tourist destination via steamship a hundred years ago, it is still a tourist destination via car now. Dominating its lakeside fringes is a well-kept paddlewheeler, a National Historical Site of Canada, with historical exhibits like vintage automobiles in and around it. We arrived on a thriving but not overly crowded day, where rainbow-coloured Pride flags were flying around the false fronts of the old buildings. I ate a few cherries left over from the Okanagan region orchards before we strolled toward the ship. A few of the siblings went down to explore, while I remained on the street above.

Uncle Pu ventured into an antiques shop and I came along. It offered an eclectic mixture of war medals, historical currencies of many different countries e.g. from the 1920s, tobacco pipes arranged on top of furniture, candlesticks, vintage clothing like furs, vinyl records, Dickens volumes and the Bobbsey Twins, 20th century toys for children, perfume diffusers, and even a painted red memento box for the coronation (if I recall correctly; it could even have been the coronation of George V, in this style) of George VI. Other people were browsing, too, like a U.S. couple from Idaho. If I'd had more luggage space and hadn't quit my job a year earlier and thus been on a budget, I would have been tempted to buy at least the royal memorabilia for a British friend. A kayak shop was nearby, although I've forgotten how the negotiations went there and just jotted down that it was too late in the day for rentals — and a realty office and a Drill Hall.

The paddle steamer sternwheeler S.S. Moyie in Kaslo.
It looks taller in person, when not looking from the far side of the street.
September 14, 2024. All rights reserved.

Then we ambled into a café that offered ice cream — tiger and rainbow sherbet was my choice — and muffins (apple & bacon, blueberry) as well as the coffee. The two snug tables could barely fit us, and I felt mildly guilty as other customers came and left without finding a seat. Through the window we could easily see, without leaving our chairs, the comings and goings on the main street. Feeling well fed and relaxed after that — even I, despite my earlier grumpiness — we happily took our leave from Kaslo and returned to New Denver for the evening.

Holidays and the Scourge of Homework

I am beginning to suspect that finding a student job in an app is like a small pyramid scheme, if I understand pyramid schemes correctly. Before your application is accepted, I am getting the impression that 1. it is better to get a food health certificate (€30 if done through the public Health Office), 2. acquire new clothes (I might be a little eccentric in not having black suit trousers already, but I don't like the expensive idea of filling that gap in my closet), 3. own a pair of hard-toed safety shoes for factory/warehouse work, and 4. preferably already have job experience in a relevant mini-job, tracked in the app. (Investing some funds makes sense, but I'd prefer to find a job that doesn't have these prerequisites first, then to use some of the proceeds toward certificates and clothing.)

Regardless of the truth of this pessimistic assessment, I had better luck — as usual — finding volunteer work. Today I woke up incredibly early by my standards (7:30 a.m.), then toddled off to a Berlin food bank for what promised to be a long and stinky four hours of sifting through vegetables and fruit rotting in the summer heat. Instead, miraculously, three fellow volunteers (in their twenties and thirties) and I were set to distribute non-perishable food into black plastic crates that will be delivered to charities around Berlin. We packed over 150 crates with noodles, flour, rice, soup cans, tomato sauce, mayonnaise (since I detest it I would always pack one jar per crate whereas other volunteers packed two), cucumber pickles, apple sauce, bottled cherries, chili con carne spice mix, coffee creamer, sugar, etc. As refreshments we were given soft drinks and chocolate bars, so the snack I had packed for myself wasn't necessary. And the food bank staffer who was directing us was good about making sure that we were set up with everything we needed to work — tables, cardboard recycling bin, the food for the crates. He was at hand at once to inspect the situation when I stepped on a piece of glass, broke it, and briefly froze because I wondered if the shards would cut through my shoe sole. It was still stinky volunteer work, firstly because a fraction of the non-perishable food had been delivered broken open and decomposing, and secondly because the crates had been re-used from the fruit and vegetable section and we still had to remove some of the remnants. But it was far less stinky. And for once as I went home I still had a spring in my step — and marzipan in my bag that I was given because the food bank could not use it due to its alcohol content.

On the way home I saw that a building beside the railway tracks had evidently suffered a fire, broken white slabs of something scattered out the rear door where firefighters had presumably tossed them, windows empty of glass, and a gaping hole in the roof. I thought there was still a whiff of woodsmoke in the air. I took photos and saved them for my 'Blaulicht' folder, where I keep stock images of police cars, ambulances and the like in case I ever report on something crime-adjacent. Crime itself I want to avoid, because it's depressing and doesn't feel like my business as long as the relevant authorities are handling it. At home I checked if the fire had been reported in the news, saw that it had seemingly not been reported, and presumed that nobody was injured and that I wasn't a vampire for taking the sensationalist shots.

Since the volunteer outing I've done another of my daily workload of about forty-five minutes of reading the pages of the Kapodistrias biography that we were assigned over the holidays. It looks like I have at least 40 hours of work on that class alone to go. This homework will surely be good for me in terms of learning Greek. But a feeling of ire does arise when I reflect that, when finally reaching the end of a semester of lectures and seminars full of migraines, anxiety and pressure, and the intermittent loss of what felt like all of my personal and social life, as well as budgeting and inter alia doing a lot of home cooking to save money, not to mention sitting in an apartment that is partially messy due to me and that I'd been hoping to spring-clean, I am still chained to my desk doing hours of work for university instead of being able to call it done. Not to mention that plans to swim in a lake, travel to Oranienburg, visit free art and history exhibitions, or go on wild journalistic adventures are being pushed further into the distance. None of the grades or participation marks for any of my classes have been posted yet, either, so the feeling of 'not being done' is not just caused by the biography, the upcoming exam, or the three essays I need to write. Why may I not have actual holidays? That said, of course millions of people have had to take (or seek) jobs and study and save money simultaneously, so it is difficult to feel that self-pity is justified.

On a happier note, I also baked a gingerbread loaf cake recipe that turned out nicely, and went shopping at the local zero-waste shop. On a less happy note, the model of zero-waste shops seems to have perilously thin profit margins: the opening hours have been further reduced so that the shop is closed Tuesdays as well as Mondays. The cashiers and owner have shown signs of strain especially in the past two weeks or so, but before seeing the opening hours change I'd wondered if I was imagining things. [Update: I felt chattier than usual when shopping there again after writing this post. After I asked how long the new opening hours have been in effect, the shop's owner told me that it's something they also did last year during the school holidays. The reason: Berlin empties too much in late July, so standing around not serving (m)any customers is an expensive luxury.]

Sunset Days of the Summer Semester

It's the first day after the university summer semester, and it's been quite busy.

Last night, my mother went off for the next leg of her walking pilgrimage, which is still leading her through eastern France. It sounds like it was literally rocky today, but at least she has eaten a square meal for dinner.

One of my brothers had contracted what seems to be food poisoning, and was sleeping like a log in his room.

I was a bit unsettled on the whole and woke up before 6 a.m., before going back to bed and waking up before 10 a.m. It was far earlier than I usually wake up unless prompted by educational or vocational obligation. But it was worth it to see my once-ill brother happily zipping about his morning routine, well rested and ready to face the world again.

Since then I went on an errand, played one or two pieces from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier as well as an arrangement of an Edith Piaf song on the piano, and read the news (in my neighbourhood, there were a few very happy Spain soccer fans who let off firecrackers, honked their horns, and shouted in a primeval manner after midnight at the end of the World Cup final).

For university I did half an hour each of Greek grammar exercises and reading the Kapodistrias biography. Besides I emailed the Greek-Russian literature professor for help approving the topic for my end-of-term paper.

But aside from that I am quite focused on finding work, as I might otherwise have trouble paying my way in eight months' time.

***

In September, fortunately, I will be working as an exit poll helper for Germany's public media, just as hoped. The contract is signed, sealed and delivered. It will earn me €170 plus reimbursement for expenses incurred e.g. travel.

Fortuitously, a fellow student elections helper also told me in May about an app for student jobs.

I've signed up for the app now, although divulging a plethora of personal information over the internet went against the grain. Since then a cornucopia of possibilities has spread before me, with jobs that are a lot more realistic for me as a student than the 20-hour-per week jobs that are usually presented as 'flexible' but seem to me to leave ludicrously little time for homework, transit, etc. Warehouse sorting, bartending help, dishwashing, promoting high fashion brands, restocking medicines and accessories, cashier gigs, waitressing, etc. ... at any hour of the night or day.

The app offers online training for food service work and for grocery store cashier work, which combine written text with instructional videos. I was skeptical as to their value, but realized while watching them that they really might save a manager/onboarding employee from having to explain too many details at once to a student jobber. Having breezed through the food service work (a few tips, like that it's easier to polish silverware when it's somewhat wet from the dishwasher, were already familiar) I am finding the cash register introduction more daunting. It's nothing like the cashier work that I once did at the family bookshop. But I've been working on the tutorial in installments today.

All qualms aside, I can't deny that I find this job-search exciting. It's thrilling to think of catching up on experiences that I never had as a teenager, or even as a twenty-something student.

Strawberries and Exams

In two weeks, the university seminars will be officially over, except insofar as there are two essays to write (Greek history, Greek/Russian literature) and one exam (Greek language) before I will receive credit for my courses.

Besides feeling apprehensive about a class presentation where I am supposed to compare a Spanish and a Portuguese Renaissance epic, I feel apprehensive about the spoken Spanish exam on Thursday. That said, I've learned a few tricks from past failures. Firstly, half the battle is won if I've gotten enough sleep the night before, because vocabulary magically comes to mind and I can present neatly structured material then. Secondly, re-reading the news articles and re-watching the videos that the professor shared with us a) refreshes the information, and b) ensures that I never run out of material to talk about. But as there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, as the saying goes, the most important trick is to remember to take my own advice.

It's been delightfully cold — and one might say autumnal — since our descent into the infernal a week or two ago (I am trying to repress the memory) by way of 38°C peak temperatures. That said, the windy weather has made me a little less enthusiastic about cycling.

'My' tree has still only had about 15% of the rain that it needs over the past 30 days. That said, the agricultural realm seems to be doing well, and the usual German strawberries, blueberries and red currants are thronging into the shelves of the grocery stores.

Beautiful British Columbia: Our September 2024 Holiday, Part Seven

Carpenter Creek, New Denver
September 13, 2024
All rights reserved.

AFTER we visited the Japanese-Canadian internment centre in New Denver, we walked back toward the inn. First we passed through the thinly sprinkled trees at a campground beside the lakeshore. As we wandered along the beach and over the large smoothed pebbles, as crickets chirped and woodsmoke floated on the air.

For dinner we went to the restaurant that adjoins the inn. The dining room in the back of the restaurant reminded me of Social Studies (i.e. history) classes in Canadian school. Its decor was a mixture of time periods: a fan-shaped lamp hung from the ceiling, oil paintings of landscapes as well as of people dressed in 18th?-century attire apparently somewhere in Eastern Canada or the US hung on the walls above the wainscoting. Swing music played from unobtrusive loudspeakers. The tablecloths were mulberry-red and I worried about dropping any food on them. Flowers from the garden beds were sprinkled in vases on the tables: yellow dusty miller or white yarrow? I don't remember. A grandfather in a plaid shirt and baseball cap was dining with his grandson in one corner of the room, and at the end of the meal they played on the floor. The inn owner family's grandchild was roaming around all the tables and intermittently vanishing into the kitchen with a quietly cheeky air.

A man and woman were the other guests, sitting in the opposite corner. As they chatted with the current owners, we found out that they were the inn's previous owners. The pair had run the place for (I seem to recall) thirteen years. When we were woven into the discussion, they told us about the inn's past life. In the 1970s, I think, the inn had been named in honour of Lucerne in Switzerland, before being renamed after the park on the other side of Slocan Lake. The pair bought it and ran it for many years. They reminisced about the boom and bust cycles of working at an inn: long periods of inactivity, even with the year-round influx of mountain cyclists in summer and snowmobilers in winter. They evidently had few, or no, regrets about passing the torch.

Besides, the former inn owner mused about the social changes in New Denver, likely applicable to British Columbian towns in general: new people moving in, people speaking to each other on their smartphones instead of meeting each other in person, young people travelling off for jobs in remote areas, for weeks at a time, returning too tired to leave their houses and go out in the village. I guess that in a city like Berlin the social change is not dissimilar, although it might be easier to notice the change if one lives in a village.

As for the food, one of the brothers ordered a wild sockeye salmon burger with fries. But above all we shared sweet & sour chicken, spring rolls with dipping sauce, dumplings with soy sauce and green onion, beef ginger chicken, and sweet & sour pork. It was Hong Kong food as we'd never had it before, because it had elements of home cooking rather than the familiar conventions of restaurant fare made for a large crowd. Green onions from the garden and lemon slipped into the sweet-and-sour sauce, and I liked it. It felt like being invited over to a friend's house.

To drink I had chrysanthemum tea, which came in greenish-yellow buds. The inn owner daughter also recommended that we try a new ginger ale brand, brewed in Victoria, so we did; in Berlin I also like to compare the taste of German ginger ale (generally more pungent and dry) to the Canadian ginger ale brands we grew up with, and this Victoria brand was the first time that I had ginger ale that tastes like cooked ginger root rather than raw ginger root.

For the dessert, the grandmother — who was doing the cooking — brought us apple fritters as an extra: fried with fruit which her grandson had picked from a tree across the street, dusted with powdered sugar.

After that, pleased with everything, we went to our rooms.

***

September 14, 2024

Next morning, as I recorded in my notebook, I woke up before 6 a.m.

Walking downslope through the town, it was a relief to see rain and mist clinging to the mountains across the lake. Hopefully they were quenching more of the forest fires — although it was always hard to tell what was mist and what was smoke. The reddish mountain ash berries glowed in New Denver's streets, and (intentional) woodsmoke rose from a house's chimney. We saw one or two For Sale signs on the buildings. No bears in sight, but we did spot what I thought was a hawk.

Sign near the waterfront, New Denver
September 14, 2024
All rights reserved.

In the restaurant, the radio was playing 1980s hits like "Down Under" and "Eye of the Tiger," as we ordered coffee, Earl Grey tea, and chrysanthemum tea. The brothers had one of the omelettes with toast, as far as I recall, as well as Belgian waffles with blueberry jam and whipping cream, and French toast with maple syrup. Uncle Pu and/or I ordered porridge, too.

Uncle Pu was asked how he would like the porridge prepared. He was ready with an answer, since he has a patented way in which he prepares it for breakfast. He explained that he likes it served with brown sugar and milk on the side, and — when asked — specified that the milk should be 3.8%... Unfortunately for the restaurant, Canadian milk that is not skimmed seems to come in 3.25% or some other fat percentage, unlike German milk. But, when it was reported to him, Uncle Pu accepted this divergence willingly. I did feel bad that there was any doubt that we'd accept the infinitesimally less creamy milk... Either way, the porridge was tasty.

Then Uncle Pu roamed around the town with us again. We stopped at the Catholic church of St. Anthony's (1929): there, he said, he had met the priest and rung the bell a few times when he was a child. Afterwards we passed the Knox Presbyterian Hall, built 1897, now a non-denominational community hall.

Old fire station, New Denver.
No longer in use; as of 2024 I think it was partly or wholly owned
by a tree maintenance company.
September 13, 2024
License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Returning to the inn, Uncle Pu engaged one of the owner's family in talk about geothermal energy, and I cryptically noted that there was mention of "exploitative rentals of gold mining equipment by stock listed companies (TSX)." Which I guess refers to the veins of various precious and semi-precious metals that still lurk in the British Columbia hills, luring modern-day heirs to the gold fevers that once populated the Yukon, Cariboo and Sacramento. Meanwhile, the housekeeper (wearing an apron) was on her rounds and knocking on doors.

As we headed outdoors again, we had (in my case, for the first time) a quintessential North American experience, namely a visit to an outdoor outfitter's shop. I was so awed that I kept a long mental list of items:

canoe paddle covers, pots, pans, water bottles, water purification kits, water purification tabs, forks, spoons, bear spray, bear klaxon, whistles, lifevest for dogs?, swimwear, tops, hiking trousers, puffer jackets, paddles, knives, axes, maps, books about bear attacks and mushrooms, fuel canisters, sunscreen, flares

Sale signs were prolific, given the end of the holiday season, and I guess we probably felt doubly welcome. Uncle Pu chatted with the shop's owner, who stood behind her son at the cash register. (The store is a franchise, which has outlets with other owners in, for example, Victoria.)

I think he was at the time embarked on his months-long quest to find Gore-Tex hiking trousers with a certain number of layers of fabric, so that was one topic. (In Berlin's sports stores, he had failed to find his Holy Grail: one salesperson explained that they only carry the cheaper apparel in-store, and that online shopping is the likelier option.) But he also winkled out the information that the outfitter would be running kayak rentals the following year. In the end he bought, for example, two waterproof bags that can be used in kayaks to prevent one's valuables from becoming soaked or sunken.

Then, at the owner's recommendation, we drove to a boat rental in the nearby town of Slocan, thirty kilometres away. I continued to worry that we were on a lemming mission and that I'd see my uncle and all of my brothers be lost to Davy Jones's locker if they did go kayaking. (Whether this fear was rational, or irrational — and if the latter, if it was inspired by my father's sudden death — I guess I'll leave to any future therapist to decide.)

In consequence, I felt little sense of grievance when Uncle Pu surmised that the area's kayak store owners were engaged in a conspiracy to keep tourists off the water and away from the far shores of the National Park, to avoid risking people's lives through the wildfires there. I also still had no intention whatsoever of climbing into a boat myself, although I feared that this would seem like girlish timidity and let down the feminist cause.

Instead I was sunken in foreboding gloom. That said, the foreboding gloom was needless. Slocan's kayak rental was closed — the owner clearly cheerfully convinced that the season was over anyway and that a spontaneous vacation was in order.

Red and black trees after forest fires; mist and possibly smoke,
in Slocan. September 14, 2024.
All rights reserved.

By way of compensation, we went on a road trip to the ghost town of Sandon and the former steamship vacation destination of Kaslo.

Flowers, a Spanish Essay and Sewing

We're expecting 33°C weather tomorrow. So while lush May and early June flowers remain — like elderflower, jasmine, and bellflowers — especially in the shaded hedges, and the linden trees are still diffusing a lovely fragrance from their pale leaf-petals, I expect everything green and bright will become withered and straw-like sooner or later. It is a particularly bad year for rain, but I still can't water the trees in the neighbourhood because the street water pump is still out of service; the RBB news network has even run an article about the widespread problem of non-operational pumps. (This malfunctioning is also a spanner in the works of Berlin's emergency planning, because the Notbrunnen are meant to be a back-up resource for civilians.)

While frantically cycling between universities — again, it's sadly a necessity every Thursday due to my schedule this summer — I noticed that the diesel(?) price at a gas station has finally dipped to 181 cents per litre. Thanks, probably, to the Memorandum of Understanding that was just signed between Iran and the United States.

I've been struggling with overstimulation at university: due to the Franco presentation, then an in-class essay, regular homework, and bouts of migraines/tension headaches that make it impossible to do homework.

The 600-word, Spanish-language in-class essay was especially stressful as I didn't quite know how to prepare for it. Nevertheless, at first it went beautifully. I was well-rested before writing it, the argumentative structures were neat, and I recollected many pertinent details from our semester materials, etc. (Of course I did make mistakes, but still.) ... Then the professor alerted us: we had 5 minutes left. Sadly, it was impossible to transfer the rest of of my draft essay text to the final version paper in that time.

My main consolations (besides a fairly decent class attendance record, and the successful tackling of much of my prescribed readings and homework) have been 1. the fairly warm atmosphere amongst my classmates and professors, and 2. little discoveries along the route to campus — like random police officers standing on deserted sidewalks and foxes trotting into the underbrush.

*

Another factor in the overstimulation has been performing in my choir's two summer concerts. That said, I enjoyed the first one hugely, and Mama, T. and J. came to watch it. It was just that practicing the songs at home before the concert, to avoid singing off rhythm and out of tune, is stressful.

(It was only when they and I walked home together after the event that J. divulged the details of his highly adventurous afternoon. He and Ge. capsized their canoe in one of Berlin's southwestern lakes, soaked their shoes and clothes and wallets in evil-smelling water, and ruined a smartphone and a digital camera (which now have to be replaced). But they were wearing life jackets, and they were in such a shallow area that they were able to wade through the mucky urban lake bottom to terra firma. Meanwhile Gi., staying perfectly dry and on top of the water surface in his kayak, helped steer the canoe to the shore.

As a temporary measure, J. is enjoying the use of my old smartphone — the phone that I was phasing out because its battery has been bulging, a little alarmingly, for months.)

Ge. had already wisely decided to stay at home instead of attending the concert, since he would work an early shift the next day. So he recovered at leisure from the canoeing shenanigans.

The second concert has not happened yet. It will be on Sunday: part of the Fête de la Musique.

***

On Wednesday, I had a brief phone interview for a one-day job that I am very excited about: conducting voter polling during the next Berlin city government election, on behalf of one of Germany's two big public television channels. They have promised to contact me again, with a positive or negative response, in July or August.

I'm also keeping an eye out for other jobs to help fill the summer holidays. (No news from the political think tank, mentioned in the last blog post, yet.)

I am growing increasingly cranky about worrying about my spending.

My latest flight of anxiety: Even buying darning wool for my socks at €1.20 per package now seems extravagant. So I thought to ask the local zero-waste shop if I could have the packing yarn that is used to sew shut some of the bags of food. Happily the staff said yes, were delighted by the idea because they've just been throwing away the yarn, and have already given me the first string. But, to be honest, I felt a little embarrassed...

The round of socks that I mended over the past months is beginning to dissolve into holes now, which is deflating my morale. But I have mended a pair of pajama pants as well, and that made me feel very accomplished.

Dim Pages of History, and Hunting for Work

Today was well below 30°C but humid and warmer than I'd like again. Exhausted from the past week and the Franco dictatorship presentation preparation — I was practically reading articles and taking notes night and day for a while, and on the day of the presentation I had to cycle from the Freie Universität to the Humboldt Universität and back again (I only had 30 minutes to do each trip if I wanted to arrive to class on time; but it takes at least 45 minutes for me, if not 50, so I was chronically late) — I only got up around 11 a.m.

Then my siblings returned from their travels to Ireland, sleep-deprived but happy, and we feasted on porter cake, Oxford cake, and vanilla fudge that they had brought back. We postponed the viewing of their travel photos to a later date. In the evening, Uncle Pu popped by for a visit.

My only outing was shopping: at the zero waste store, for eggs, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and tomato passata.

***

Friday was easier, university-wise.

In the afternoon the Greek History professor gave his usual video class. He was, lamentably!, confident that we had all read the prescribed texts and therefore did not need to be told year by year what happened during the Greek Civil War. But after the Franco research, and last week's immersion in the Pontic genocide after World War I and the fall of Constantinople in my other Greek classes, I was all warfare'd out. Before the class I'd opened up the website that hosts our course materials, twice, and tested myself by looking at the links he had posted; it was rather as if I'd had the stomach flu and were checking if I could stand the thought of eating certain foods again. But both times I felt an instant aversion. So I definitely have not read the prescribed texts, did need to be told year by year what happened during the Greek Civil War, and will have to review that material in future.

***

This week I also did my personal household accounting for May. It was of course easy, given my somewhat limited set of expenses and a very limited set of incomes. My largest cost centres are the rent, food, and health insurance.

Then I sent off an application for a job at a political think thank that would require 10 hours of work per week.

In general I feel uncomfortable about figuring out which jobs to apply for and how to configure my CV. Firstly, I haven't entirely figured out which way I want my career to go, secondly I have many interests, thirdly I wish I'd had at least one other full-time job of 2 years or more to fill out my job history (my volunteer work timeline feels more impressive than my paid work timeline), fourthly my 40 years of living are breathing down my neck, and lastly I'm sitting on many fences when it comes to junior vs. senior qualifications. The pragmatic thing to do would be to finally self-study math, statistics, computer architecture and computer programming, and put my last full-time job to good use. But another central problem, aside from qualifications, is that I detest tooting my own horn, and (to paraphrase Burns) have never been given the gift to see myself as others see me.

Telegrams of Student Life in Early Summer

It's the time of year where it makes less sense to sit indoors with one's nose in a university notebook or one's face in front of a computer screen all day, but the homework load is keeping me busy.

Roses and elderflowers perfume the air when I cycle to campus, and the beauty bushes with their whitish flowers and dabs of orange always remind me of the garden that Opapa planted in Canada.

I've been exchanging emails about the tutoring volunteer work that I've wanted to do with refugee children here in Berlin. So far it's still unclear whether it will happen, because the children are understandably reluctant to fill their schedules with more academic drill.

In any case, once the pressure from university releases a little, I'm planning to volunteer at the food-sorting place again.

The same goes for amateur-journalistic enterprises — given the class presentations that I need to prepare for, e.g. 10 minutes about Francisco Franco's dictatorship in Spain, I don't have as much time for projects as I'd like.

Today I played the piano again, but it wasn't very exciting: I was trying out sight-reading primers for children who are taking lessons. Admittedly the scores were zeitgeisty, and I'm quite sure they're left over from my Aunt Nora's piano teacher years in Washington state and in Canada.

I earned money last week by helping people vote in the student elections. This year's were quieter than last year's. For example, there were far fewer parties and candidates. I think this is partly explained by the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and a détente between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups and the university administration. Fortunately the voter turnout was higher this year — at least in the polling station I was at.

And this evening I cooked a lentil soup with leek, onion, carrot, potato, parsnip, parsley, and Vienna sausages, with one garlic clove, for dinner. Maybe next time I'll use a recipe so that the proportions of vegetables are better, but the family liked it anyway.

Summer Research and the Life Story of Tante Lieschen

Morbidly, perhaps, I've taken to doing family history research journeys during university holidays, taking the Holocaust and Nazi era as my focus.

*

Last summer holidays I started by looking at my great-great-grandmother's sister. My father's paternal family wasn't religiously Jewish any more in the 1930s, due to converting to the Protestant faith before the 20th century. Largely they had assimilated — a practice which I gather became controversial amongst 20th century Zionist-leaning thinkers like Gershom Scholem. But, as my grandfather's Ahnenpass reflected, in the 1930s he was considered part-Jewish, and some of his living relatives were considered even more Jewish and thus were in great danger. (In the early 2000s, as he was tidying up and we also went through his sister's papers to see what to keep, I remember that we found both of their Ahnenpässe.)

My grandfather wrote in his memoirs, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, that his 'Tante Lieschen' had died due to the Holocaust. So last summer I was interested in learning more about her life story. It felt especially urgent because of world events: if the Holocaust is only remembered when it is used as a cudgel to justify killing civilians in the Middle East today, or suppressing pro-Palestinian activism in Germany, I am certain that it does the victims of the Holocaust a disservice. Regardless of what my Jewish ancestors and relatives would have thought and felt about the political situation — it is, of course, impossible to know that, although I can say with certainty that in the early 2000s my grandfather sympathized with my father's opinions that Israel's Likud governments went too far — I felt it was important to shed post-World War political interpretations and go back to what we do know about the real people who were affected by the Holocaust.

As others have already researched my family's history in great depth, I found an online biography of Tante Lieschen: her real first name was Elisabeth. She was born into a family of medical researchers at the Charité in Berlin. One of them wrote about transgender identity at a time where I gather it was not often discussed, let alone accepted. After taking care of her sick mother for years, Tante Lieschen ended up (if I remember correctly) in a care home in Potsdam or southwestern Berlin, in her seventies. I don't know if she herself was in the crosshairs of the Nazis early on. But her brother, a politician in Potsdam, incurred the Nazis' ire when he wanted their flag taken off a public building. Eventually a relative of ours found out that she was about to be arrested and transported to a concentration camp. He passed on this information to Tante Lieschen, who took her own life.

My great-great-grandmother, meanwhile, was whisked away to Sweden until it was safe to return to Germany. I felt weird about the situation while reading the biography, and since I've done my research there's been anecdotal evidence to support my doubts. Recently one of my relatives was talking about Tante Lieschen and my great-great-grandmother in a different context. It sounds like the family paid millions of Mark to the Nazis to buy my great-great-grandmother's freedom, but that there wasn't money left over for Tante Lieschen. Perhaps 'Sophie's Choice' is not the right term here, but it is a horrible situation to decide which of two sisters lives and which dies.

To round out the story, at any rate, I found out to my surprise that Elisabeth is buried in Kreuzberg, in a cemetery on the Mehringdamm that I've visited before. It surprised me even more because I thought that the Nazi government buried Jewish Germans in separate cemeteries on the outskirts of the city, or that Tante Lieschen was buried elsewhere in Germany; but it turns out that her remains were transferred to that graveyard years after World War II ended. Visiting the cemetery, I found her resting place: tucked in a black-fenced plot, alongside her siblings and parents, as sunshine and evergreen branches and ivy framed the rather formal monuments. It felt even more personal because my grandfather's cousin, whom I have met, is buried opposite.

Tante Lieschen's story also, however, made me realize the complexity of trying to de-politicize the Holocaust: her brother Ernst's children emigrated to Israel, and one descendant died fighting in a mid-to-late 20th-century war. I can't in good conscience give an interpretation of what her life means for the present day, because it may clash with the interpretations of her closer relatives.

Step-Stones for the Summer Semester

University is inching closer and closer: the summer semester formally resumes on Monday. In preparation, I've signed up for my classes online. So far I've received no response to my application for helping with the student parliament elections. But I've been reviewing elementary Greek grammar exercises, hoping to build a stronger foundation for the next semester. In that sense, my preparations are complete, although a few castles-in-the-air that I had last semester — e.g. reading Spanish literature, reviewing Greek history, finishing the essay about a Spanish playwright in comparison with Molière, and/or reading Isaac Babel about Odessa — would have been a good idea to round out the curriculum...

In the meantime, this evening I went to a volunteer get-together for an organization that supplies refugee housing centres with locals willing to lead sports, sewing or art activities, help with homework, and organize outings.

The get-together was near Tempelhofer Feld. I was a little antsy riding my bicycle toward this area because my stereotype of Neukölln is that nobody obeys the laws of traffic and everyone (being in a great hurry) has a lead foot on the gas/bicycle pedal. The streets, often being older, are also often narrower. Needless to say, all my stereotypes were confirmed. Due to my blundering I also managed to take two wrong turns before realizing and correcting my mistakes. Anyway, at the event we gathered at will at different tables of five to six people, sipping lemonades, water, beer, and wine that the organizers had made available. Then we cooked Mediterranean-style dips, salads, a vegetable and rice stir-fry, garlic flatbread, rice with lentils, and muffins together, which took about three hours. At the end we sat down and ate.

It was, predictably, a friendly and diverse group of volunteers and organizers: others mentioned that they were, for instance, from Argentina, Hungary, Italy, India, Paraguay, Syria, and Ukraine. One or two children and a dog (it was as large as a collie, and I thought moderately but not bumptiously sociable) roamed around amongst us young adults/adults. There were a few glitches in food safety that both horrified and amused me, but while I've already told my family the details I don't think I'll go into them here.

In 2-4 weeks my police certificate of good conduct should (hopefully) have been printed and sent back by the authorities, proving that I'm safe company. Then I'll be tutoring, accompanying refugees to bureaucratic appointments, or both. Likely on Mondays, when it looks like I won't have any classes this semester, and/or on Saturdays. I've been soul-searching about my past volunteering and have come to the conclusion that it's more helpful for organizers if I really treat volunteering like a job, carefully arriving on time etc. (instead of being late, as I've been many a time for clothes-sorting or food sorting...).

A volunteer coordinator gave me advice about being a volunteer, when I asked her:

1. Do communicate to the coordinator, letting them know of problems. It's better than worrying about being a bother or assuming that things are supposed to be dysfunctional ... and letting problems escalate. But being independent is good at the same time.

2. Don't expect adult refugees to be full of energy and enthusiasm for new activities; they're often exhausted and struggling to adjust to living a life that they never expected.

3. If you start dreading going to volunteering appointments or start being unhappy in general, recognize your limits and stop what you're doing.

It seems like good advice, so I've noted it for later.

Fish and Chips, and More Spring

Last night we passed into Daylight Savings Time (I'd prefer to keep winter time, especially as I am not an early bird), but I still woke up early.

T. rang the doorbell for the weekly weekend journey to a bouldering gym with the siblings. The last weeks I hadn't gone because I felt too sleepy.

We went to a gym in the bowels of a post-war building, past a glass door and an Edeka. It was fairly empty. So we didn't need to wait for other boulderers before we could begin. Soon Gi. — who had been delayed by road closures due to the Berlin Half Marathon — joined us, too. My siblings can do difficulty level 4 and 5 courses, but after doing two difficulty level 1 course and one level 3, I ran out of steam. My hands felt too painful to keep going; because since I haven't bouldered lately the skin isn't hardened enough, even if I apply a lot of chalk. That said, regularly cooking and washing dishes by hand for at least 2 months has serendipitously strengthened my arm muscles.

In the meantime, our mother has impulsively ridden the train off to her hometown to meet for coffee with some of our uncles and aunts. She'll be back tomorrow, and so far the journey seems to have been a nice slice of family and early spring flowers in the German countryside.

The past week has been a change from routine in more ways, too.

*

Yesterday, I took photographs and notes on a protest about American politics, and saw part of the Berlin Half Marathon festivities as well as a pro-Palestinian protest on the way.

The weather was too cold and windy for (probably) any of us to enjoy standing for over an hour, although I was pleased that my hands weren't too chilly to operate my pen or smartphone.

To go on a tangent: I'm a bit surprised that more American expatriates aren't protesting. It's true that having worked for a US company I understand the concern that political activity can kill a career if one nosy person complains. Yet I don't see the efficacy of sitting at home on one's rear end, if one wants a change. Admittedly I think this skepticism is stronger because I have the chance to see that action is effective firsthand in my amateur journalism: it's not possible to raise awareness of points of view or of how strongly they're held if I have no people and no signs to photograph in public, whereas from the moment people and signs appear in public, the nucleus of a blog post or social media post exists. Passersby respond in real time, too.

Besides I think there's a basic logic to political activity. The more people stay quiet, the easier it remains to retaliate against employees for holding political opinions in their personal lives. It may get worse and worse indefinitely. But if everyone were to firmly state their (reasoned) opinions, employers would have no replacements left to hire.

                                                                                    

Regardless, on Saturday the American protest's organizers struck a cautious note about demonstrating being effective. 'This isn't activism,' a speaker in her fifties told the audience, 'this is just for community. We need to go out and do more after this.' Voting, writing letters to Congresspeople, donating, and repeating all of the above, was what she and others advised. But the speakers' outlook on the efficacy of voting was also pessimistic, because the SAVE Act could undo any hope of voting from abroad. Privately I'm wondering if even a general strike would make any difference to improving civic life in the United States; I suspect that workers' rights in general and labour unions in particular are a lot weaker now than they were during the 1960s, for example, so employers could easily throw people out of work. Do I think, on a personal level, that it's sad and angering that US citizens seem to be reduced to begging for democratic rights, which we've been told for decades were practically copyrighted by the States? — Yes.

The speaker did strike a note of optimism when she recounted the story of Mary Manning, the Irish store clerk whose refusal to handle produce from apartheid South Africa ended up playing a large role in the economic boycotts of the 1980s.

*

Returning to personal life, the other departures from routine were, for example, our trip to an Irish pub last weekend. The pub: exposed brick walls in a pre-war residential building with peeling plaster, English Premier League games on the 'telly' and loud whoops from the audience, and bubbling table surfaces that seemed to be made from orange laminate that doesn't take well to acidic cleaning liquids. One of the waitstaff was Irish, judging by the stereotypical lilt, and she called something 'grand' when she was pleased. The restaurant outing was a reward after a bicycle outing to the Drachenberg, a hill in the southwest of the city that was also teeming with other Berliners out for exercise and a panoramic view of the city. We all ordered fish and chips, except for T., who had a chicken burger.

The weather was and is still kind of grim, the trees largely still ashen as they were in winter. But in addition to all the other flowers I've mentioned in past weeks, the intense blue hyacinth blossoms are also out, as well as sparkling golden maple tree blossoms. The green hazel foliage and lilac leaf buds, too, are more intense.

An Ordinary Day in Springtime

Pursuant to the freewheeling university holidays, I woke up well after 11 a.m. today to find the sun shining. The daffodil and tulip leaves on my windowsill are flourishing, and only one set of arugula sprouts has wilted in my egg carton seedling garden.

In the early afternoon (after a dutiful, if uncharacteristic, round of housework) I went shopping at the zero-waste store, and came back with potatoes, flour, an apple, two clementine oranges, and — for Easter — gummy worms. Over the past year or so I've grown sick and tired of cramming plastic packages into the recycling during Christmas and Easter. So this year I've assembled fruit gummies and chocolates in jars and English tea tins to serve as a base for our Easter brunch. Returning to the regular groceries, it's apparently still too early for rhubarb and asparagus in Germany. (Although you can get 500 grams of asparagus for over 9€, from Greece.) But lamb's lettuce and miner's lettuce (Postelein) are abundant.

On the way home I admired the plum blossoms that are appearing in the neighbourhood, and the blazing yellow forsythia bushes. The earliest wrinkly green leaves are brightening the hazel bushes, and more daffodil blossoms emerge every day. Even the first early red-and-yellow tulip has budded. Meanwhile the squills, snowdrops, winter aconites, and crocuses are hanging on despite the warmer temperatures.

Yesterday I'd checked the street water pump: sadly it is not yet functional. But rain is forecast again for tomorrow.

When I arrived back home, for dinner I made potato scones with flecks of fresh parsley. For 'dessert' there was a mid-20th-century granola recipe: it ended up very crumbly and tasted incongruously like popcorn, but everyone liked it.

And, as a treat after my last grocery shopping trip of the day, I bought myself the latest paper issue of the Tagesspiegel and read a few pages. I've already read the free neighbourhood magazines for February and March, which are obligingly laid out at the local grocery stores, so I figured that this extra reading would not be too overwhelming.

Lastly, in the evening, some of us watched the news together: the classic line-up of Berlin news from 7:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., and then the Tagesschau from 8 to 8:15 p.m.

Saturday Brunch and a Few Minutes with Antifa

This morning I met up with one of my aunts, who's visiting Berlin, in the northeast of the city. Going there on my bicycle, it wasn't exactly fun to ride streets seemingly designed for narrow 18th-century carriage traffic, with cobblestones and dangerous tram tracks, large delivery vans and car drivers with a need for speed, from a road safety perspective. But on the whole I enjoyed the journey, since I don't otherwise get out to that neighbourhood much anymore and of course I was looking forward to the meet-up.

The two of us had tea, quiche and cake together and talked. And then we strolled out for an ice cream. The streets were peaceful considering that the area is a hipster mecca; we did not have to wait in line with fifty (I exaggerate slightly) families for our gelato, which is often enough the case in Berlin. The cloudy weather likely explained it!

It is a relief that rain is forecast again, because the winter has not been as wet as it should have been. I use an app that tracks Berlin's city trees. Since it's geared up again at the beginning of March (when the trees awake from hibernation) it shows that the past month's rainfall has been ~15.5% of what it should be. That said, the street water pump in the neighbourhood was not yet spouting out any water when I checked it earlier this week, so I haven't been able to start supplying 'my' trees with groundwater again. I could use water left over from rinsing vegetables at home, but since tree roots apparently grow deeper and better if given at least 40 litres at once, I think it would take a week (and a lot of forbearance on my mother's side) to gather the right amount.

I was caught up in an anti-fascist protest on my way home. A huge contingent of police vans had been dispersed in flotillas around the general area. Riot police officers had even been shipped in from Bavaria (their black uniforms had the telltale abbreviation "BY" on the backs) to help the Berlin authorities deal with a plethora of demonstrations. The counter-protest I was caught up in was inspired by a march of a neo-Nazi party. Judging by the speaker whose message was being amplified from a vehicle at the rear of the neo-Nazis, the marchers felt that their freedom of speech was being infringed upon and that the mainstream political parties were no good. I wasn't sure if this allegation of censorship was a reference to the government recently shutting down a publishing house that reprinted the 'greatest hits' of the Nazi era without context or comment.

Riot police on foot and the police vans didn't just surround the march. Eventually one group of officers put on their helmets (generally an indication that things are getting heated) while others performed an uncomfortable trot to keep up with the moving crowd of counter-protestors.

These counter-protestors were mostly, I judged, at least a decade younger than me, so not unlike my classmates at university. One held out a black Antifa flag with logo where the neo-Nazis would see it at the front of the crowd, but most carried neither signs nor flags. Many others clapped their hands, raised their arms, and chanted 'Siamo tutti antifascisti!' To vary the programme, they sometimes chanted "Nazis raus!", and two or three at the front of the crowd silently held up both middle fingers, while another tooted a horn to try to drown out the rightwing protest's messages. A few had muffled their mouths with scarves, a few wore black FFP2 face masks, and one young person wore a keffiyeh around their neck. As a protestor came to stand on the bollard right beside me, I presumed that nobody minded my incongruous presence in a business-casual wool skirt, tights, baby-blue knit sweater, and flowered pink silk scarf.

Eventually the police blocked the counter-protest's progress entirely, perhaps because the street narrowed past this point? The fun was essentially over. I went up to the front of the crowd, explained that I lived in street X, and asked if there'd be any way of getting through within the next 10 minutes. An officer answered, through her face shield, 'Vorerst geht nichts mehr.'

So I took a detour home, feeling a little guilty that I'd enjoyed myself so much when the subject matter of the protests had been serious.

Fortunately the rest of the journey was uneventful. The evening news mentioned that, like other protests in Berlin today, these protests' turnout had been lower than projected. There were no gruesome tales to be told.

Daffodils, Databases and Dates

It's beginning to be spring: the daffodil, leek, and arugula leaves on my windowsill have begun to sprout, and not only the hazel and alder catkins but also the earliest yellow Oregon grape blossoms, crocuses in yellow but also purple and blue, chionodoxa and faded-looking late white snowdrops are out. In front of City Hall, a cluster of daffodil flowers looked ready to burst out of its buds this afternoon.

I successfully finished my Excel course at university, and my holidays will thenceforth be unalloyed until April 13th! We spent the last week finishing an Excel project, which was a slog because I didn't save back-up copies properly and thus had to redo much of it once my instructor pointed out errors that I'd need to fix in order to pass the class. (It's pass/fail, so in that respect the stakes were lower.) But we also went through databases, queries, reports and data-entry forms in Access. I was quite happy that we didn't use Access for work back in my professional life, even if the reports and data-entry forms might have been useful. Because when the instructor let us take a look at the Structured Query Language (SQL) view, all the nested round brackets etc. made the syntax look pretty hairy.

***

As far as the war on Iran goes, the news feels much more bearable if one has a daily routine to immerse one's self in selfishly. Then the moment I hear of the news again, I feel plunged back into a dystopia. For what it's worth, we're hearing in the German news about German travellers who were stranded in the Middle East when airports were being shot at and missiles intercepted over hotel roofs, but also high gas and oil prices. (One Berlin company that uses trucks told the RBB Abendschau frankly that if this situation continues 6 more months, they'll be out of business because there's no way their clients will want to pay for that.) Of course the war itself is also being reported on.

I decided to go by the Iranian embassy in Berlin today to get the lay of the land during this unfortunately historic time. The embassy is on a street of large and fancy villas near the university (Berlin is generally too cramped for buildings of that size, which seem more typical of the rich Babelsberg area between us and Potsdam), not far from the Indian and Jordanian representatives. The Iranian embassy is the only one with a police booth in front. Two male cops were patrolling along the sidewalk, one of them in what looked to me like a formal dress uniform cap that I never see amongst the riot police at protests. They were chatting with each other, seeming relaxed enough, a white-and-red security fence separating them from the street.

In and on the fence of the embassy there were photographs presumably of victims of the latest war, wilted roses, flags of the Islamic Republic, and posters saying 'No War on Iran' and '160 killed on the first day' (referring to the school in Minab). At the same time, across the street, ten or so protestors were playing music and holding the sun-emblazoned flag of the monarchist movement. They have been protesting for weeks, non-stop, under the slogan "Stoppt Hinrichtungen im Iran/Solidarität mit den Bürgerprotesten im Iran."

But I didn't talk with the protestors. I was feeling hungry (no breakfast) and exhausted after my long day, and I didn't want to be a disaster tourist.

To be honest, as a private individual I also think that only one of the Pahlavis who was actually imprisoned for opposing the Shah sounds pretty compelling.

In general, I've been feeling that the war is not an amateur journalism-friendly topic, either. One reason is that the war on Iran seems so inscrutable: if I were working in foreign intelligence, I think I'd have a better grip on things. That said, I suspect that a recent report in the Guardian is the only explanation that makes sense: some American military commanders, certainly also the Ambassador to Israel, and perhaps the Secretary of Defense, are pushing this war, because this military campaign has a Biblical dimension and is linked to their conception of Armageddon.

Either way, the more closely I follow the news, the more contradictions I find. For example, when the tens of thousands of Iranian protestors were killed earlier this year, I read that Israel and Persian Gulf neighbours tried to prevent the U.S. president from attacking Iran's military and police in defense of the protestors, because the Middle Eastern countries were worried about the blowback. But then, right after the war broke out, the Prime Minister of Israel was reported as being the person who had brought up the idea of a military intervention. I've also read that Saudi Arabia's government was pushing for the war.

Another example: Governments like Germany's and Canada's seem to be in favour of the US-Israeli attacks. Yet when they're asked about sending in the military, they rule it out except in a 'defensive role.' But if the war were actually justified, and if the threat to other countries from Iran's military had been so great and time-critical, surely they'd be willing to do their part?

A third example: all of the arguments used by those who want to attack Iran would apply just as well to Russia (threat of nuclear war) or Saudi Arabia (religious extremism and misogyny, besides which I think the Trump administration wants to give them nuclear technology).

Of course it worries me to feel that governments are being so dishonest. I'm also worried that this war will radicalize people.

In the meantime, Ramadan goes on. The current routine in my neighbourhood is: people in a good mood when I go shopping, crescent moon decorations in the restaurant beneath my family's apartment, dates and water bottles and bread baskets set out on tables for the breaking of the fast, the call of the muezzin at dusk, and families eating al fresco at the tables on the sidewalk.

Turning of the Times

On Saturday morning I woke up incredibly early (by my standards; it was before 6:30 a.m.) and took one of the few bus lines that wasn't affected by the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe strikes to the district Moabit, to volunteer at the Berlin charity that gathers and redistributes leftover food from grocery stores.

It was going quite well. First the reddish sunrise at the Beusselstraße station overlooking the shipping containers, train tracks, and GDR architecture, then arriving early at the warehouse and having a coffee before setting off for a drive. I was accompanying a driver who was doing a tour of grocery stores and a bakery shop in Wedding and Prenzlauer Berg to transfer produce and other food into crates, pack the crates into the charity's van, and then bring everything back to the charity's warehouse. There was little traffic early in the day, and as the driver considerately waved tentative pedestrians across the streets, everyone was relaxed and smiling. Hopping out at the stores, checking in with the cashier or going straight to the fruit & vegetable section to find the earpiece'd employee in charge of sorting out donations, etc. went well too.

Two or so hours later, admittedly, the traffic began to thicken and the sunny temperatures to rise. I began to feel hungry for the snacks I'd packed as the driver lowered the windows for fresh air. But I still felt a sense of adventure and achievement, and enjoyed the sunshine.

Then the local radio channel that was playing pop hits from the 80s and 90s switched to a news break, and the rest of the day was ruined... 'The situation in the Middle East has escalated further as the US and Israel have begun attacking Iran,' said the announcer in German. Then the music resumed.

The energy drained out of me, and I've felt pretty weepy. It's worse because Germany, the UK, and even France's governments have reacted in my view weakly; the solidarity and moral clarity that we saw during the invasion of Ukraine isn't there as a comfort. It enrages me to think of the Israeli government plane sitting on the tarmac of Berlin's airport after being evacuated from the Mediterranean for its safety, as missiles hit Israeli residents who are evidently not being treated with the same care by their government. As for the Canadian government's reaction, let's not even go there.

It's not like I care all that much what happened to the Ayatollah, but I don't think that democracy and safety for Iranians will be instilled into Tehran one bomblet at a time. And besides I have such a low opinion of Trump that I think, given the chance to liberate a Nazi concentration camp, he'd only have done so in order to build a McDonald's (or an outlet of his favourite US corporation du jour) there and use the camp survivors as cheap labour. Hopefully I'm not trivializing the Holocaust by making this comparison. To put it more reasonably, I distrust his motives — the presence of the Energy and Treasury secretaries in the White House situation room as the war began also suggests to me that a primary post-invasion aim is to annex Iran's oil — and I think that shoddy motives lead to shoddy outcomes.

The strikes on the northern coast of the Strait of Hormuz, where the girls' elementary school was hit and over a hundred people died according to the local prosecutor, are I think explained though not excused by this New York Times report. The report says that until 2016 the building was part of a naval base, but since then a wall has separated it off from the base. Satellite surveillance would surely have shown small people regularly drifting in and out before and at the end of the usual school hours? During the Clinton administrations I'm quite sure the president would have been asked to resign by multiple newspaper editorials, and likely leading Republican congresspeople, if he had started a war with this kind of gross error.

Besides it's very disconcerting even from a selfish perspective to have a president in power in the US who seems to start wars as often as, if not more often than, he sneezes. What will happen to Cuba (I think the oil embargo is already extremely cruel), Greenland, Canada, and other countries?

All in all I think the last time I felt this badly, and this depressed, about world events was after September 11th. As the ripples of this new war spread and spread, it seems to suck the joy out of life.

At the same time I have to acknowledge that this war doesn't make civilians in the Gaza Strip or Sudan or Ukraine less dead; there are also other wars going on that are no less terrible.

And, finally, not having lived in Iran myself, I also have to acknowledge that the opinions of people who have lived — and do live — there, matter more than my assessment.