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.]