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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

The Aquatic Archaeology Tour That Wasn't

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

The job search has had to be relaunched.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Adventure at the Job Agency and Further Afield

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday was a little more exciting than expected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And since then things have cleared up quite nicely.

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

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

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

A Trip to the Cafeteria, Trees and Sonatas

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then I cycled back home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is one of my favourite 'new' ones:

https://youtu.be/Bd0TRy41Fxg

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In-person reporting is even better.

***

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

Freelancing, Greek Snacking, and May Sunshine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full Steam Ahead in Greek and Amateur Journalism

It's been as busy a time as ever.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

*

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

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

I found the event quite depressing.

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

A Visit to the Leipziger Buchmesse

It's been many years since my mother and my uncle M. have gone to the Leipzig Book Fair. It takes place in spring at the same time as a Comic Con, is a bit of a festive time in the booksellers' calendar, generally has a theme that is often a country, and draws attention from major German TV broadcasters (ARD, ZDF/3Sat, ARTE). These broadcasters and the Book Fair organizers host podium discussions and other events.

This year's guest country at the Book Fair is Austria.

Back here in Berlin, I've undertaken a journalistic project about the Austrian theme. I still need to finalize it, but it meant cycling around Schöneberg and Kreuzberg on Thursday and yesterday to mini-interview librarians and booksellers about their favourite Austrian books. I even pinged the Austrian embassy in Berlin (which replied, via their cultural forum), and a German Literature professor at the Freie Uni (who hasn't replied). To be honest, it's now mentally associated with so much effort that I can barely stand to talk about it any more!

Thematically, however, I felt that the invasion of Ukraine might be the secondary emphasis at least in the literary events. This is the first Leipzig Book Fair that's taken place in person, instead of virtually, since the invasion happened, which may help explain it.

Major prizes have also been handed out to a handful of lucky authors. I'm currently reading one of the prizewinning authors' works: Unser Deutschland Märchen by Dinçer Güçyeter. It is an accessibly written, topically tough book (is it semi-autobiographical fiction?) about multiple generations of a Turkish family, of which a daughter was sent to Germany in an arranged marriage. The plot goes further, but that's as far as I've gotten.

Anyway, this morning I set off to the train station. The family had eaten breakfast; and Ge. had kindly looked up and written down an itinerary for me. At the station I was able to buy tickets to and from Leipzig from a friendly Deutsche Bahn employee who had a pleasant Berliner accent, and who also seemed to gulp a bit at the cost of using the ICE rather than the slower Regionalbahn. She was all set to provide me with a Deutschlandticket [49€ monthly ticket that allows you to travel through all of Germany with the Regionalbahn]; but I was low on cash and my debit card had hit the weekly limit, so I decided not to combine errands.

It was meditative travel weather: overcast sky, a few faint drops of rain but nothing insistent, a clammy-looking mist in the middle distance, and a nice classic impressionistic colour scheme in pastels of faded-red roofs, pale green birches, yellow rapeseed blossoms either 'escaped' and growing wild beside the tracks or filling fields with apparent sunshine, faded earth colours of the building walls, frail dark branches (sometimes colonized by globes of mistletoe) in the trees that don't have all their leaves yet, and speckled white and very light pink fruit tree blossoms.

I liked it very much, and so eventually did a trio of children who were being quietly obedient and finally running riot beside me. It was a somewhat packed train, and as I hadn't reserved a seat I found an aisle where it was easier to be out of the way.

At Bitterfelde I had to change into the S-Bahn, and then we rolled more slowly through the periphery of Leipzig until we finally reached Leipzig-Messe station. We were a bright stream of people, unlike the shades-of-black winter clothing colour palette that I'm used to from Berlin's city streets, because Leipzig's Comic Con is also a favourite opportunity for cosplayers. And while there are two short tram lines leading to and from the convention centre, I joined those who were walking.

It was an intimidating throng that gathered at the doors when we had passed the shallow waters of the large reflecting pool that extends from the glass entrance hall. But we were processed surprisingly quickly, and I was able to buy an entrance ticket (I hadn't pre-booked) with minimal effort. The ticket seller almost whispered to me that I'd have an easier time getting in to the hall if I took the route to the left, so I gladly followed his advice.

A ZDF-3Sat stage was just hosting a discussion where an author explained the background to his novel about Pompei. I listened in briefly, but then wanted to get to the exhibition halls. What amused me was the raised podium that celebrated the winners of the Leipzig Book Fair prizes: there were three or more coffee tables that had the prize-winning books chained to them, and chairs around, so that you could sit down and read them but not run away with them.

It was going to be under 1.25 hours that I could roam around, before I'd catch the train back to Berlin hopefully in time to do amateur journalism at a protest against unsustainable fashion consumerism. So I sketched out a quick mental plan, and headed to Hall 5 in the back and decided to work my way forward while keeping a sense of time, like Cinderella before midnight. I didn't have my smartphone along, having left it merrily charging (out of sight and out of mind) in my room, by accident; and there were no clocks in the convention centre.

Hall 5 was an excellent choice, as it turned out to be where the independent publishing houses were displaying their books. I knew a few of them by name, like Kröner or Unions Verlag, but others I didn't. The booths for self-publishing and books-on-demand were also popular.

Afterward I landed in Hall 4, where the stalwarts of the German publishing industry like Reclam, S. Fischer, and Kiepenheuer had far more sprawling booths. There were also stands for different countries: Poland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovenia — and organizations like an Israeli-German one or the Italian Cultural Institute of Berlin (whose flyer for events I nicked tout de suite).

As I'm unemployed and I only had 20€ at hand after paying for the Book Fair ticket, I felt unable to dip into the books, or talk to people at the stands without raising expectations that I was bound to disappoint.

But I made one exception: I spotted the stand for my favourite music score publisher. I was so delighted that I fan-girled to the lady who, dressed as elegantly as a trans-Atlantic airline attendant, was personning the stand. She heaped 'freebies' (paper tote bag, pencil, postcard, free sample booklet of easy songs for piano) on me when I mentioned that I had tons of the publisher's books at home.

Despite my budget, I also bought a Rachmaninoff Prelude in d minor, which cost 6€ and therefore did not break the bank. I'd felt guilty for playing that prelude from a photocopy for years, so I had the nice unexpected feeling of crossing off an item on my 'bucket list.'

But it felt as if time was of the essence after that. So I passed fairly swiftly through Hall 2, which had another stage that was for the broadcaster ARD this time, and other things that I've forgotten, and passed through the turnstiles and exited the glass entrance hall again.

It was 12:38 p.m. on the display screens at the tram stations, so I was back at the train station in time. The trains were also far less empty on the way back to Bitterfelde, and thence to Berlin.

I came back to Berlin too late for the event, mostly because I needed to fetch my smartphone from the family apartment if I wanted to photograph the event anyway; and because protest events rarely last as long as announced. But I still had a nice quick cycle to Alexanderplatz, and then back home, amongst hordes of tourists; and now I'm exhausted ... but pleasantly exhausted.

(Aside from the Austrian books project I mentioned above, I've been adding daily 1 hour cycling time for university Tuesdays to Fridays, Greek homework, 1 hour weekly volunteer work at the clothes donation sorting place, a journalistic project on sustainable clothing shops in Berlin that is as intense as the Austrian books project, a trip to Kreuzberg/Neukölln yesterday for a cycling protest that a former colleague believes deserves greater publicity, and other things I'm forgetting now.

I also find it hard to get over the shy sides of my character when these things require human interaction.

So I want to create more breathing space again for me to just observe things and let the news come to me; and I am desperate to cover live events that don't require reams of research and where anonymous observation is generally informative enough. A few booksellers expected me to already know lots of Austrian authors when I mini-interviewed them, for example, so I've had metaphorical beads of sweat on my forehead quite often.

But I also need to do far more 'dry dock journalism.' The lack of certain basics will become ever more apparent the more I do things in the field — and I am hoping that being willing to do tons of legwork and seeing things in real life rather than aggregating online content will be a 'unique selling point.'

For example, I ran into a lawyer who specializes in media at a protest where I self-introduced as a freelance journalist - I've been too lazy to look up the formal definition, and I think I'm too used to reading about e.g. a North American media culture where citizen journalism might be more accepted than it is here.

The lawyer's friendly but slightly stern advice made me very much want to dot my 'i's and cross my 't's from now on, so I won't have a cartoon 'Eep!' thought bubble metaphorically pop up again. I started watching videos on YouTube about German media law [by a law professor who cringe-worthily referred to himself in the third person, but I figure that hearing that is a sacrifice that must be made] — e.g. the guidelines about whom I can and can't photograph, when.

I also want to ask if he has a website or reading recommendations if I bump into him again, to be honest.

That said, I'm undermining all of these good intentions of taking more time to relax, informing myself before dashing into the field, etc., by revolving thoughts around my head of trying to cover the May Day protests on Monday — which would be at least mildly stressful.)

Anyway, I'm glad I went to the Leipziger Buchmesse especially because Mama had told me for years I could tag along with her, and I like the idea of carrying on a family tradition— I've just never had the time and money to consider it seriously before!

The First Week as a Gasthörer

On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to Greek classes at the university. Also a Spanish class that I couldn't stay in (there were too many other students who needed to attend and I found out belatedly that the guest auditor programme didn't cover it).

It was a little stressful.

For example: My old Greek professor would be glad to have me back in class, I was pretty sure although we hadn't seen each other since a party at the family apartment in 2018. But no answer ever arrived to the inquiry email I'd sent weeks ago. So I was taking a risk by showing up.

Besides the scheduling is early in the morning (8 a.m.... eurgh), and I feel weird sharing resources with properly immatriculated students who are 10 years younger than me who deserve more of the spotlight. Also the logistical bumps in getting even this far are making me more and more anxious about actually being accepted as a student in November.

Then on Wednesday evening I developed a congested nose, and have had to stay home the rest of the week. So much for launching smoothly into the semester...

That said, although individual grammatical things are spectacularly lousy and it's clear I won't be able to follow along a class entirely conducted in Greek after I accidentally showed up to a first-year class instead of the introductory class, I feel like I'm not behind the others in the introductory class. The work I've put in here and there to keep up with Greek over the years has been useful.

Besides I am beginning to feel that at least in terms of having a tidier room, cooking and baking at leisure again (I prepared ayran with yoghurt, water, salt, and dried mint leaves today), working away on writing and photography projects, taking care of houseplants, and feeling like I have time for family and friends ... my life is beginning to sort itself out again.

It's not the full picture. But I'm a little less hopped-up on anxiety than 1 or 2 months ago, my conscience is more at ease, and I no longer feel when I'm communing with thoughts of my father that I've gone a bit astray or that there's something I'm leaving undone or that I'm wasting my life (I just need to keep going on this new path: not give up).

Travels to Alsace: The First Day

Travelling from Berlin to Strasbourg is not genuinely fast (I think) even though we were taking a bullet-train-shaped, white, speedy Inter-City Express, which peaked at over 245 km/h during our trip.

It was before 10 a.m. on a cloudy morning when we passed the dandelions, red deadnettle, daffodils and grape hyacinths in front of the train station, found our platform, and then eventually pulled out to our first stop: Wittenberg.

Platform at Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, April 11th, 2023

After that: Leipzig, Eisenach in terrain that began to be pleasantly hilly in comparison to the flat floodplains of Brandenburg, Frankfurt am Main with its characteristic cluster of skyscrapers.

View of farmyard from Berlin-to-Strasbourg train, April 11th, 2023

We paused there for 15 minutes, in a riveted, steel-framed hall typical of pre-WWI railroad architecture, with restaurant advertisements on electronic billboards.

The family and I were seated in 1st class, not so much because we wanted to live like kings, but because it was the best way to book seats close to each other. It also serendipitously meant that my siblings could order chili con carne and coffee for lunch, and have it be brought to their seats!

Then we pulled out of the station again, in the direction we'd come, and curved around to the southwest.

But before we left Frankfurt: a train employee announced on the public address speakers that a freight train had been abandoned on the tracks, so we would be rerouted past Darmstadt. The final stop of Zürich was also cancelled: the train would only reach Basel. (But this was more a problem for other travellers; we wouldn't be going that far.) This led to incremental delays adding up to over 30 minutes, and the employee kept checking in on connecting trains at the various stops to see if they'd wait for us or not.

At Baden-Baden, whose railroad station looked nothing like the grand, imperial edifice I'd been expecting given the town's opulent history, we switched to a French TGV (très grande vitesse = high-speed) train upholstered in patriotic blue.

Crossing the border was fuss-free, and we never had to show our passports (or even our tickets, after leaving the Deutsche Bahn), thanks to the Schengen Agreement. We just rolled over a broad arm of the Rhine between Kehl on the German side and Strasbourg in France.

We reached Strasbourg in the early evening.

***

We were booked in a hotel near the city centre, at a bridge over one of the canals, in a four-storey half-timbered apartment building that had been painted yellow and adorned with Easter decorations.

It was possible to walk there from Strasbourg's main train station, the Gare Central, with its restored, early 20th-century, red sandstone front façade almost unblemished, encapsulated in an egg-like bubble of glass.

But it was clear that Strasbourg is a touristy city, with students and EU diplomats as well, and we almost had to use pointy elbows to navigate past the pedestrians and cyclists, who were generally moving at speed. (That said, the restrained use of perfume is popular in Strasbourg and I liked catching in the streets; I was also intrigued that the men generally had neatly trimmed hair, which seems like a lot of upkeep but quite dashing; and I gazed for a while at the bicycle paths and the pillars with green and red lights and the ubiquitous zebra stripe crosswalks to try to figure out how the traffic works exactly.) T. had been there before, and conducted us unerringly to our residence.

Checking in was fast, and then we were in our rooms.

The others were staying in a courtyard room: despite its modern aesthetic, the blue and white wall-to-wall carpet, linen-patterned walls, and coloured photo print of three young girls wearing the massive traditional Alsation headgear in fashion from the late 19th century, all tributes to the region in which we were staying. The exposed, varnished wooden beams of the half-timbering (colombage) were also a tribute.

As I'd only agreed to join the trip to Strasbourg after she'd made the original arrangements, T. had booked me into my own small room, which I grew to like a lot. It had a comfy, white bed. The bathroom was also nice: it had a little sewing kit, a hair net and scrunchy, as well as a wooden tablet with artisanal soap and hand cream and body wash. And I appreciated the view of the street below, with an épicerie and a bakery at the corner, old dormer windows, the spire of the Strasbourg Cathedral, pigeons, a clock that always pointed to 6:05 no matter what time of day it was, the comings and goings at the foot of a bridge, and a nice slice of sky.

*

This first evening we went to dinner in a wooden building in the city centre, right above a bridge where the water was thundering through a disused mill run, with more classic white-plastered half-timbered houses above the cobblestones.

View of Strasbourg street near restaurant, April 11th, 2023

The tables were covered in red and white plaid tablecloths, then a pebbled white layer that looked a little like a bib and which spoke volumes about the experiences the restaurant had been through with spill-prone tourists...

The restaurant's menu featured Alsatian casserole (Elsaesser Baeckeoffe) with beef or duck or lamb in red pottery dishes. It also had varieties of Flammkuchen which is a type of super-thin-crust pizza that is also popular in southern German-style restaurants in Berlin. Choucroûte is part of the typical smells that waft through the streets of Strasbourg: a meal of sauerkraut, potatoes, and sausage. There were also other odds and ends — including the Salade à chèvre chaud (warm goat cheese salad) that I ordered. It's not really a useful or endearing quality, but I've become a bit precious about food and was a little disgruntled for example that there weren't more vegetarian options...

The coffee I ordered as an inexpensive substitute for dessert was nothing to write home about. But I think I figured out eventually as we stayed in Strasbourg that French restaurants seem to offer cheap café rallongé as a regular thing that's about 2.50 to 3 Euros, and then special gourmet coffees that are 7 or 7.50 Euros. Maybe the gourmet coffees are the ones that taste like the ones we can make in Berlin.

We did share two bottles of sparkling mineral water amongst us. I did feel tempted to get sirop à l'eau, but in the end decided against it.

I'd felt prudent for taking along travel candy in the train to France, knowing from past experience that when my blood sugar levels drop and my travel anxiety kicks in, I become like the snobby city person in Hallmark films before they have a Scrooge conversion.

But for visiting restaurants, the travel candy didn't suffice. I considered this one a tourist dive. — Meanwhile my mother was taking undoubtedly a better view: seeing things through rose-tinged glasses, reminiscing wistfully about eating Elsaesser Baeckeoffe at her wedding reception with my father, and feeling happy that she was visiting the right places to get to know her Alsatian mentor/mother-figure's native culture...

Either way, the rest of the family was happy with their meals.

Cycling, Home Cookery, and Indolence on the Day Before Studies

It's the first day of the university semester... but I have no classes scheduled for Mondays! So instead I spent the day as I wished, on unscheduled things.

Breakfast was coffee and orange juice; and I did half a page of Greek and read the Guardian headlines, and then read a book for fun, and tidied my room.

Then I cycled off to a charity to drop off donations that have been in my room for a while. Although I was daydreaming and therefore cycled the wrong way at first, a detour on a quiet Monday morning to the Zoologischer Garten area wasn't bad. But I reflected yet again that Berlin is far behind in the springtime vegetation cycle compared to Strasbourg, where the horse chestnut leaves had already spread greenly and amply and the first lilacs were blossoming!

After that, Ge. prepared porridge with an apple cut into it, and that was our lunch.

Grocery-shopping, as well as laundry, took up more of the morning. The Turkish supermarket was bustling, either due to the time of day or due to people being antsy to have food ready for iftar. (It's the month of Ramadan and, as always, many neighbours are celebrating it.)

Then I went off to volunteer for about an hour, sorting clothes donations. It was pretty quiet, but also easy to become absorbed.

It wasn't the most cheerful weather, but it was still possible I suppose to find aesthetic enjoyment even when there wasn't the rare sunny interval.

For example, I enjoyed cycling behind a mother and her toddler as I got closer to the apartment. There's a wonder-filled Age of Curiosity that young children go through that I like very much, and this toddler was in the middle of it. Her head encased in an extraterrestrial-green helmet was wobbling a little with the motion of the bicycle, as she was not yet old and strong enough to hold it steady as she sat behind her mother. But she swivelled her gaze back and forth, then poked out a finger like a delighted, pleasant little dictator and chirped something to her mother when she found something she liked (I think she spotted the bright gold blossoms on a maple tree).

When I returned to the building, Ge. was returning from a 'wild goose chase' to get our sewing machine repaired. The shop wasn't able to order the required spare part.

In the late afternoon I prepared a lunch of green asparagus with fried eggs, then — from Yasmin Khan's Ripe Figs cookbook — dinner: red bell pepper-and-walnut dip (muhammara), flatbread (lavash) that I did not bother making from scratch, and Greek greens (horta). For dessert, I had bought a mixed salted and roasted nut mix of pistachios, cashews, hazelnuts, and almonds; and sweetened chestnuts. And Ge. had bought tiramisu. It all tasted delicious and I reflected happily that sometimes putting forward effort into spoiling one's self really works. And J. prepared chicory coffee for after the meal.

I'll need to wake up very early tomorrow morning. But in the meantime I may research my World War I story further, or write up an account of the journey to Strasbourg, or do something lazy!

Travels to Alsace: The Prequel

Before the family left for our holiday in France, I watched the French mini-series Les combattantes (Women at War, released in 2022) on Netflix.

Tracing the fortunes of four women, it explores fighting in the forested, mountainous Vosges region of France near the border of present-day Germany, after World War I started in 1914. The Vosges formed the southern end of the French front, which has tended to predominate the imagination of many people who learn about WWI, to the detriment of many other fronts, for example in Gallipoli, or around Austria. (Serbia lost by far the highest percentage of soldiers.)

Caroline is the wife of a minor aristocrat who had inherited his family's vehicle manufacturing company as part of a family tradition, but leaves home to serve as a military engineer. Left on her hands: a factory full of workers who are at imminent risk of being treated as deserters because they are waiting for an official exemption from military service, and half-finished delivery trucks for a local grocer's; her daughter Madeleine, her mother-in-law Éléonore, and her brother-in-law Charles.

Marguerite is a prostitute, capable and chain-smoking and a little fierce, who has driven into town from Paris to find the whereabouts of her biological son. After being adopted out, he has been educated at a prestigious military academy and is now serving as an officer amongst what I think would be termed riflemen.

Mère Agnès is the head of a convent, trying to mitigate the risks to the civilians who live nearby and trying to help the casualties of war (physical and emotional) who stream in from the battlefield — with exemplary gentleness, kindness, and forgiveness.

The nurse Suzanne is fleeing the vengeful husband of a patient who died on the operating table; he wants to prosecute her for a failed abortion. (While I have never read Les Misérables, I think you just need to picture Javert to get an idea of this figure.) In the early 20th century, performing abortions really was considered equivalent to murder by most people, resulting in correspondingly brutal legal penalties, and the series spells this out. The character Jeanne is trying to smuggle her across the border into Switzerland.

But Suzanne feels drawn to her medical work again as she sees the influx of badly wounded men when she is forced to take shelter in the convent. Eventually she makes the decision to risk arrest and death by foregoing an escape to Switzerland, instead assisting the only surgeon, who is the son of a general and deeply overworked as he is the only man capable of triaging cases and performing surgery. (I found the scenes pretty gory. If you dislike blood, guts, and loud groaning, you will not enjoy the mini-series.)

These women are heroines of the series, and one can say that they're nuanced. But I say with all due respect that I've rarely seen a TV series with more one-dimensional villains. Even if redeemed by the plot, they are signaled with the subtlety of a sledgehammer: at least in my opinion, their mean scowls generally give them away. If all villains in real life were that easy to spot, the police would have an easy time.

On the one hand the series departs from tropes like 'a France where only White people ever lived until the 1990s,' or 'a pious Church full of well-meaning people,' or, more trivially, 'guttural-sounding German indicating the brutish soul of the Hun'. — It was quite uplifting for this Teuton to see her fellow country people speaking such flawless French, a tribute to Prussian education no doubt. — It was also good that the filmmakers showed the venality of 'the same side': e.g. sales of cocaine to soldiers who badly wanted to escape reality, even at the risk of an overdose. On the other hand, the screenwriters etc. did take it easy on themselves here and there, taking over a few threadbare tropes like Mère Agnès's wise mother abbess.

The romantic plot for Mère Agnès, I brutally skipped through once I saw which way the wind was blowing. Also I can't say I wholly appreciated being reminded that sexual abuse of children at the hand of other clergy happened in the past as well as the present — because the series was already full of depressing plot lines.

Many historical details seemed correct, based on my past months of research for the story I want to write.

Syphilis was a problem during World War I. Of course the TV series finds new jobs for the affected prostitutes in a kinder way than reality would have done, and as far as I recall doesn't portray the medical effects on soldiers or civilians who contract the disease.

Soldiers were sent back to the front even when they were blatantly unfit due to shellshock or for other reasons.

And so on and so forth.

However the depiction of gas warfare in 1914 is blatantly wrong, as an IMDb website reviewer commented. There must be a storytelling reason for it — perhaps to make clearer that psychologically the nature of war seemed to contemporaries to be growing more perfidious.

Secondly, in battlefield scenes, I think that it would be harder to run dramatically between shells because they would leave gaping holes that would trip up the person who was running.

Lastly, the film does not at all show the perfidious nature of shrapnel...

The filmmakers nodded to outdated social mores of the time, all the while making figures like Marguerite's son rather anachronistically open-minded. But I did think it was silly that the film made the serious injury of one of the characters into a Feminist Moment as the nurse performed surgery to save the character's life... I think that in real life the character would have been focusing on trying not to die and not on cheerleading Suzanne's 'one small step for woman, one giant leap for womankind' sutures.

Mostly the acting is pretty wonderful: it's incredible how the cast sustained so much emotion through very soapy and extreme scenarios that still needed to respect a real-life parallel.

***

Anyway, the film prepared my mind for my peacetime travels to Alsace in two thematic ways:

Firstly, it hinted at the complex history of French-German relations. In Strasbourg [note: not in the film] the semi-recent history was tremendously un-complex, or still complex, depending on how you want to look at it: for one thing the Prussians bombed an entire civilian city quarter to smithereens during the Franco-Prussian War, and for another thing of course the Nazis occupied the city again after Strasbourg was relinquished post-WWI.

Secondly, it showed the beauty of the Vosges region, and hinted at the region's industries and longer-ago history, through the filmmakers' choices of cinematography and locations. It felt shallow to be distracted by summer-lit green foliage, rocky mountain slopes, mysterious forests, soaring vistas from hilltops, a golden hay harvest, etc., during a wartime plot. But the contrast between serene landscapes and mass slaughter was noted by soldiers even during the time of the war, for example as described in All Quiet on the Western Front. The filmmakers shot on location with a genuine sensitivity for what would complement but also perhaps contrast to the plot and its incidents.

Easter and an Unexpected Sighting

It's been an enjoyable Easter Sunday.

I woke up before 11 a.m., and joined the family for an Easter breakfast of raisin buns, regular bread buns, coffee, freshly boiled eggs as well as the dyed ones that I'd prepared while assisting the Easter bunny, and a ton of candy.

Then I had a long nap.

Afterward we strolled off to the park, which was quite beautiful with sunshine, Oregon grape blossoms, hyacinths, blue squills, and tulip leaf stands that were not yet blossoming. In the lawn, a few daisies were speckled like a star constellation. And the undergrowth is so sparse that I wandered around the foot of a massive tree looking at all the rabbit warrens that had been burrowed into the ground. Even in the lawn, thinner holes had I think been dug by voles instead. Many bushes and a few trees already have green leaves, the first 'fingertips' already opening in a horse chestnut tree. But as far as I recall, the splashes of colour from shrubs are still mostly the golden forsythia blossoms.

While Ge. and J. played badminton, I was conducting my explorations and taking photographs. Then, as we were going to leave, they pointed out that Mama had also wandered to the park and was sitting on the steps leading up to a building. So we joined her, then went around two corners to a nearby ice cream shop, to buy waffle cones with two scoops for each of us. It was pleasantly warm but not too hot, so only one family was in the queue besides us and we were in and out more quickly than in the past.

We drank more coffee at home, and chatted a little, but then I cycled to the allotment gardens for the first time in months. Aside from forsythias and squills and hyacinths, I saw late purple crocuses, yellow and yellow-red cowslips, blue grape hyacinths, blossoming fruit trees, tall daffodils, and a lot of people: families and groups of friends who were partly sitting at tables outdoors.

Emboldened by the pleasant experience to stay outdoors longer, I also cycled to Kreuzberg and waved hi to an uncle who was cycling, by chance, in the opposite direction.

Since then, I've played the piano a bit, read a New York Times article about the life of Benjamin Ferencz (last living prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials until he died on Friday, over 100 years old), and cogitated further about amateur journalism.

I believe it makes sense to learn shorthand, but the course that I found in Berlin (aimed at personal assistants rather than journalists) would cost over 900€ and be online-only. So I'd like to return to learning from a late 19th-century online copy of Gregg's Shorthand. Besides I read journalism manuals yesterday about how to handle press conferences, interviews with famous people, interviews with 'regular' people, and vox pop ('man on the street') interviews.

The next story I'd like to write will require vox pop interviews, I think, so there will be opportunity to practice... (Although a German manual was very sniffy about the genre.)

In general I've googled 'feelings that are normal to have after quitting a job,' have given myself a pep talk, stayed up happily late immersed in a Netflix mini-series that took my mind off of things, and have enjoyed the company of relatives to the full. Yesterday I had a long walk around Tempelhofer Feld with the two youngest brothers, talking out the remaining worries I have about my work team, which was quite therapeutic especially as they are engaged listeners. And now I feel better.

During the walks/cycling today I reflected that I want to follow an idea in one of Maria Edgeworth's books: one way to approach gambling is to just decide on a certain sum of money that one feels comfortable losing, and then to keep playing until one has lost that amount. To apply it to my case, I will keep looking for a part-time job, but try not to panic about finances until my bank balance has shrunk by (almost) a third. Until then, I can register as unemployed and invest my past earnings in training and equipment.

In any case, the family leaves for France on Tuesday, except Gi. who prefers to stay home, and although the prospect of continual rain is a little daunting, it at least means that I'll be thinking of other matters!

The Bumpy Beginnings of Liberty

It's my first day out of the company where I didn't meet up with any colleagues.

It was rough. I woke up before 8 a.m., a usually unheard-of early time, then went back to sleep for an hour or so between 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., and have still been stress-sleeping (i.e. thinking about work while sleeping). After waking up I was thinking with tired pain about all the errands that need doing (contacting university professors, registering as a job seeker, getting a Covid test ahead of the evening choir...) and worrying that I wouldn't be able to do anything ever again now that I don't have the impetus of all the tasks that happen in the course of a working day.

On the one hand, explicitly giving up the responsibility I felt toward a hundred-odd colleagues, of whom most have become deeply unhappy so that lifting spirits has become harder and harder, is such a relief that I feel absolutely giddy with it, like Atlas transferring the world to Hercules' shoulders. In the past weeks it became especially heavy as I've been playing a sort of 5-dimensional chess in which I tried to guess at how to leave without causing colleagues to panic, gave little lifts to morale here and there (through focusing on colleagues individually and personally and giving specific and well-deserved praise), and squelched all of my own feelings of frustration, anger and overwhelm to be as constructive as possible. While not being able to sleep very well or eat very well. On the other hand, doing things for others is a much stronger motivation in life than just focusing willpower and ingenuity on my own ends, which is like crushing a peanut with a sledgehammer.

I mean no disparagement of the company, but I've been deeply torn for months between loyalty to a company that also made me sign a non-disclosure agreement, alongside the abstract ethics of being an employee — and my absolute fury at the emotional toll that company changes have taken on colleagues, and fear for their psychological and emotional health. Especially with my own team, I turned into a regular 'momma bear' during my last days and felt like I would happily beat anyone up who made them unhappy. I didn't know whether telling people that I appreciated their work and pointing out why, would encourage them to stay longer than they'd otherwise have done because they'd finally feel that someone is acknowledging their effort... but that later they'd regret not leaving earlier, for example. It definitely might save the company's bacon for a while, but it would not save theirs. Anyway, in the end I haven't encouraged anyone to leave (just encouraged one person to leave sooner, or take sick days, if things turn nasty — which might admittedly be skirting the law). But I have given whichever information they asked for about how to leave.

That said, these past weeks my youngest brothers and mother have been magnificent, my aunt L. wrote a nice note to cheer me up, many teammates including uncle M. have been lovely, my coach/therapist also lent her sympathetic ear, and former colleagues have sent messages of support. So it's never just me propping up others.

In the meantime I've been pursuing my amateur journalism with more zeal and vigour than discretion. After jamming a firewire plug into my desktop computer to try to transfer photographs from my smartphone, it looks like my ethernet socket is broken. And I was almost as frustrated as my dad became when things didn't go well on his computer, when trying to set up a Wordpress account so that e.g. editors could check my bona fides. I researched the websites of photojournalists like Lynsey Addario and wanted something close to what they had: a simple sidebar listing perhaps 5 sub-pages, a very pared-down look, a few attractive images. No dice. It's also embarrassing that I couldn't link to a single published article, blog post, ... under my own name.

What I've realized is that when it comes to starting a job, I have very little to no self-esteem. I just don't believe I can do that task or job unless someone else tells me so, and it's making me very scared about finding the next thing. This is definitely sad for a thirty-seven-year -old adult. Even no longer feeling that I'm leading a team has dinged my self-confidence to the degree that I feel comparatively mopey and inept when running errands, like shopping; of course that makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Anyway, I went to choir practice this evening. The school where we practice was closed down for the Easter holidays, so it was pitch-dark again as we left; and yet again I stepped down four-odd flights of stairs feeling that the spirits of generations of pupils and teachers were waiting to pounce at me from the shadows. That said, I passed a church spire on the way home: the gentle lighting of the façade, the oblique glow from the nearby apartment windows, the first golden sprigs of blossoms on a tree, the outline of the branches of another tree, the whimsical clouds, and the pale moon, were all very poetic and reminiscent of late 19th-century German paintings.

My Last Wednesday at the Company, and Daffodils

Today was a little better.

I am writing up my teammates' last performance reviews, and I dislike the task. While there are plenty of agreeable things to say, I don't like being the 'voice of God,' judging the hard work of teammates and pointing out where they have not sufficiently set aside their personal struggles to deliver value to the company. Besides I want to start off everyone on an ideal footing with the new manager. And the performance reviews were a strong motive for me to leave the company anyway, because superimposed on every review I envision the faint outline of each teammate with a little dagger embedded in their back: in other words, it offends my sense of loyalty to my teammates. But the good thing is that it'll be over soon, at least for me.

That said, I was not feeling very well this morning. In the past weeks I've become disconcertingly woozy, short of breath, sleepy, and random other things at different points in the working day. Generally the source of the outbreak can be traced back to my work laptop and the stresses of the day, so at least there's no magic mystery there. This morning I was getting out of bed when I realized that my legs felt quite limp and heavy, thought 'I'm making a big mistake,' and felt like staying there and having a nice nap.

This is the usual drama-queen/lack-of-common-sense Venn diagram overlap where I'm thinking that while events make for a self-pitying blog post, maybe it would be wiser to make sure I don't have stuff like this to mention. Colleagues from the top management level through to anyone in my team would point out that maybe I should skip out the door faster or just take a sick day.

But... at this point there are only 16 working hours left and on Friday it'll probably be half that, so 12. In the interests of not having a weird reversal of expectations, I'd rather be working. What does make me feel bad is that given my physical state there was absolutely no way I wanted to cycle for 50 minutes to the office, even if people were hoping I'd show up at various points this week so we could say our goodbyes.

One meeting had a rather friendly outcome: I was flattered that my American manager said (in a hopeful tone) that the door was wide open if I'd like to re-join the company. It felt like a very concrete sign of professional approval. We also talked about forest fires on the Pacific Northwest coast, as a non-work-related topic that selfishly felt lighter to me.

That said, while I might rejoin the computer science field in a lower-stakes environment, the whole 'large stock-listed employer' phase of my life is definitely over, for the sakes both of sanity and of idealism.

In the evening, once the meetings were done, I had a lie-down. J. knocked at the door to kindly deliver a cup of coffee, however, so I decided to chat instead of nap. He told me that my pose reminded him of William Holden's character in Sabrina, during the inglorious recovery from the champagne glass incident.

Non-work things:

1. I'm watching the Canada Reads book competition.

2. On the piano, I'm playing a Bach cantata arranged by the German pianist Wilhelm Kempff. It's rather brooding and religious, but also satisfyingly straightforward and atmospheric. It was part of a Dussmann shopping spree after I made the fateful decision to change careers this year.

3. For lunch I cooked again: a type of failed egg foo yung with eggs, rice, green peas, and an onion.

4. Spring has sprung even more: Daffodils, the early tulips, an entire tree bedecked with tiny green leaves, crocuses even overblown, springy hyacinths. And the grocery store across the street had bundles of boxwood twigs, and bundles of forsythia branches, in the fruit and vegetable section.

5. For Friday, I've already bought vegan snacks to ensure that no one needs to be hungry at the team farewell party. Next up: Drinks, and on the day of, I'm hoping to put together a nice Italian cheese platter and to get cake. I think I'm still too exhausted to bake cake myself.

6. A job application to be social media coordinator for a non-governmental organization here in Berlin is pending.

7. I don't think I've mentioned on this blog yet that I'm hoping to freelance report on the Special Olympics Summer Games in Berlin this June. The ticket is purchased! Because I am not familiar with reporting on sports, or interviewing athletes and coaches, I've decided not to aim for a press pass.

Two Pleasant Goodbyes ... and Awkwardness!

Today I slept a lot during the daytime. I have still been stress-sleeping (i.e. still worrying about things while I'm sleeping), and because I over-ate a bit had a few nightmares, so it wasn't perfectly restful.

But in the morning we all went as a family to vote in the referendum about strengthening Berlin's climate neutrality commitments and advancing the deadline for meeting these commitments to the year 2030 instead of 2045. Afterward we went for ice cream: I had a waffle cone with a scoop each of lemon gelato and yoghurt-cherry gelato.

Last Thursday I had a goodbye event with the colleagues who speak to our clients and then let us know what they need from us, and vice versa. We ate cake together quietly in the office dining area, and we exchanged presents and chatted. The fudge that they gave me is all eaten up now, but there's still a pretty bouquet with eucalyptus, a sunset-coloured chrysanthemum, pink baby's breath and other flowers in it on the windowsill in the kitchen.

On Friday, we had a scheduled question & answer session about the many colleagues departing the company, with two higher-up managers. We had a few technical issues and started late, and the team also didn't submit any questions. So I moderated the discussion and asked the questions that I thought might be on my team's minds. It was extremely tough.

I was quite tired of euphemistic, official explanations of why x or y colleague had left. These always gloss over the severe mental health problems that working in our company in its current state has caused for at least three people I know of, plus self-reported exhaustion of five or more further colleagues.

The official explanations also never acknowledge that not everyone can skip from one job to the next. I decided not to mention this during the meeting, but in my early 20s I was suicidal for several months because of the strain of unemployment. I definitely did not hop out of this job lightly. What I also didn't mention is the impact on family and friends of someone being dissatisfied with their jobs or jobless: I remember whenever my father left a job because he couldn't stand it there any more; it was so bad to witness as a little girl who was fond of him, that I realized as an adult that I had absorbed a deeply fearful mindset about jobs in general. And I've also been worrying constantly about friends who have been pushed out of the company purposely or through the force of their own annoyance, who haven't found new jobs yet.

So I took the risk of sounding a little insane. I introduced the session by saying that job dissatisfaction and unemployment are closely linked to people's sense of self-worth, and that unemployment can lead to suicidalism, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic abuse, as well as loss of residency and broken relationships for people who are not EU citizens. In short, we were talking about serious issues here. My voice was all shaky, the acoustics weren't working well in the room, and it was deeply embarrassing. Besides I'd happily repressed my unemployment years and was feeling a bit shaken by the resurgent memories lately, although I've been putting a cheeky and happy public face on my new employment liberty. But at the same time I felt that, although I needed to avoid putting emotional pressure on managers who are already under pressure, it was important that I loyally represent the colleagues who had left, and also respect the truth.

Then I invited teammates to mention colleagues who'd left whom they'd personally known, while acknowledging that for some of us we didn't know them that well and that I wished to represent both perspectives. Crickets. So I mentioned four colleagues myself and gave a brief tribute to each, and then suggested that we concentrate on discussing the case where three colleagues left from the same team.

Fortunately, the managers did not seem angry or upset at me for the way I started the conversation. (I was also scared of risking our friendly relationship.) In their answers, they respected the privacy of departing colleagues while explaining fairly accurately why these colleagues departed.

The managers also frankly addressed my next question: for any of my teammates who might depart in future, would it be possible that their work messenger accounts would just be deactivated from one day to the next, without any goodbye email or announcement beforehand? (The answer was, highly unlikely; this is done in other parts of the company, certainly, but they don't like the practice and aren't involved in it except for colleagues who asked to leave quietly.)

Then 25 minutes were up. I thanked the managers for appearing in the call and answering the questions, and then I opened up the floor to any more questions for the remaining 5 minutes. There were none, except a bit of pleasant banter, which indicated some emotional catharsis.

Afterward, three of us teammates and one of the managers went out to a Vietnamese restaurant and then to a bar, and chatted about work and plans for the future. It was candid and friendly. It also was a little sad because, had the team been able to speak directly to the manager all along, I think that developments might have been better. I'm rarely taken seriously when I try to present summary of the spectrum of views across the team; but one-to-one conversations with teammates seem to carry conviction.

But while it's a glib joke to make, it feels like many (not all) of us are living in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, while the management sees Thomas Kinkade.

I know that taking risks is good for the character; but I absolutely hate it, especially as I'm a natural lily-livered coward and am practically drowning in vulnerability and fear beforehand. It's not much comfort if colleagues call me brave. In the end it feels egotistical: I'm just making everyone uncomfortable because I'm weirdly determined to carry out an inconvenient impulse and foist it on everyone else.

Spring Flowers, Journalistic Inquiries, and Workplace Diplomacy

It turns out that leaving a company is more awkward than expected... The paperwork, so far fine. Saying goodbye to colleagues individually, even a nice opportunity to chat with them again after a long time. Looking forward to hopefully seeing teammates quite as well outside of work, comforting. Thinking of everything needed before I leave, fine because I left myself quite a bit of time to jot down and remember things as different tasks etc. arise.

But on Friday and Monday I engaged in single combat with higher-ups about something... It ended amicably enough, and I wasn't kicked out of my email and messenger accounts as I thought I would be. There is a nice surprise that the former managing director had thought up as a farewell gesture, which I won't spill the beans on until it's formally announced tomorrow.

But everything else was stressful. I ended the day with a tension headache, and I woke up this morning knowing that I was in no shape to work. I applied for a sick day.

I feel guilty about planning to go to choir practice after a sick day. But I think it will distract me enough to pull myself together for the last week and a half on the job. Also, it's not very far away so I won't need to worry about swooning off my bicycle. (I was wondering if walking might be wiser.)

When I stepped out the apartment door to get the obligatory Covid test (obligatory if I want to attend choir practice, that is) at the pharmacy down the street, I did find that my anxiety was so severe that I could barely walk at first. Which at least confirmed, if confirmation were needed, that I hadn't been malingering.

Anyway, the daffodils are out, hyacinths too to a lesser degree, and the earliest red-and-yellow tulips are already in flower.

I've been quite busy after working hours and during the sick day. Today I made the payment for my card to guest audit courses at university until I can formally apply to become a student again for the Fall/Winter semester.

Yesterday evening I sent off an inquiry to see if a Canadian newspaper would be interested in printing articles that I'd write about an international sporting event that'll be happening in summer in Berlin.

In between, I'm further researching a World War I book, refreshing my Greek, playing the piano again, doing volunteer proofreading for a non-profit website, and practicing typewriting. And I lay down for a while, and chatted with the brothers and Mama.

And, after a months-long lull in baking and cooking, I boiled eggs *and* made myself a pot of tea *and* made porridge for lunch.

In the past weeks I've felt really bad about 'abandoning' colleagues and worried about their wellbeing. But in other ways, leaving this job and having a chance at a regular, healthy life again is... not tough at all, to be honest.

"It'll be over in 1.5 weeks anyway!" is one thought that's inspired me deeply. But I've also come across a Bible quotation [Disclaimer: No conversion or evangelism of any sort is intended] that I'm hoping will be a helpful motto whenever I feel overwhelmed at the thought of trying to sort out the interpersonal mess at work: "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."