December thoughts
There’s this restaurant in Hackescher Markt that lets me use their bathroom for free every now and then if I ask nicely. I always offer to pay, but they never take it. I’m washing my hands downstairs when suddenly I hear the Christmas-themed music stop. As I go back up the stairs, I realize the place is teeming with police officers. I count at least 7 or 8 of them, and there’s another group wearing a type of uniform I don’t even recognize. They all stop and look at me. I give them my widest smile, like a bridesmaid in a wedding photo, and then gingerly squeeze myself past them. I disappear before they can change their minds.
I'm on my way to work, red light is taking forever. There’s two groups of friends excited to finally see each other, they’re waiting on opposite sides of the crosswalk in Alexanderplatz. I get excited too and start smiling like a fool. Wish I could join them.
Bought a tiny little embroidered shooting star today, thought it looked so delicate and pretty. It’s actually a lot smaller than it looks in the photo. I’ll probably add it to my winter coat. I guess if you want to spot me in Berlin, look for the shooting star.
Berlin’s slowly emptying out for the holidays. Soon it will just be me and the foxes, running into each other at midnight.
It’s Saturday night. A group of drunk guys stumble out of a pub and try to accost me as I walk past. This is unusual even for Warschauer Straße. I‘m wearing a long Mackintosh coat if you’re wondering. I ignore their questions and give them a wide berth. They can barely stand, but they try to follow me down the street like hungry puppies. They probably won’t remember what they said in the morning, but I will.
I'm turning 31 in a few months and on some level I'm relieved that a younger, greener version of me is gone forever. Like some annoying but endearing friend who moved away. I find her old t-shirts, patiently mend bridges she burned, laugh at her old tweets. People who used to know her still contact me. I do miss her. Times like these I wish I could give her a call, see what bold advice she'd give me. She was braver than me, maybe she'd know what to do.
It's late and my local pharmacy is randomly playing a documentary about street monkeys in India in their window display instead of their usual ads. First I stand there watching just out of pure confusion (what am I looking at?), then I slowly start to like it. A homeless man eventually joins me and we watch together for a bit. I thought we were having a moment, but then he asks me for money. I give him some change and leave. Kind of wanted to keep watching, but now it's awkward. (Update: The monkeys are gone, back to regular ads. Maybe it was a Christmas special.)
I finally manage to sit down when I suddenly realize that the tram is taking me in the opposite direction, but I'm too exhausted to get off again. It's quiet and empty, close to the end of the line. I just let it take me in the wrong direction for a while. At least I know for a fact there's good sushi at the end of this line.
You can’t really understand who someone is without knowing the best and worst thing that ever happened to them. It’s not about trauma dumping or expecting sympathy, you just want others to understand where you’re coming from. Your whole world gets filtered through those events.
I don’t spend any time on Instagram. I have no idea what exactly happens there these days, I just get to see the final output. It gets harder and harder to find anything that somehow escaped the TikTok-Insta black hole. You try to fight it for as long as you can, but you always feel its pull everywhere you go. I noticed that even older men now start to subconsciously prefer the Instagram-like beauty ideal, even though they never directly spend any time on the app.
Whenever I’m having a disagreement with someone, there’s this funny AI song called “Wow, I didn't know that” that I like to play. Always makes me laugh and defuses the situation. It’s a satire on people that play dumb or act innocent when they get caught doing something wrong. We all know someone like that, this could be their national anthem. I just love the fake innocence the singer has when he “learns” he can’t drink and drive, commit insurance fraud, or show up late for work: https://www.udio.com/songs/jGjYfsRosZjYTkSBdFgEyF
Martin Luther ended up in an unfortunate spot in my photo gallery. Sorry buddy. Just saw his portrait at the Deutsche Historische Museum.
Also saw a pretty view of Altona from 1859. But the context of the painting in this exhibit was quite sad: multiple cholera outbreaks happened there around that time.
I think the hardest things to afford in life are dignity and integrity. That’s the real luxury, not having to ever compromise the two. Being able to say no.
My Christmas present: a Gustave Baumann calendar. Sells out every year because people collect them. The artist was German-American (born in Magdeburg, emigrated to the US when he was ten), maybe that’s why I have a soft spot for him. I feel like there’s some germanness in his prints, no?
