February Thoughts
I feel awful so I decide to take my temperature. The thermometer takes forever to make up its mind and eventually spits out: 40.3°C (104.5°F). That can’t be right, so I try again. 40.5°C. I put it back in the drawer, probably broken. I get dressed to go buy another one. I can barely stand. I stubbornly pull on my boots and try to tie my shoelaces, but I don’t quite remember how to anymore. I sit there for a while, confused, staring down at them. I give up and go back to bed.
Whenever I get the flu I end up listening to this podcast about Napoleon and his battles to pass the time. It’s like a ritual. There’s 134 episodes, and it takes us 25 just to finally leave France and see some action. I’m sick and there’s nothing to do but listen, so every day we drag ourselves from camp to camp. Sometimes it’s quite suspenseful, sometimes it just lulls me to sleep. I must have slept through the battle of Arcole at least four different times. Once I start to recover I lose interest and desert his campaigns. I‘ve never made it to Egypt.
Later edit: I went to the Deutsches Historisches Museum to take a photo of the hat Napoleon left behind at the battle of Waterloo. The front desk guy solemnly told me that the exhibit’s closed until... 2031. That‘s a long time for me, but a short time for a hat.
I‘m at the Berlin Zoo when I get asked out of the blue by my friend if I can tell apart the male from the female hippo. They’re both lurking in the water and look nearly identical to my tired, non-caffeinated eyes. I stare at them for a while, and conclude that one of the hippos has longer, cuter eyelashes. They’re not exactly like Audrey Hepburn‘s, but you know, more noticeable. And I guessed right! Self-doubt kicks in later that maybe I just got lucky, so I spend the rest of the day studying everyone’s eyelashes. (Later edit: my friend said that she looked more delicate than him.)
I’m trying to log into my old Goodreads account, but it’s been over ten years since I last signed in and I don’t remember the password anymore. Spend days trying out different combinations, trying to reverse engineer what kind of wacky password my college self could have possibly come up with. I’m standing in line at the supermarket when it suddenly dawns on me what it could be. I only have a few items, so I throw them back into my cart and rush to try it before I forget. I hide out in the potato section to try my luck. „Your password is incorrect“. I go back to the now much longer line feeling foolish.
I’ve been curious to see Hotel Wilmina for years now, the premises used to be a women’s prison ward/ criminal court in the 1900s. I assumed they had taken all the prisonness out of it and only left a few historical details here and there. They actually left in quite a bit. The rooms feel like a german take on California Modern and there’s a fancy restaurant downstairs, but at the end of the day you still go back to your cell. I would describe it as a whimsical luxury prison. This is probably where they’d send you if you were a billionaire.
