Postcard from Berlin🇩🇪
3 fun (and 1 serious) thoughts from my first 6 weeks.
If you're new here, welcome! This post will tell you why I’m in Berlin and when I'll be back home in North Carolina.
3 fun observations:
Slugs. Everything is smaller in Berlin (fridges, desks, bags of chips, ice cube trays, fire trucks) except the slugs! They are mammoth and rippled brown, clinging to damp (ground, garbage, dog shit) like ambitious groundhogs.
my daughter’s right foot in a black sandal next to a brown slug The light. Most of Europe, including Berlin, lies north of Maine. Wild, right? Having driven through Maine once in my early 20's, I can confidently say that the light here is like nothing I have ever experienced. Whether it’s the pink light of dawn cresting into my bedroom a few minutes before 6:00 on clear mornings or walking through wide bright fields at 8:00 pm, this light is a gift I receive with eager hands every day.
5:35 am looking out from my bedroom. 2 Euros. There’s a 2 Euro coin and I love it. Why? Because it’ll get me a damn good snack. I can’t buy much of a snack in the US for $2.35 (including tax) but in Berlin, I can buy a:
Single ice cream cone with sprinkles even! Not the fanciest small batch kind but good enough on hot days and accessible from most neighborhood kiosks. Flavors run from Schlumpf (Smurf) to Milchreis (rice puddingish) to the standard Schokolade.
Sweet pastry with icing and raisins baked in. Homemade, at the farmers market and a hefty wedge, too. Fresh, local pastry delights me. Light-up-with-joy kind of delight. And this one! Wow, I don’t even like dark raisins.
bretzel / pretzel, usually for *under 2 Euros* AND 90% of the time, wherever you get them they are fantastic. I favor a rosemarin brezel - rosemary leaves melted into cheese over a pretzel - from the Shroom at Sudkreuz SBahn stop. It could be lunch! Sometimes it is!
1 serious observation:
In Berlin, I notice men who are unafraid to look...softer. It's the 20something guy wearing a light pink tie dye short sleeve collared shirt and matching shorts. I'm not kidding. The outfit was a set. He was a regular looking guy, on the SBahn, looking at his phone, in a fabulous matching set. Or it's two adult men on one Lime scooter with one hand on the other's waist and the other on their shoulder as they whizz by laughing. Or two super hot guys wearing full on head wraps and totally tailored outfits hugging. Not a quick bro hug but a real hug that lasts.
Any of these sights would be uncommon in the US. Not just in the South where I live but most anywhere. Men expressing emotions. Men who don't seem to feel like they have to look and act "tough". Men who don't worry that pink means girly. Men unafraid to touch another man.
At 51, I'm rapidly becoming invisible so catcalls are not a thing. But my history as a rape survivor steels me against the man who gets too close in a wide aisle at the grocery store. Or who edges right up to me in line at the coffee shop. I'm on guard against the swarms of white guys walking East Campus taking the width of the path and being aggressively loud. These blatant male signs of aggression are absent here in Berlin. I still prefer to sit with my back against the wall but the absence of toxic masculinity is such a relief. The softness helps reset my nervous system and adds ease to my days. I’ll be sorry to leave it behind when I head home next July.
What I’m Reading:
Book: Slow Productivity (nf) by Cal Newport. He usually irks me because his writing never acknowledges the substantial privilege (wealth, job security, whiteness, caregiver for his children, being male etc) he has to do his work. But I picked up his newest at an English bookstore because of the cover. (See also how I choose wine.) And, pulling from his chapter “Do Fewer Things”, I’m now on a break from social media so maybe Newport isn’t all that bad.
Enticing, right? Article: When criticized for writing about the cruelty of children in Blubber author Judy Blume responded, “I’d rather get it out there in the open than pretend it isn’t there.” And that my friends, in fourteen brief words, is why I LOVE Judy Blume. That’s how we should think about the hard stuff. Here’s a recent piece on the new book, The Genius of Judy.
Essay: A Letter To My Lost Sister by Lucy Sternbach via The Audacity is for everyone —searing truth and astonishing clarity are etched into every word— but especially for the sister or daughter who looked the other way sometimes.
Books: The Recovering by Leslie Jamison (nf) and Let Me Tell You What I Mean (nf) by Joan Didion. I also just finished Such a Pretty Girl by Nadina La Spina. If you are an able-bodied person who has no idea about the disability rights movement, go read this book! Memoir.
As always, my heart is full with gratitude for your time and attention. Thank you very much for being here.
We have slugs here, too, but mostly we have snails! We have a little covered patio, and every morning there are different snails arranged in different ways on the patio. I think it's very cute.
Loved all of your observations here. I can't wait to hear more about your time in Berlin!