I have that kind of soul and body and mind restlessness where I keep erasing this first sentence because I want to start with a bang, to talk about how amazing it was to have Brenna here and everything we did, but also it's after 9 pm and it's so bright outside it looks like it's only 6, and this jazz music is probably more daytime than nighttime, and I keep looking at my phone and out the window and to all the things in the apartment I still need to aufraum before I leave on Friday, and then glancing to the journal to my left and trying to sort out my work and tasks for the week--how I'll go to the gym tomorrow because I didn't go today, how I'd love to go to bachata open-air tomorrow but I told Jenny I'd edit these two reports, and usually I can edit a report pretty quickly but on days when I go to the gym that takes half the day, and my original plan today was to work after seeing Oma for lunch but everything got mixed up because today's a holiday and guess what the bus doesn't run, so I started to walk to the Dallgow Bahnhof but guess what the train's been coming only once an hour on the 38 mark for the past few weeks, and it's a 20 minute walk and it was already 10:25. So I turned back around and walked with all my heavy bags back to the house and up the stairs and got the bike lock key, and set off to Oma's, so at least that's one task out of the way, taking the bike home where it belongs.
And then after we ate our ground turkey and red cabbage and mashed potatoes we both visited Opa, and I don't want to say "that's out of the way too" because it's not like that, but practically speaking it is, because I wanted to see him before I go to Iceland. But today was not a good day for him, he was asleep when we walked in and looked at least half-dead, his shoulders seem like they're shrinking and his eyes clouded. He had pain in his neck and shoulders and sometimes he says super bizarre things, about shoes and hallways and things he sees in his brain that don't match up to what's actually there. When we left him I squeezed his hand and said we'd see each other again, and I hope so, but hope is a weak word, because the doctor had originally said a quarter of a year, and when I get back from Iceland in two weeks it will have been just that, a quarter of a year, and if he degrades these next three weeks then I don't quite mean "hope", because I don't want to hope for his suffering. I hope he feels better, but not if it means yo-yoing him, teasing him with better days, prolonging the amount of time he has to wither away in that bed. Oma said again today that she and Opa are old and lived long enough, but it's so strange to imagine her anywhere close to death, even though she's only two years younger than Opa. She has such a youthful and inquisitive presence about her, the way she'll break into old songs or play with words and the things she sees. Today she said maybe one day she'll draw the faces in the trees, before the breeze takes them away. A week ago she wrinkled her brow and said sometimes she sits there and wonders, who formed our hands? Our faces? She asks it with the same curiosity as what she says about cancer: first mom and then Opa, you have to wonder where it comes from. Where on earth does cancer come from?
Brenna arrived Friday the 19th on a 45-minute delay. We long-hugged and rode the train home, gabbing the whole way. She was starving and we tried finding food around the main train station before walking back and catching the next SBahn to Falkensee, where we bought doners to-go and ate them on a bench in the sun in front of the tracks, the ICE occasionally flying by. The food was messy and fell all over our hands and the ground. We walked the 20 minutes home, stopping at all the flowers, and stayed in that night, chatting.
On Saturday we went to the bakery down the road and ate delectable sweets--me a crumble cake, her a sweet bread and pretzel--then walked along a small creek with a wider river mouth, where mandarin ducks collected on logs and one flew right overhead, so close you could hear its speed. A ways down the river, a fisherman sat in the shade. Brenna and I peeled blowflower stems and talked about backyards, the grass and the green, how inner-city doesn't get childhoods like the suburbs. How the garden house could be a writer's retreat. We caught the train first to Spandau and then the Zoological Gardens, where we hopped in and out of stores and spent at least a full hour in Uniqlo, getting sickly red-hot trying on so many clothes. I bought a down compression coat, a pair of jeans, and a new fanny pack big enough to fit what my current one won't. Around 6 pm we hunted for a bar, but so many were too crowded or in the shade, and it wasn't the warmest day.
On the way to Kreuzberg we passed an Indian restaurant with tables in the sun. We impromptu stopped and sipped incredible Mojitos with so much fresh mint and crushed lime and after three sips Brenna said she was drunk. We ordered an app plate and everything was battered and fried, even the cauliflower and cheese, but oh it all tasted so good, and even better with the cocktail. I've only had a handful of drinks since March, so each one feels super special, but I drink it way too fast.
At 9:30 we ate big plates of beef and salad and fries (essentially more expensive doner on a plate) and had our second drink of the night, my first beer in Germany this trip: don't ask me what it was, and I didn't drink the whole thing, but it was good and so worth the wait to toast with Bren, someone who was around before I'd ever even taken my first alcoholic sip.
Sunday we went back to the bakery and sat in the airy sunroom with the wooden beams. It felt Mediterranean somehow more than European, like a space I'd imagine on the edge of Greece, with white stucco walls. We ordered the breakfast plates we'd envied the day before, when we'd seen all the retired people sip coffee and share baskets of bread. Brenna's plate came with cheese and liverwurst, mine with butter, marmalade, and Hörnchenbrot, since they ran out of croissants. My stomach was feeling weird, but I sipped orange juice and ate slowly and felt better by the time we hopped on the train.
On the Straßenbahn I watched a young woman with long hair, long nails and brand name purse type-type on her phone, sunglasses on, unbothered by all the people crowding the space. Her and her hot girl crew. Makeup is a huge thing here, dyed eyebrows and perfect skin. When Brenna arrived she pointed out all the trench coats, and how so many people here have different styles. My favorite thing is to spot the techno people in the weekend crowds.
We rode a few stops before hopping off with everyone else at Mauerplatz. Leonie had mentioned the flea market to me after our visit to the small one at Fehrbelliner Platz, and she was right, this one was so much bigger and truly wunderschön, a mix of antiques and art and thrift and food vendors. I bought a 40-euro brand new white linen shirt and then many things for so much cheaper, the way it should have been: a 4-Euro skirt that's too small for my Euro bread-and-butter waist and a 1-Euro purse, pair of pants, and breezy button down. So many people were drinking and the vendors too, including one who said there are so many Americans here today and then called me out of the crowd for my Montana whitewater hat. It's something I find fascinating about Berlin, and romantic too: how much English you hear but how most is accented, European friends and lovers coming from different countries and meeting with English in the middle.
After the fair we walked through the rest of the park, which gave off a festival vibe of drum circles and friends drinking beer, some people dancing to techno and some watching a basketball game on the court, and then a whole lawn of Turkisk families grilling long, fragrant kabobs of meat. We walked and walked and then googled the closest ice cream shop and went there -- I got a scoop each of tiramisu and cookies and we ate it on a bench in the shade-- my first ice cream since being in Berlin. It was so incredible I didn't want it to end, but of course the melting cream dripped out of the crunchy cone and all over my fingers and wrist.
On Monday I worked out and then bought a whole assortment of bread (for under 3 euros) at the mega Kaufland at Havelpark, and Bren and I ate it together in the balcony in the sun. We stuffed the table full of cheese and meat and honey and butter and strawberry jam and well-washed Bodenberries that Brenna triple-washed. We sipped orange soda and ginger-orange shots and chatted for two hours before Bren helped me curl my hair.
I wore a skirt for the first time since being here and we took the train to Hackescher Markt, where we went into a totally soothing Japanese store Muji and then popped back into Uniqlo. Bren calls it a good "basics" store which is totally true, but still it fascinates me how popular baggy, boxy and scrunch-band clothes have become. It hits as a "comfort over fashion" place, if you look at the manikins, but then you see all the people walking around who can mostly pull off the style. And, I did get my new favorite pair of jeans there!
We strolled for a while in that neighborhood, past Auguststraße, up a big hill and then down the same one. We were getting hungry and finally decided to stop at Datscha, a restaurant in Kollwitzkiez, where we snagged the best spot, one in the corner where we both could see. We ordered two cocktails each (me Pink Passion, Brenna something red and then basil gin) and indulged in incredible white asparagus soup and beefy Russian ravioli in an oily tomato sauce. By the time we left, the restaurant was so crowded we had to squeeze our way out. We talked about the people around us, and how I always wonder who's on their first date, or who's been together for years; the subtle ways we posture to strangers: the silence we can have around old friends, and how it's so much richer.
After food we walked to Monbijou Park, and there on the river, across from Bode Museum, was the pop-up salsa floor, a treasure of a space decorated with string lights and dancers. A man I've danced with before at Havanna reached out his hand and said, the sun is so beautiful and I need someone to dance with. Brenna waited patiently on the side with my things as I danced for almost an hour, as the sky darkened and a river heron stalking the shadows flew away. An old man I danced with said I looked so ernst, which I quickly learned was serious, and so after that I tried to smile a lot more, but also I didn't try and dance with him again. Sometimes I am very serious when I dance, other times I can't stop laughing, but since the whole point of dance is just to go with how you feel, I don't quite like being told to feel differently.
After about an hour, we walked across the bridge and sat on the steps of the museum as a single man with a guitar performed in front of an audience that seemed purposeful: people who brought snacks and shared wine, who mostly said nothing. The guitarist sang Wicked Games and the lamplight glowed orange against the last of the evening blue and occasionally a biker rode by and it was all so beautiful.
Tuesday was gray and cold and perfect for shopping. First we stopped at a bakery in the Dallgow-Döberitz square, but my pastry didn't taste fresh. Next we hopped on a bus to Havelpark, where we bought things at TKMaxx (the K is not a typo) and Kaufland and then sat in my first Eiscafé this whole time in Berlin. I ordered a Stracciatella Becher and Brenna a strawberry one, and we licked every last bit up with our fun long spoons.
On Wednesday we visited the bakery one last time and sat on the patio in the cold, or what Bren would call "the Icelandic summer". My Apfel-Johannisbeer streusel Kuchen was divine: perfectly moist with a springy caramelized glaze. And then we slowly made our way to Hauptbahnhof, where we waited for Bren's FEX (Flughafen Express). See you in a couple of weeks, we laughed.
After Brenna left, I went to the gym and then visited Opa, who was in the best mood I'd seen yet--the reason the most recent visit felt particularly bumming. The day before, they'd apparently wheeled his whole bed outside so that he could eat white asparagus with a bunch of other people in the big room. When we left, I told Oma he seemed like he was in a great mood, talkative and cheery, and she laughed and said yes, maybe he has a new girlfriend. It got me thinking again how social isolation truly kills the soul, and how grateful I am for all the people in my life who share it with me, who sit across from me and tell me what's on their mind, who listen to what's on mine.
And there's a certain kind of magic that happens when you're with someone who's known you particularly long, who remembers your middle school lunches, how Mom would always pack me kiwi and Babybell cheese, liversausage and sometimes grapes; the group-switching in high-school to be closer to boys, and the crushes we both had that weren't ever the same. I love our shared experience of school, but we didn't even really *know* each other until college, when we'd call each other from hundreds or thousands of miles away, when she was in NYC and Italy and France. There's such an intimacy in remembering someone else's memory, in feeling like you were there too, because they shared it with you at the time. I love how all of our talks and postcards and texts led us where we are now, country-hopping to tink glasses and talk for hours in the sun and shade, about how we feel and what we're thinking and where we're going. And to know, as much as we can, that we'll see each other again.
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