Dispatches from Berlin
07/10
I am in quarantine following a test at the station administered by a man in full hazard gear. A friend brings me dark German bread and bio eggs and bemoans the potential return of restrictions. I realize I have moved into the historic gay area, mainly because Christopher Isherwood’s address is 10 doors down from me and the cafes I can see from my window are full of middle aged gay men. There are two leather shops within spitting distance.
08/10
It rains a lot. I sort through 40,000 iCloud photos, subscribe to the LRB and make a new Instagram account.
09/10
I test negative and a friend takes me to a protest in Mitte, but we end up with 3 beers in a smoking bar because it is raining torrentially and we are bad citizens. We talk about Brexit and how pitiful the UK looks from afar - she says it’s a relief to talk about something other than Corona. I make a profile on a friend-meeting app later that night, and obsess over changing my bio from English-Irish to Irish-English.
11/10
I try to get returns at my favourite theatre but every showing is sold out for the rest of the month. I am happy for them (begrudgingly). I meet friends for suspiciously cheap sushi in a canteen round the corner, and like any good German restaurant they are utterly horrified when we ask for tap water.
13/10
My local bar takes some time to identify as it is called Slumberland and is listed on Google as a mattress store. Like any good Berlin bar it is dimly-lit, cash only, and the staff are incredibly rude. The floor is covered by an inch of sand, which the barman tells us has been a fixture since 1984, and within which I find two pennies. A friend’s boyfriend tells me his parents used to come here before the wall fell. I wonder whether they have changed the sand since then.
15/10
I spend a long time navigating flea markets and Facebook marketplace trying to find an atmospheric lamp for my bedroom as the dive bar taste for horizontal lighting does not make it beyond the threshold of private homes. There are a bizarre number of paintings of sunflowers for sale everywhere, as if I occupy the titles of a Wes Anderson film.
17/10
I walk home in the rain from a smoking bar and the main door to my building is unlocked. I creep up the stairs to my flat expecting to be ambushed at any moment, which doesn’t happen, but scream at my overcoat in a pile on my bed. In the morning my pillow smells of cigarettes even though I had a bath.
18/10
I make a ridiculously, preposterously large tray of caramel shortbread that I cannot possibly eat myself. My flatmates and the boys in my writing group eat it for me.
19/10
I eat Korean food with a friend in the south east and drink beers in the yellow glow of petrol canister lampshades. A woman at the table next to us lights up a joint, and the barman tells her she can only smoke tobacco inside (but joints are welcome on the pavement).
20/10
I finally catch a glimpse of the toddler that I hear directly above me in the middle of every night when I pick up a package from its flat, which is sadly not for me.
21/10
I take a visiting friend to a spa - a non-naked one unlike most Berlin spas, as we are English-Irish. We watch the attendants repeatedly directing baffled naked Germans to put their swimsuits back on. Everyone’s confusion makes the concept of swimsuits feel absurd; we drink a beer on loungers as a woman defiantly pulls off her bikini after getting into the al fresco pool. In the thermal bath they amplify plinky plonky music underwater with rainbow Tik Tok LEDS across the ceiling. We all float about on foam noodles and no talking is allowed. A middle-aged man rocks a woman in his arms and flows her gently through and beneath the surface of the water, in a display of tenderness that I find incredibly moving. On our way out he is wearing a nametag and arguing with the receptionist over a session he has not been paid for.
22/10
We cycle around the old airfield after spending some time agonizing whether escooters are forbidden. In the end we rent €4 bikes from the rental shop that has retained my details from my first visit at age 18, and weave down the runway around people on escooters. We have a beer and watch two old women in many scarves insistently pushing change at each other for their coffees. We cycle to a photography exhibition on the second floor of a warehouse opposite a showroom for large fiberglass ice cream cones for ice cream shops. The American photographer insists on talking us through each image and which state it was taken in, and also the election. We watch 2001: A Space Odyssey in a cavernous 60s cinema where everyone pulls their noses over their masks the second the lights go down.
24/10
When the sun is out it filters through the oak tree outside my window to spray gold across the headboard between 1 and 3pm.
