Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: Australian in Germany

  • cherry tree, wait for me

    Today I would give anything to run outside into this suddenly warm sunshine. I woke to birdsong and discovered I had left my window open all night. This is the first night since October that’s even been possible. I don’t feel the icy breezes snaking round my feet in the chilly living room, I can’t hear the ticking of the heaters. When I stood in front of the glass and gazed out I could feel the sun’s mighty warmth on my face. My eyes sting with tears thinking about it. It’s reached us.

    This winter staining gradually into pink blue yellow spring is now extended indefinitely, perhaps eighteen months, perhaps twelve, perhaps three, as if by a bad council order. Such a long winter under such low grey sunless skies.I miss cafes, I miss walking past people and feeling the foreign-communal energy of their own brisk, or vague preoccupations. The feeling of their thoughts and breathing fringing and wrinkling my air. I just miss them being there. I miss the little coughs and the unconscious throat clearings and sighs and the faint breeze as my neighbour in some plinking humming bistro turns a large page in his sagging newspaper. 

    That’s how we sit, that’s how I spend time with people. Cafes are my communion. I love the delicacy of their shared but parceled space. All along the old wall strip, the dead zone through Berlin that divided families like a terrible quarantine, the decades of no mans land that now is all overgrown with trees and nested with sweet birds, torn down one by one for new apartments as the city swells, one Japanese cherry tree after another will be touched by the sun and burst into its perfect ineffable colour, its blossoms fluttering and the sky a web of blue trapped in its branches. I want to lie there dazedly noticing the comings and workings of ants for whom springtime is an unending toil. I want to hear the punks on their houseboat creaking and clinking at beers in their foldout chairs. I want to feel a fast bicycle zip past me. Lie under the trees and feel their placid embrace, like two hands turned slowly outward to show me something.

  • German Corona: fascism vs panic

    In Berlin this early in the quarantine it’s ok, the sun is out and I would love to be out in it, I imagine people here might be finding it daunting at the end of a long low skied winter to have to stay indoors for longer. Seems to be one of those instances (unlike, say, individual freedoms) where German collectivism shines. Everybody is leaving plenty of toilet rolls for everybody else. We’ve been home four days apart from raids on the food store and I feel fortunate to have so much reading and writing I want to do. My partner’s college and all colleges have shut down, buses are running but their front doors are closed and the drivers don’t have to sell tickets. From Wednesday all clubs and bars shut down, restaurants not; because they’re purveying a service.

    Ludicrous given the scale of things right now but one of my preoccupations is making sure I come online in little sips, like a refresher or palate cleanser a hundred times in a day, and not just slump there like a barfly for hours. I’m guessing most people are dealing with that – the ultimate outworking of our collective and so recent addiction.

    I have learned how deeply Germans are conditioned to incline to potential fascism – that is, hyper conformity – but not really to panic. It’s impressive. When we all need to act in the common interest Germans shine, even if the sun does not.

    Meanwhile the macho flab of narcissist ‘leaders’ putting everyone so chronically at risk can do so that much more acutely right now. They’re really showing their sociopathy as well as their slackness. Johnson. Morrison in Australia. Tr*mp. Everyday people outshine them in every way, our common generosity and kindness is so moving. My heroes this week are people singing from their balconies in Italy. People offering shopping trips to their elderly neighbours. Nurses and doctors working at risk and through the night. We can be this. Thank god and hurrah.

  • supermerch

    In the supermarket I queued for the African check out dude who’s always calm in the midst of all the Germanness. A blonde woman behind me set down, emphatically, a bagful of fresh pak choy and then behind it, all in a heap, several packets of cream-filled biscuits, a jar of chocolate pudding, some plump filled fresh pasta and a tray of chocolates. I said, indicating the leafy greens, “This seems cute to me. Because one buys that – one gets to buy all of this.”

    She burst out laughing. “Stimmt.” True. I looked at my own pile and felt concerned its greenery might seem chiding. “I’m the same,” I said, showing her the huge bag of green grapes. “These are really a sweet treat but they look like vegetables.”

    “Very wise,” she said, still laughing, “it’s perfectly balanced.” We were chortling. The man at the register bade good evening to the person in front and picked up my Toblerone, the excuse for all the grapes. “Guten Abend,” he said, and I said, “Guten Abend.” Every sly glance sideways between me and the blonde girl started us both spluttering mirthfully. I stashed the grapes in my thousand-use bag and took the bar of chocolate from his brown hand, saying, “Beautiful Celebration-Evening!” which is how Germans tell each other, I am glad for your sake it’s nearly knocking-off time. Heading out to my bike parked under the trees I was thinking for the hundredth time that some poet among Germans has decided the wooden divider separating my groceries from hers shall be called a cashier’s Toblerone: Kassentoblerone.

  • pity flamingo

    Every week I cross town on the train and we pass a tower block of identical grey-frame units which have grey balconies. One balcony, at eye level with the train, has a bright pink inflatable flamingo hanging like a lurid fern, I guess somebody went to Florida or Havana and brought it back with them to bring back the tropics. It doesn’t look tropical. It looks more defeated. The air has shrivelled out of it, or perhaps shrunk in the bitter chill of Berlin’s below-zero winter. The bird sags, motionless, its head drooping over its breast and hanging down to the shrivelling feet.

    Poor tropical bird, alone trapped in glassy Berlin and its colourless end of year season, after all the other bright birds have vanished down to the southern shores to caw and preen.

    Snow lies on the ground in greying patches. Hardened scars of black ice have been strewn with sharp pocks of gravel from the big grey plastic bins. This fake bird is the only pink thing. Apparently flamingoes, naturally flamboyant or perhaps insecure on their wavering stalk legs, will not make babies unless a crowd of other bright pink flamingoes stands round them watching.

    Zoos have had to set up elaborate peacock tails of mirror to encourage them to breed. Gazing out at this sad blow-up bird sometimes I think about staging an intervention. What if every passenger put on a pair of Edna Everage sunglasses. What if we all stared out the windows and flapped our arms. Maybe the dying flamingo would stir on its still leaf of string. Maybe the neck would waggle and stretch, and the tiny head come up again to display proudly its improbable and superciliously curled coconut ice pink swan lip.

    But Berlin’s trains are courteous and pragmatic. People stand back tiredly to let each other on. This week I’ve passed a junkie shooting up right into the arm, against a pillar at my nearest U-Bahn station; five people in a row who were all reading books but seemed unaware of each other; and a sturdy Polish tourist who rolled, under my nose, a plump head of ganja into his palm so that when we all got off the train, he could light it.

  • nation of dog lovers

    You know you’re in Germany when you can saunter into a department store carrying your dog on a leash. The dog accompanies you up the escalator, looking longingly across at the fluffy bunnies quivering in their mesh cages down in the pet department. When the dog starts barking and kicks up a fuss in the queue to pay for haberdashery findings, and everyone turns with expressions of indulgent affection, that’s when you know you’re in Germany. When the woman staffing the cash register leans in to ask confidingly, Darf er eine Leckerli haben? Is he allowed to have a little treat? She has drawn open her cash drawer and pulled out a little bag of crackling dog treats. She gazes over the counter at the dog with a doting expression. She says, Mäuschen? my little mousie-mouse? wouldn’t you like a little yummy treat? The people at the next register have stopped their transaction to watch. Everybody is smiling fondly. The dog takes the treat politely, then drops it to the floor. His owner, known in German as the Herrchen, the little husband of the dog, bends to pick it up and then the dog takes it and gulps it down. An elderly lady in the queue says, That’s right. He takes it only from his Herrchen.

  • born by scissory section

    A German’s interpretation of my Australian pronunciation of flasher just yielded the phantom of the flesher: a guy who walks round with his coat open, flashing people with his flesh. Having cherished sundry other examples like “this cost fifty bugs” and “you have a great bump” I was reluctant to point out the error – but I’ve been made to promise so I broke it to him, gingerly; then had to turn away to hide my overweening affection when he confessed he now felt totally discombubbled.

    Yesterday my osteopath described his daughter’s birth by making a scissors motion: she had to be cut out, his wife had “a scissoring.” Thus we render unto scissors that which is scissors’, yield unto flesh what’s in flashes. It’s all gold.