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.
Tag: department store
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casa de correos
A beautiful girl went into meltdown at the post office counter at ten o’clock at night and we saw her wailing, sobbing with her mouth open, pleading in liquid Spanish. Tears ran down her face and arms, she was almost screaming with some kind of unbearable grief, what could be the matter? I felt like a psychopath unable to share her intense suffering. People behind us in the queue started shouting and pelting the staff members with accusations. No, said the man at the end, no, we’re closed now. I asked the man next to me, Hablo pocolito Ingles? Do you have a tiny bit of English? Yes, he said, hesitating. “Why is that girl so upset? What happened to her? Do you know?” He said, “She have to deliver something and the staff is working extra slow, that is why she’s unhappy.” I looked the girl over, carefully. I had never seen anyone cry so unashamedly and I envied her. She had dropped her head onto the counter and long black hair fell across her shoulders and pooled on the desk. She lifted her head suddenly and with both hands spread imploringly cried out to the postal worker in her husky treble, oh you can not do this, you are ruining my life. This tableau took place in a surreal setting as at some deserted wedding reception or garden party, we were right up the back of the seventh floor of a department store where the post office is located – other floors had advertised a travel agent, health insurance office, cafe – and on three sides were palatial suites of bright gleaming garden furniture, orange and pink and purple, sleek beige couches which fold out into beds, Chinese vases, immaculate mirrors. The rest of the store had closed and we went slowly, reluctantly down the escalators past floor after floor of unlit displays of homewares, women’s clothing, children’s fashion, appliances. Outside it was high blue hour and all the creamy ancient buildings reared into the perfect endless Spanish sky like stagecraft, I have never seen anywhere more beautiful and its mix of comfortable acceptance and torrid drama is a constant astonishment to me. Last time I flew home to Berlin from Madrid I noticed Spanish passengers tend to applaud, once the plane safely touches down – something English-speaking people will do only when the weather has been perilous and the landing dicey. They did it again this time. A ragged shout of “yay!” went up when we took off. The streets are crowded with tablecloth stalls which are held by four ropes to be picked up over the shoulder if the police happen past; there are stores filled with gold-crusted crosses and confirmation cups, long white candles with gold stickers round them, baby Jesuses the size of small bears. The sacred Andalusian baths in a grotto underground which are lit only by candles and have tiled signs in every room which say Silencio, Por Favor are always crammed with people gossiping at the tops of their voices. At the end of the night we walk home very slowly, worn out by the endless stones and the glaring heat, and in the Museum of Ham and the Paradise of Ham along the zinc-topped counters men in white aprons are sweeping, very quietly, a dirty snowfall of white crumpled napkins flung down by the day’s customers as they have finished their meals, one by one.
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bunnyhutch
I was in the petshop section of a department store, because pets were next to pens, as if alphabetical, and it is remarkably difficult to find decent, practical biros in Deutschland that are not too fat to hold. Those I brought with me are all written dry. Standing gazing at the rabbits, whose noses whickered as they twitched and munched, I felt someone come up alongside me. This was an employee of the store, a brand-new rabbit clutched in her hands. She stood there regarding them. “So,” she said at last. “Ihre neue Kollegin.” (Your new colleague). “Be courteous to one another.” Then abruptly stooping she stowed the fuzzy bunny, a ginger-coloured flop-eared morsel, in the straw.
Berlin has a higher population of dogs than any other city in Germany: a nerve-wracking place for a bunny rabbit. I watched. The other bunnies snuffled round slowly but no wars over straw started. After a moment the girl turned and went backstage again, to the ranks (I imagined) of yet-unlabelled white mice, Siamese fighting fish, ferrets, maybe camels. Her formality, her use of the polite form of “you”, the girl form of “colleague”, and the word “courtesy” – the use of the word “colleague” altogether, for bunnies – struck me as inexpressibly wise and drily loving.
