Though I live in one of the grimiest areas of Berlin, and that’s pretty grimy, right now and for a few short blessed weeks I can walk – from my house – clear down to the UBahn station – under an alleyway of pink cherry blossom. It’s like a fairytale. All I have to do […]
I just acquired the most beautiful new German word. We are discussing privilege and a new acquaintance says he has to do something ehrenamtlich – oh, how divine, can ‘ehrenamtlich’ mean ‘voluntary’? An ‘Amt’ is a bureau, government department or office. But ‘Ehre’ means honour. Germany is overrun with Amts. Ordinarily they sound faintly menacing: […]
Oh, Spain! Is so filled with amazing events! Walking home just now I saw a man busking with his telescope. It was pointed up towards the moon, a peach lying in dark glossy syrup, and his hand-lettered sign and the beast had attracted a queue of people eager to see the sky up close. His […]
A literal translation of the conversation that took place between me and the gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy working in the Turkish deli just now: Me: Hi! Can we have two pieces of that, please, to take-with? Gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy: Sure! Rightfully to take-with or simply for underway? Me: Oh, just for underway please. We […]
Interesting coincidence between the accidents of physics and the compulsions of human nature: so often when a glove falls, in the street, like a leaf it will lie palm-side-up, as though its fortune is about to be told. That way when you walk past these lost lonely single gloves they are usually in postures of […]
København magical, sunken in the deep, dark water like a turtle from the undersea land, and all of these strangers (to me) riding the waves on its back. The water stretches away into the dark, black and pulsing with lights. Candles in the windows, restaurants which opened in 1694, boats creaking in the wind which […]