Monthly Archives: April 2019

Walks

Sunday’s Little Moments

There is something special about Sundays in the springtime. Maybe because here in Hamburg we usually have to wait for ours – nature takes its time and blooming happens slowly, thoughtfully. But when the season is finally here, it’s glorious. It also feels earned!

It rained this morning first, but in the afternoon the sun came out and I seized my chance to take a short walk. I had one quick errand on my list and as I sped along underneath some lovely old trees the height of a four-storey building, a generous dollop of bird poo landed next to me with a plop, narrowly missing me. Or so I thought! A few minutes later I discovered part of it on my jeans. Yay, because I was worried – it’s considered a sign of good luck around these here parts.

Every café in sight has tables standing outside and people are clearly enjoying the conclusion of a (mostly) sunny weekend, stretching out the Sunday evening before next week begins. I get some ice cream and sit down on a bench to enjoy it. Within a minute there’s a long line out the door while I leisurely eat my dessert, so thanks to that bird.

Two small children, brother and sister, dart out, a cone with two scoops (like me) for each. Their mother instructs them in focused German on how to eat the thing: “Turn the cone and just lick all around the bottom.” Well! Now I finally know how it’s done! By this point it’s too late to test the technique, because I’ve already eaten my ice cream, but I’m certainly savouring (no pun intended) the moment.

In fact, I’d gotten my two scoops in a cone, and I’m actually wary of cones, even though I love them, because I worry about dripping or dropping, since the top scoop (if you get two) is usually  sitting above the rim of the cone and is therefore in more danger of toppling over if you don’t eat it carefully or lick away too much of the bottom scoop. This is an important topic! But it’s 2019, and my cone trust has grown a lot. May this year signal the arrival of a new era in ice cream consumption outside as well as more little Sunday moments.

Advertisement
Standard
Thoughts

Aunt of Two

Becoming an aunt for the first time both touched my heart and opened up the place where the new family member took up residence. It confirmed and strengthened a large part of my long-standing feelings about family as a whole, as well as giving me a new understanding of myself as an adult.

Like all relationships, being an aunt is a continuing process. I learn, I cry (not with the kid, I hold it in and let loose later), I laugh, I smile before I even know I’m doing so, I visit, I play, I run and I stop to look at flowers in the grass outside. I make up nicknames with lightning speed and my voice changes pitch when I praise.

Conversations with family have expanded to include this experience and I know for sure that they will feel the same way I do when we talk, with our individual perspectives chipping in. I am, in short, invested, and I care. You see your sibling, now a parent, in a new light, and as you observe them with respect and a full heart, you may get a glimpse of what it was like for your parents, now the newly minted grandparents, to care for you and your siblings before your memory began to form.

I have now become an aunt for a second time and as we say in the family, I’m immediately aware. Everything I knew my heart to do before has happened again, and it still feels new, infinite. There is room for everyone.

The most humbling part about this experience is that I keep thinking the children didn’t ask for an aunt who still cries during (well-acted) sad scenes in movies, to name just one example, who is obsessed with using gifs in all forms of chatting and texting, and loves to grab almost any kind of freebies just because they are free (take now, sort later!). In fact, they didn’t know one single thing about me until we met, just as I couldn’t know what they would be like until I saw them. But during that first-time meeting I knew that this was how it was supposed to be, then and there.

Acceptance as an aunt is not to be taken for granted. I feel strongly that everything that makes up my life, especially the parts connected to my ever-developing self-awareness, values, thoughts on what kind of person I want to be and how I treat family and friends – all this, so crucial already, takes on an added, life-affirming importance because of two growing people who will know what I’m up to, since we are included in each other’s lives.

I do want to be an example to myself, and if by doing so I will also contribute in a positive way to someone else watching me (in addition to going to their parents first) from their smaller height as their world gets bigger every day, that will be the best mutual gift that aunthood could give.

Standard
My Travel

Notre Dame de Paris

My feelings after seeing the news that Notre Dame de Paris was on fire on April 15 are still quite raw and I have been finding it difficult to write this post. Even now I’m hesitating, because how can you wrap up your words in one not overdone package after decades of happily creating memories that have grown deep roots?

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw the headlines. You think of Notre Dame and you see soaring, stalwart stone walls and towers that have stood the test of time. You remember the overwhelming impact of history, architecture and beauty that the cathedral produces and simply assume that it will always be there. Of course I know that buildings are not going to be around forever and things can happen. They have happened. But we reach out towards that which stays, welcomes, remains, inspires. And that is one of the reasons why what happened to Notre Dame de Paris is so incredibly sad.

Buildings do not speak, but they make us speak because they are witnesses to time. Anyone can walk in, sit down, look around, take pictures, take away impressions, read up on historic structures and open up stories of the people connected to them. Whether you are religious or not, a cathedral like Notre Dame de Paris, aside from obviously being a landmark of enormous cultural, historical and architectural significance, is a place of gathering. Not just inside the building, but around it – in the little square nearby with Paris’ oldest tree and metal arches covered with roses in the springtime, in front of the two-tower facade everyone recognizes and tries to take the best picture of.

Way back in the day my sister and I first visited Notre Dame de Paris on the heels of multiple viewings of Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. We knew all the songs by heart and we even knew about Victor Hugo’s novel, even if we were too young to read it. Feeling quite prepared with our knowledge, we were very eager to go inside and as high as possible. We wanted to follow Quasimodo’s footsteps and see it all: the bells, the stained-glass windows, the gargoyle statues, the view of Paris from above. I remember that afterwards, full to bursting with all our impressions, we went around a corner to get some ice cream (mais oui) and there was a beautiful mime dressed as Esmeralda who pretended to read my palm. The experience was complete. As kids, we couldn’t have asked for more.

Since then I have been fortunate enough to go to Paris a lot and almost every time I stopped by Notre Dame, wherever I was coming from. Whether it was a longer sit-down with some relaxed people-watching or just a brief look, it has always been a part of my Paris. It was touching to see the same sentiments expressed online by people around the world, and the crowd singing Ave Maria as the cathedral burned is something that I don’t think I will ever forget. No riots, no violence, no fights, no pushing, shouting or discord of any kind (for a change), and thankfully no fatalities during the fire. Just pure, sincere acknowledgement of sadness and respect.

Standard
Thoughts

Nice Things People Ask or Say to You When They Find Out You’re Russian

Because they do! And while I have previously truthfully listed the rather typical things they ask (which tickle all my sarcastic scribbling instincts and love of the ridiculous hidden between the lines), I do always veer towards being positive in the end.

So, that conversation happens where you reveal the R word when people ask you where you’re from (sometimes they insistently ask you where you’re from “originally”, because your name sounds different, regardless of how long you’ve been living in your current non-Russian city). And you might hear one of the following:

Wow! That is a big country! (Yes. Depending on my mood, I might respond with, “Indeed, we have a lot of room” or “Go big or go home!”)

I love that stew, what’s it called…borscht! (Actually it’s pronounced borSCH, without a “t”, but I appreciate the effort and I have to restrain myself from asking if you’ve seen Miss Congeniality and if you might remember that scene in the dingy Russian restaurant, with Gracie Hart complimenting the waitress on that very stew…I’m getting carried away.)

What are those pretty Russian wooden dolls called, the ones you can stack up in each other? (Matryoshka. NOT babushka.)

Do you know that animated film, Anastasia? (Yes, I do, and I love it, though before you can ask, I’ll say myself that it’s a rather liberal interpretation of the Russian Revolution and the following years!)

I think you’re the first Russian I’ve ever met. (Honoured! Prepare to be amazed…)

Standard
Style?!

The See-Through Bag: Why?

I’m seeing them everywhere: a stylishly cut bag of a nice rectangular shape with good straps, roomy enough to fit all your daily necessities, as well as a tablet or small laptop. I’d grab one myself. But here’s the thing: they are transparent. Yes, I don’t know the girl in the pretty trenchcoat standing next to me by the traffic light, and I’ll probably never see her again, but I will remember every item in her bag, since I’ve had time to scrutinize it in conveniently visible detail.

I don’t want to know she has extra socks with her, even if I admire her for it. I am not interested in her make-up, and if I should suddenly lean that way, there are more than plenty of people on Instagram and YouTube telling me about their choices. I might have asked her about the book she’s reading, but I would actually have felt like it was more appropriate to do so if she was reading it on the bus in front of me. And the stray hairs littering the bottom of the bag from all those hairbands and scrunchies are just too much information for my morning.

The year before I started high school, most of the girls in my class seemed to have suddenly cloned the way they would bring things to school. You’d stuff pens, pencils, erasers, a bus pass and maybe the lipstick you stole from your mother into a handbag the size of a small notebook (making sure to take out only the lipstick with a flourish once in class, and not draw attention to the rest), then carry it in one hand and a plastic bag with your books in the other. If you did did things differently (a backpack, gasp!), you were suspiciously stared at.

But it couldn’t be just any plastic bag – it had to aspire to be chic, preferably with some non-supermarket logo, and then you were all set. It didn’t matter if the bag was bulging or weighing you down. It didn’t matter if this bag was transparent. Heck, it didn’t even matter if it tore and your books fell through the bottom right in to a puddle of autumn/ winter slush.  The main thing was, at 12 years old you retained your freshly discovered womanly dignity in your too-small handbag. This life challenge followed you through high school.

Fast forward we won’t say how many years, and enter the transparent bag. Shops and supermarkets have long since graduated to paper bags, but we’ll save those for shopping only.

Are even handbags being stripped (no pun intended) of privacy these days? Blocking the contents of a bag from being seen while out and about is one of the things in life we can actually control, choosing what to share and what not to about our daily routines and plans, saving ourselves at least a little of plenty of inevitable judging and misinterpretations from others. And there are so many lovely bags to enjoy carrying, surely it’s a shame not to get to play around with styles and colours? Isn’t it more convenient to store your dental floss in a small inner zip-up pocket than get another container or holder for it to put in the look-in-here bag? But wait, maybe the point is for people to see your dental floss. So they can remember to buy their own?

Aside from all these deep philosophical discussions, here’s a plain, practical question: do we seriously want to make it easier for muggers and pickpockets?

I just don’t get it.

 

Standard