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| An old abandoned brewery, a huge graffiti mural and a startling blue sky. Now that’s what I’m talking about. |
We have had sunny skies for more than three days in a row, there are people on the streets wearing shorts and all the cafés now have tables and chairs outside as well as inside. All signs would point to this officially being the start of Spring, or rather the end of the longest and most gruelling Winter of my life. I headed over to my afternoon’s lessons to find the school unexpectedly shut and as echoingly empty as an abandoned amusement park and thus found myself with a whole glorious afternoon in Berlin all to my disposal. In celebration I immediately went to the nearest shopping centre, bought a pair of sunglasses (in itself this was a risky manoeuvre as every pair of sunglasses on the market makes me look like an electron microscope image of a fly’s face) and went marching around the city in the manner to which I have become partial.
The minute the sun shines on this city it truly does metamorphose; suddenly the grey concrete blocks surrounding you are no longer imposing but exciting in their sheer bigness, the graffiti seems like a wild anarchic doodle as opposed to a gritty rejection of society and the people begin to be softer, kinder, more spirited. On the S-Bahn a terrifying-looking gangster man with a trucker hat perched atop his scalp, an array of gangsta accessories splayed on the seat next to him and drinking from a bottle of beer which itself managed to be threatening in being covered with German flags and nationalistic slogans, was taking up the only free seat on the train with his flotsam and jetsam. Being exhausted and dizzy I eventually plucked up the courage to ask if I could use the seat he was using as a cloakroom and was delighted when he turned to me and with a huge and glittering white smile gently uttered ‘Auf jeden Fall’ and cleared his things away. And sure, so he then kicked his beer bottle along the train aisle before he left the carriage, but you could tell that even this man was fundamentally a Good Egg.
My wander took me past old people drinking espressos on the street, past young people sitting on a bench which was actually an old bathtub missing one side, an abandoned brewery basking in the afternoon sun like a big elephant seal, past beach bars gearing up to put their deckchairs out for the start of the season, through parks where puppies and babies scampered around in the only way they know how…cheek-chewingly cliché as this all sounds, it all got my heart beating a little bit quicker because there is just a general sense in this city at the moment of something great coming on the horizon.
Particularly lovely is the beginning of preparations for German Easter, which very much like Christmas is exactly the same here as in the UK but about 25% more cute. The selection of Easter chocolates is so much nicer; you can buy multicoloured and adorable little eggs filled with marzipan, lovely coffee goo, chocolate truffle, nutella, that strange beige Kinder Bueno gubb, and a million other flavours, the chocolate rabbits are available in every hue and pose from sporty to studious to sexy and there is not a single trace of those disappointing chocolate-bar themed big eggs that promise to be ‘filled’ with what turns out to be just one risibly small sample-sized version of the thing emblazoned all over the packaging. Easter decorations are also a big deal. Every shop in the place sells ‘Ostergras’, a lurid green hay which I love for its all-purpose purposelessness and the fact that actually, when you really look at it, it honestly does just look fun and pretty and sweet, which is exactly what a festival about chocolate and baby animals ought to do. The array of little decorated eggs and mini pipe-cleaner chicks you can buy is impressive and I am already greedily eyeing them up for a Harvest Moon-themed set of jewellery.
I have been in Germany for the Easter run-up three times now and it never fails to get me squealing a little inside. It’s just so sweet! I will never forget being given, in a shop in Köln, a tiny sugar Spiegelei (fried egg, and by the by one of the absolute greatest words in the German language; who couldn’t love a populace who call fried eggs ‘mirror eggs’??) alongside my change when I bought some Easter goodies. The kids are, of course, sharpening their little teeth ready for the day in question and are unspeakably excited whenever I mention that they might be getting an Easter present if they are good; one group who are always late to lessons have been earning points for every time they turn up punctually and know that the kids with the most points will get an Ostergeschenk. They are truly so hopped-up about this idea that they have started coming to class half an hour early and waiting cross-legged outside the locked door before I even arrive, like Star Wars fans waiting for a seventh film a week before its release.
Not to mention, as I have already touched upon above, the fact that these little and barely-warm licks of sunshine have transformed everyone here into smiling and cheer-spreading versions of their former selves. This is why seasonal affective disorder is in my opinion a complete pile of bollocks; you’re telling me you feel depressed when you have to rip yourself out of a heart-breakingly warm and comfy bed to venture out into the wet and sin-dark morning wrapped in a million layers of itchy wool? And that you feel suddenly less depressed when you peel the duvet off to discover balmy temperatures, fresh sunshine and jewel-blue skies? CALL THE CLERGY. Honestly, everyone is depressed in Winter and conversely everyone suddenly recovers the minute the sun shines. The streets seem somehow wider and you can come home from work to enjoy a glass of wine in the evening light rather than mummified in your six dressing gowns in front of drab Winter television.
And if all this wasn’t enough to get you feeling giddy with anticipation about the coming months, here are some words that will do the trick: barbecues. Bellinis. Swimming. Cream teas. Lambs. Skirts. Flipflops.
I for one couldn’t be more excited. Finally the city I love is showing me that it loves me too and I can even stay out for over an hour looking at it without tiny ice crystals whipping at my face.
And despite the fact that when I first wore them to a school, the man at reception declared in front of a drift of children and coworkers that I look like a porn star, I also love my new sunglasses.
