Prologue
An invitation mid July 2022 to a railway & camping trip through Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary on the following August raised an illusion. Its retraction —tarding a couple of days long enough to tease into me a great desire— was a disappointment. Kahneman and Tversky tell, people are more sensitive to losses than gains, and perhaps that was it. I had spent many a vacation days at home, happy and content, working on my never finishing and thence never read writings, a tad sad once framed thus into a sentence. I can't say I have ever had any wanderlust, though that rings somewhat untrue given how far and often the place I call home has traveled across the world. I had long wanted to end up living in Europe, but it was a petulant jerk which first brought me here. Living at my parents for the first time again after four years of study abroad I could not stand my father's loud music playing at his adjacent study. I knew I had to move out, yet nothing short of moving to another continent, for all my affection towards my parents, seemed far enough. It's only recently that I've recognized a pattern underlying much of my behaviour; I'm a person of poor measurement: when I go, I can't stop; if I go, it's all the way. Nonetheless it strikes me as odd, as I feel to be a self-controlling person. Only on the cartoon level I'd say that hypercontrolling in one realm gives rise to its counter hypo- in another, compensably, in accordance with the locomotive Freud model where sticking shut your finger in one hole sends the steam breaking loose the seams at the other end.
It occurs to me that the next is, appropriately, like a homage to Three Men in a Boat, though my own journey was more sad than hilarious, more pathetic than sad, included no dog whatsoever (perhaps a centipede), and is not entirely clear if there was even a single man there. That book begins, of course, with Jerome Klapka's telling how he discovered he had each of the ailments described over the pages of a medical manual. In my case it is the mind rather than the body that has given me concern. Am I a case of autistic spectrum disorder? Until the critical years were over, I had been worried of the prospect of being struck by schizophrenia. The newest discovery is of the obsessive compulsivee's tendencies, of whose relentlessness, I suspect, control's “hold on” and the excess' “don't stop”, rather than the opposites they seem to be, are but two sides of: there's a clear direction to go in, not so clear is the destination, where to stop. An ever present anxiety to put things in order reigns.
Shoot for the moon and you would land among the stars, they say. That or you'd be destined the lot of the moth, ever whirring a street light until the final exhalation or until entrapment by a treacherous cathedral such as the spiders so meticulously construct before winter within the lanterns of Marchbrücke. Or do you shoot for the stars and land on the moon? I never remember which one it is. I suppose the bronze for poor aiming comes with a spectacular & buoyant but freezing view over the universe while the one for not shooting far enough comes additionally with a piece of real estate of open horizons, albeit barren, under one's feet. When I left Israel I aimed more modestly, merely at Europe, and ended up in Berlin, whither I actually wanted to go. Now I aimed to quickly get rid of the load of my experience and ended up spending half a year writing about a trip of less than a fortnight in which nothing happened. Perhaps both variations of the adage can be true.
∗ ❦ ∗
What ultimately drove me to set out on the trip was the occupation with what others would think of me. Namely, they who, collectively, made that offer and retracted it. Yes: an expression of independence, an ‘I'd have done it even without you’, towards them. Petty, yes, and not unlike times in the long past, living in a flatshare, when I'd leave to be absent as if I was “going out,” just so that my flatmates would not think me a friendless bore. I had otherwise spent most of my time at home, whether arbitrarily or because of my coffers' constraints, attuned to their own goings and comings.
∗
I first met them, a year earlier, at Kallasch, an unadorned, unpainted walls enclosed pub in Moabit, in front of the “Center for Art and Urbanistics” ZK/U which occupied the former railway depot that served Berlin's Westhafen Canal inland port. Rosalía had been once a resident artist there. We sat outside on crates over a coffee-table-height table and drank alcohol-free beers. It was October. Noemí had a way to lop-sidedly squeeze her cheek, create a -+ with her mouth, that reminded me of Shaked. Rosalía's smile reminded me of Orit. Two woman, I realized, that had to do with Yami — his partner and sister.
The two met each other three years earlier through Tinder, now lived together and wanted to become parents. We met to discuss sperm donation. Before me they had met a man who wanted to be a father proper, which they realized did not align with their own wishes. Neither the first nor the last I met under such pretext, they distinguished themselves in their attitude towards me. With Germans the whole affair was more transactional, contained, official, while with the two Argentinians a broader relationship was developed. At the conclusion of our first meeting, already in the warmer insides of the pub, Noemí suggested I met their friends. I was surprised at this unprecedented invitation, and though attracted by it, was wary in principle and gave a non-committal answer. I could see that Rosalía was not as forthcoming, perhaps unhappy about that extension. When I mentioned it to her many months later, she said that her worries were about scaring away the potential donor. Nonetheless, the two had differing attitudes towards the affair: Noemí who was ready to involve the village to bring up the child, and Rosalía who wanted to keep the child close.
How I got to make such donations is somewhat trivial, but my persistent motivation is drawn from, first, the opportunity to do a favour, rendering a good to others that greatly exceeds the demands it makes on me. Second, being touched by videos of diblings or “donor siblings” meeting for the first time, by the immediate connection they felt for each other, I was excited to provide my own future children the opportunity to meet such oddly relatives of theirs, especially since I come from a small family and on top of that am an immigrating immigrant with little family where I live. And third, it's a way to root myself, however abstractly or potentially, in the community I've moved to.
∗
Beside their friendly attitude, I had the wish to learn Spanish, at which I had made for a few years, on and off, tentative strikes, which now turned me to write them often; here appeared both a strong motivation to communicate and impress and an opportunity to practice. I went to get-togethers of their friends. Over time I developed an affection towards them, as well as, given the nature of my help, a desire — as I would to lesser or greater extent with any of the recipients, or, for that matter, to a varying degree with any female friend. One day at a moment of introspection it occurred to me that I saw them regularly —a couple of times each of many months— right after the little dying, that is, I wondered, after being flooded with oxytocin and its pair-bonding effects. I shared this observation on our group chat, adding that I didn't mean to suggest anything by it.
When we saw each other later that July day for a donation, Rosalía came alone; Noemí, the more talkative of the two, was in Spain. After Rosalía used my donation, we stood, then sat, in my room, chatting, our first tête-à-tête. She asked me what I meant with the message; I said it was a mere observation. She said that I must have thought that it was suggestive of something if I bothered to write otherwise, which I had indeed just realized to be the case. We had a vague theoretical discussion. I felt that there was a word that was being avoided, and I thought the word was “love”. I suppose I did love them, in a new and somewhat distant kind of way. I did not want us to be partners, conventionally speaking, but I appreciated them and was glad to be their donor, for us to be bonded thus within this terra incognita kind of relationship. The word seemed taboo to me as it presented a threat to the accord we had, of me providing the biological possibility, as it were, for their conception of a child, where my relation to them should had ended. However, the word she had been avoiding, until she brought it up, was "sex". I tried to keep a poker face. Though I desired it, I would not have dared to bring it up, seeing it would have been a breach of trust, an exploitative move, to say nothing of having been a blurring of our boundaries — not directly, at least; I suppose I had indeed expressed things out of desire, perhaps indirectly suggesting my readiness for it, an odd sort of flirting. It was only retrospectively that I realized that, as we sat in my room, Rosalía was not so much elucidating that which I had said, reacting to it, but was making her own move, spontaneous in a way though encouraged by my own words. She told me that sex with men was something she was into; that she and Noemí had discussed having sex with me; that Noemí, who was strictly gay, had already had a threesome once. She asked if I had had. She added, I presumed it was a conclusion reached when she discussed it with Noemí, that perhaps it would make sex too forced a thing. Having to have, say, sex three days in a row on particular days of the month. I understood what she meant though I scarcely saw it the same way. As it was already, I had to force myself into an inspired arousal, even more temporally strict since it had to match their planned time of arrival, an experience that for me was more stressful than pleasant. This was, ironically, a reason why I was myself wary of sex's prospect, as if by turning the procedure into a pleasant one for me the sides of the equation would unbalance and I could no longer demand the donation to be arranged on my own terms.
Two days later, after I wrote that their planned summer trip sounded exciting, Noemí invited me to it. Lasslorn for many years, prurient thoughts about hot tent nights in the forest filled my mind. Her wife's silence on the matter on the chat, though by itself typical, raised a concern. When I phoned Noemí she told me she had not yet discussed it with Rosalía, but said she was sure she would be for it. On that call she informed me that Rosalía's sister was joining. That changed my fantasies, though not my wish to join. Beside having a nice time travelling with them, I now wished to display my impeccable proper self-control. Nonetheless, eventually came the news that Rosalía wanted to spend time with her usually on the other side of the Atlantic sister and that I, to put it bluntly, did not belong.
∗
At first I sought to make a simulacrum of what had not quite been promised to me. Therefore I solicited others to form a party for such a trip, yielding nothing; those I wrote to were each in their own way unavailable, and though I had designed to cast a wide net of invocation in the form of an email to all dear people I could think of, I never came around to it. The only apparent recourse was to go on the trip alone, which was undesirable. I had spent, I dare say, if not much of my life then at least most of the last years in solitude, not merely bearing it but often seeking it; presently I had had enough of it, but if I were to be alone I'd have preferred to be so at my study, if I might thus verbally promote my one own rented room, part of an estranged flatshare, serving all of my domestic needs but the kitchen and bathroomic. It seemed pointless to go travel alone. Indeed any touristic kind of travel, conducted with the aimed conclusion of returning where one came from, was pointless, in a way, but having company elevated it into a shared experience, a piece of life. I had long thought, too, of travel as one of the best ways, more than to get to know the world, to get to know a fellow beloved human being, the novel and often challenging conditions provoking behaviour that would otherwise, in the quotidian environment of the relationship, not be witnessed. A thing to do with somebody before you marry or get into any other all encompassing long term commitment with them. With such words I tried to honey the ears of the would travelers to Slovenia &c, hoping to change a heart. It didn't work.
The appeal of getting to know myself, through solo travelling, was not there. I have my own blind-spots, but spending time in introspection was not something I lacked. But since my appetite for travelling threatened to pang me with remorse had I stayed for a vacation at home, I turned to seek conviction, principally by watching YouTube videos on the theme. This seemed a foolproof method, to the point I thought I might as well dispense with it — if I knew that I wanted to do something and would do it anyway, why bother convincing myself? But I can't say I knew what I wanted. Doubt, fantasy and a new conception of my available means suggested myriad of options, to the greater part mutually exclusive, each with its own pros and cons — I could fly, take a train, or hitchhike; get a hostel, a hotel, camp outside. Was I ready to spend the night in the wilderness? Was I ready to spend a hefty, thitherto never such spent by me, sum on a supposedly fun thing I might regret doing? Face the wild? Get to know other fellow, bunkbed-mated, travellers? Enjoy the peaceful accommodation that money can buy? And the videos I found did little to convince. I vaguely remember one that inspired, but it was drowned among others that offered little but platitudes. The only memorable video, titled ‘Why you need to travel alone,’ was of this —to judge by view count and subscriptions— popular, former product manager at Google, who praised the merits of solo travelling. His repetition of it being ‘more efficient’ would have made it look like a satire had I not known he was in earnest. Among his arguments was that when you are alone you don't get into arguments with your companions, and you can always do whatever it is that you yourself want. I found this sad, and somewhat revealing, like example sentences in linguistic papers (‘Mary may wonder if John cheats on her.’ Interestingly enough, a 2021 study took such sentences as the object of its investigation), but the rest of this iceberg was uncovered by a YouTube comment:
weeks ago : my wife left me
now : why traveling alone is awesome
And indeed, there were two other videos from the same guy; one scarcely a fortnight older, my wife left me. ("How success destroyed us"), and another that was released a couple of months later Why my wife left me (how our marriage collapsed).
It seems oh so typical of me to think of travelling as an opportunity for introspection rather than, say, meeting the wider world. But there's something to it, no? It's too already a cliché; I think there are many such quotes but I bring the first I found, of Rilke: Die einzige Reise ist die innerhalb, the only journey is the inner one. We go, get an impression, we return, it's like reading a book — a mental exercise. Tourists are ghosts: they have a human form, sometimes are capable of communicating with the environment they haunt, move around, look but don't touch, their overall influx nonetheless having an effect, residents move out of buildings, relinquishing them to the specters. And yet, even a book is something coming from without, to say nothing of proper travel where the body is displaced.
What ultimately put me at peace with the idea of travelling alone was the prospect of vlogging. It would have allowed me the opportunity to share, which was still not quite like sharing an experience with another, but seemed the closest to travelling with somebody while travelling alone. My phone would be like Tom Hanks' faced volleyball (I remembered a plank) in that Robinson Crusoeic movie. I knew that to be watchable I would have to edit it, and that I would be very unlikely to do so. I knew, moreover, that I would be very unlikely to even watch all the raw footage myself — but it didn't matter to me; the point was the production rather than the product. Thinking along these lines I couldn't help but gutter into nihilistic directions; any potential company would have died, one day, too. I would. These certain finitudes do nothing to diminish the present. Stupid, yes, but perhaps, I hope, illustrates my grappling with the decision to go. What makes an experience meaningful?
But beside the "post-production" issues which I decided to ignore, I expected real time issues. Walking around with a phone's camera pointing at myself would not come naturally to me. I found it somewhat shameful, even if I myself had enjoyed some youtubers who do exactly that. Why? Out of a general despising —somewhat a strong word, but here— of the phone-gazing culture that we were becoming. Vlogging from home, as many indeed do, is in a way not very different from, say, writing. Both happen at one's privacy. But phone usage, generally, outdoors, constitutes an odd invasion of the private upon the public sphere. On the one side, it's the user's exclusion of his surrounding from his experience by focusing his attention on the phone. On the other, by preventing eye gaze being caught, by preventing engagement —further worsened by earphones (would one day "earphone" mean a little computer that sits on one's ear? I wonder. Probably not)— the person restricts the surrounding's access to himself. Blind and unrevealing, we move among each other while somehow not really being there. A person documenting an event in writing would necessarily do it post-factum. A person documenting an event in video is doing so in real time, and thus sequesters himself from involvement. That person's experience was already altered; I always felt a little sorry for attenders who film concerts, as if by doing so, for the sake of the future self, other people or just to show one was there, they diminish their own privilege of presence, by being half elsewhere. But, more alarming, is the image of spectators of a calamity that, since they are taking a video with their phones, render themselves absent; they do nothing to help, despite their full awareness of the problem and their ability to do so. I always wondered, when watching reportages about necessitous people, whether the journalists had done anything to assist. Cases when what is to one a relative small change would go a long way to the other. A notion of journalistic professionalism suggests that no: they are there to document, not to get involved. But does witnessing not necessarily bequeath some kind of responsibility? The alternative is somewhat cold hearted. And yet, is it not better to at least expose a problem without helping, than to shun lest one would be made obliged? I don't know.
∗
I considered a true “vacation at home” option. I had already lived many years in Berlin, but had never treated it as a city to be discovered. Upon my first arrival I was thrown against the urgent matter of finding an apartment to live in, which already diverted time and attention from the studies I should have concentrated on, leaving little mind for gallivanting around. By the time I recuperated, Berlin had become old. Tentatively, that summer, I got the yearly pass for Berlin's State Museums and visited the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Old National Gallery. I enjoyed my time but still sought travels.
∗
I considered travelling to Rostock. Not as my journey proper, but as a model thereof. Lying at the Baltic sea, historical member of the Hanseatic League, Rostock was a few hours train ride away. Single regional train ride away, I'd add; throughout June to August 2022 Germany ran an experiment, offering a monthly “9 Euro Ticket” of unlimited travel on local and regional public transportation. A couple of my friends had already gone to Rostock recently, as well as Rosalía and Noemí. I supposed I could make that small jaunt and see how I liked travelling alone.
I was already on my vacation from work, but ended up not going. I found some hostels and hotels, my attention was caught by one, can't remember which, but my thrifty habits didn't let me decide on booking it. That it had received mixed reviews on Google maps didn't help. I thought I might go camp but I hadn't had yet my camping equipment. The “Hanse Sail” maritime festival was coming up, enticing, but took place on future dates in which I wished to already be on my main road.
I looked into Varna, Bulgaria. With regards to Slovenia and Croatia I had had the illusion that as they were Slavic languages speaking countries, with a bit of preparation I could have made myself useful as company and shine like some polyglot. Lying on the coast of the Black Sea, Varna was a substitute to Split and whatever other beaches the ladies set their eyes on. Had I gone to those latter destinations themselves, even if the chances of bumping into them were close to zero, I'd have too obviously appeared like a sore loser and, worse, exposed my true colors as a sorry creeper. I did look up and found two hostels in town, both warmly reviewed, though one seemed to be too much about drinking parties and I was concerned about my sleep. I found an affordable one way flight ticket. Did I go? No. Perhaps not quite committing all the way, I had planned to take my laptop with me, under another illusion that I would do writing on the mornings. The rooms not being private, I was wary the laptop could be stolen, though I doubt it was the reason that road was not taken. Rather, and I think it's more than a mere analogy, it was again this lack of measurement of mine. My overthinking is another of its effects, a ramble that knows not how to recognize when the destination was arrived to. The bar to reach, the threshold between “consideration” and “decision,” was way high, as if God would have had to appear personally from between the clouds and shine a green light. Time was passing, and I was anxious to know where I'd be going, so I dropped it.
I whimsically & briefly considered Kazakhstan. Some travel youtubers I had watched inspired the idea, and as a good friend of mine lived there the possibility seem sound. I looked up and found an aerial journey, connection through Turkey, on the following day, affordable. I was concerned about Visas but didn't even a minimal effort to look it up. I didn't go.
Another option was France. I had a vague but correct notion that a friend of mine was going to travel around the country. I had written to ask about his summer plans, with the notion of joining, already mid June, a month before Slovenia &c was ever first suggested. The plan was, he promptly answered me, ‘exploring south of France,’ though my follow up questions, a few hours late, were answered only a month later. The timing of his planned rambling did not match my already settled vacation days. He did suggest one trail to me, one his mother was then walking, as well as offered me to stay with him and his partner in Montpelier at the end of it.
Another friend, coming from the US, was travelling through South Germany to Switzerland with her grandmother, offering me to join. But she passed too quickly, she was an eye-blink. Let's all meet next year, she said.
∗
I raised the idea of going camping together with a couple of friends of mine who resided in Utrecht. Yami asked me if I was experienced in camping. I answered ‘with this kind of attitude..’ On a chat with both of them I said it didn't have to be camping, and they suggested that I would come for a visit. Something that, incidentally, my mother had already suggested a few weeks earlier. But I wanted to hit the roads some way or another.
A week later I wrote to them again. Not having found anyone to travel with me, I settled on the following plan: make my way slowly westwards, on regional trains, hitchhiking, visiting German cities, to arrive to a visit of Yami and Shaked; then return. This plan involved camping, gave these ventures a goal, involved seeing friends, allowed for precipitating the solitary parts had I not enjoyed them, and appealed to my still thrifty habits.
Preparations
I had settled on my plan on July 29. Inside my mind I was in a secret competition with Noemí and Rosalía: my trip couldn't be shorter than theirs, so I aimed to set sail as soon as they did. The duration of my trip was bound by the end of my vacation from work; their own trip was capped by a flight from Budapest back to Berlin. Both mid August.
For a week already I had made investigations regarding sleeping in the woods, in Germany and in general, mostly by watching videos. One youtuber convinced me I wanted a certain inflatable mattress —Big Agnes Isomatte Q-Core Deluxe, I might as well mention it— and though I had felt relatively certain I'd buy it, I ordered it only when my concrete final plan emerged.
I had found out that it was illegal to set up a tent in nature in Germany. This didn't bother me so much; I envisioned I'd be camping where nobody would have found me, where if a tree fell in the forest, &c &c. Nonetheless, the reasons I forwent a tent were that it was a hot and mostly dry summer and because I didn't want to carry that weight. Still I didn't want to be devoured by insects over nights, so I ordered a mosquito net. It was designed for home-use, to be hanged from the ceiling on an adhesive plastic hook, and spread over a flexible metal loop attached to it by thongs above a double bed.
The Argentinians left on their trip on the 31st of July. My inflatable mattress arrived on time, but the mosquito net did only on the 1st of August. I had set to leave early afternoon the next day, but didn't manage it. It took me the whole day to prepare: choosing what to take and figuring out how to pack it. I dug out the hiking backpack I got from one Pablo almost a decade earlier. I remember neither why it was lent to me, nor why I retained it. I must have gone on some trip, though I can't even start imagining what it was. Since our relationship had dissolved I imagine it was just half forgotten with me. I thank you, anyhow, Pablo, for the backpack. At the day of the packing I had not used it in many years, and it offered many surprises; I did find a pair of little orange socks there, but the surprises were in the form rather than the content. I relied during my long packing on a compartment only to find out, once I first opened it, that it was merely a bottom-door to the backpack's main space, so I had to forgo on certain now homeless items. Then in the evening I discovered a compartment I had overlooked. It took me many iterations to come up with the idea of carrying the mattress, and so other things, on the outside, after the image of such backpackers who, having a rolled mat attached behind the neck, had always struck me as people who knew what they were doing. It was a day long process of give and take.
My initial plan was to camp in Kreuzhorst forest, but then I found out that I wouldn't make it to the last ferry from Magdeburg across the Elbe. The days were long but not enough to even reach Magdeburg itself before dark. As I was packing I negotiated my goal, looking up various nowheres between here and there to camp in. I had set my eyes on Wusterwitz, a midpoint between Berlin and Magdeburg, when it became too late even for that. I was at the point of postponing my egress to the morrow, but thought the better of it: there was always an excuse for not doing something. Babysteps, I told myself, and decided to camp somewhere around Teufelssee, in Grunewald, on the western edge of Berlin.
I had had a close relationship with Teufelssee. For most of my years in Berlin it was my goto lake. As I saw it, it was the closest lake to my flat in Moabit. So until the present summer, when I had made a discovery. I had known, of course, of the much closer Plötzensee, a barely over ten minutes bike ride away. It had an established beach which I had long shunned, first during my thrifty years because of the admission, later solely because of the segregation of the FKK and "textile" sections, as well as the fact that swimming closed early. The discovery was of a stretch of wild shore just further along the lake, a bit of lawn around it, where people came to bathe.
∗
What I took with me: changes of cloth: underwear, socks, shirts, shorts; my new once-tested-at-home inflatable mattress, carried inside its blow-up bag; a blanket (at the last moment I rejected the very thin blanket I had been sleeping under at home for the sake of a slightly thicker one); an unfurling toiletry pouch with a hook for hanging, which I had since my military years, still bearing my Artillery Battalion insignia, now carrying a little bar soap, teeth hygiene items, effervescent tablet supplements, three 66W chargers, USB cables, two power banks, metal utensils, earplugs, spare shoelaces; a retractable umbrella; a bike light; three or so rolls of TP; a towel; a pair of flip-flops (in addition to the shoes I was wearing); a couple of books: The Crying of Lot 49, which I had been reading; The Lonely City, which had been on my shelf for a while and which seemed an appropriate companion for this trip; water in two “sports bottles” I bought for the trip and in a wineskin. I took rather plenty of food: a 500g rod of a “delikatess Edel-Salami” which I ended up not unpacking; raw tahini in a jar and a little jarito to mix it with water in; nuts on nuts; a cherry tomatoes, olives and feta salad in a bento box; hard boiled eggs; much cheese: kashkaval, cambozola, perhaps cheddar. Cambozola, a German invention, in its idea a hybrid of camembert and gorgonzola (that Frankenstein has a Germanic name is perhaps appropriate), tasted better than expected. Several forces, constraints and considerations went into the food packing. Beside feeding my journey I didn't want perishable food to waste away if left behind. On the other hand, I knew that I was not about to venture into desolation, I had a limited carrying capacity and I could resupply in supermarkets. In my final hurry I had forgotten an arc of brie that would ripen over the next couple of weeks with a foreign culture inside a paper bag I had considered taking for kickstart provision. I ended took a fabric tote bag, carried in hand, with the mosquito net, towel and possibly with another smaller tote bag, "DGzRs // Die Seenotretter", which I had had since a visit from Paris of my friend Brayan, who brought me Morbier and a baguette. I was concerned about the weight of my backpack, but let it be.
Day 0: Home – Teufelssee
The first destination gets nearer — a wineskin is lost — audio logging commences — provisions pissed on off-stage by a dog — a tent is set in Teufelssee's woods
I set out on Tuesday, August 2nd, 20:43. Outside was summer's long twilight. I strode towards the S-Tiergarten train station, normally a fifteen minutes walk. Not long thereafter I realized, even with the old-sock padding I constructed, that having put on the wineskin's cord first, the backpack straps second, was the wrong way to go about it, as the cord buried into my shoulder. Berlin is far from rife with benches, but one offered itself to me. Once I settled to rebuckle myself, I discovered a leak in the wineskin. Needless to say, I had filled it to full capacity, and though it had sat happily gorged the entire day at the corner of my room, now at the slightest provocation, having humped against me to the rhythm of my walking, it burst, lightly. Surprisingly, not at the seams: a little dark circle spread at an invisible speed on one of its faces.
I alighted at the Heerstraße S-Bahn station. Only two men were present, security guards but not of the train service, sat on a metal bench at rest, each engaged with his phone. I let my backpack on the seats to their back and made another adjustment to my packing; I attached the Lidl bag with the towel and mosquito net, which thitherto I carried in my hand, to the back of the backpack. It would soon feel like that puzzle game Rush Hour, where one has to move around pieces of traffic on a square board in order to clear the way out for the protagonist red car. I stuff one thing into or attach it on the backpack, and next I need something out which has gotten blocked by the first.
I started walking along Teufelseestraße. It was a road that branched off the highway, reaching, per its name, the Teufelssee lake. It was dark except for passing cars' headlights. On the left was a narrow sidewalk, on both sides the trees of Grunewald forest. Having reached monotony, I began my logging; not video, but audio. First, because before my trip I had tested vlogging one morning walk and discovered that the resulting footage was unwatchably shaky. Second, because I supposed it was too dark to see much anyway. At a point I thought would be a good break between one chapter and the next, I stopped to take care of the water trickling over my legs which started to bother me — perhaps because the words concluding my narration, describing ‘things going wrong’ (referring to the fact that people are asked to come to the airport so and so hours before the flight not because it takes that long to reach the gate, but because if something went awry on the way, they would still make it), that shifted my attention. I took off my backpack and saw the incontinent wineskin was irreparably ceased to be. I drank as much as I could and hanged it banner like on one of the bollards separating the sidewalk from the road. I noticed something more alarming: the Lidl bag containing the towel and mosquito net was absent. I knew at least that it must have fallen since the train station; beside rearranging it at the platform, I took a gander at my reflection on the way out.
If the sky had any tint to it when I left the station, glowing ultramarine clouds and a pearly horizon, now, as I started back, it only blushed with light pollution. I had almost recovered the entire way back when I saw the bag lying on the sidewalk ahead of me. Already before picking it up I marked that it had been urinated on. It was smellier —with a tinge of skunk— than it was wet. It seemed unlikely that a skunk, even if there had been any in Europe, would leave the forest to take a leak. I imagined a little puny dog, like Snuffles from Rick and Morty, being the culprit. Tant pis, I thought to myself, if not a shitty beginning to my travels than nonetheless in the same literal domain.
A miner's headlight jogger who ran on the other flank of the road on my way back, was passing, heading again in the other direction, on my second movement towards Teufelssee. Though I can't say they were a great number, I was still surprised at how many people passed by me, given that it was a weekday, past 22:00 and dark: few pedestrians, few bikes, a bit more cars. Maybe the strong contrasting lights made an impression. Were they late leavers of the lake?
The white and red glints of a bike were leaving the lawn before Teufelssee as I entered. At the lake's edge, before the water, was a large fallen tree trunk on which I left my backpack, went to stand and gaze at the water. Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a naked man standing a short distance away, his skin slightly glowing. From beyond the marshy vegetation I heard the strokes of a swimmer. Hot, I felt tempted to have a dip, I had never swam there at night, but I was wary of further delaying the setup of my camp, nor had I had a proper towel anymore. I sat down on the log to relax. The man approached to ask for Blätchern, rolling paper.
I didn't stray far to set my camp, the distance was less than the lake's length. At the crossing of two paths, Alte Spandauer Poststraße and Schildhornweg, was a map of the forest. I continued a short stretch along the latter then cut through the vegetation, walking only as far as I deemed enough to not be potentially seen by muggles.
Until I left the house, my prospective venture had felt bonkers. Once outside it seemed normal, nothing much, I felt calm. Now again it felt bonkers. I sought a spot which was flat, didn't need too much clearing, and had a bough above it from which I could hang my mosquito net, a combination that was not at all abundant. For a short while I entertained the idea of dispensing with the mosquito net. From past summers I knew that once the sun was barely starting to go down, mosquitoes swarmed Teufelssee. By then I had been a little while around and encountered no mosquitoes at all. I thought that perhaps the current summer had been too hot for these stick thin fellows — an idea that was both pleasant and alarming. I looked up the matter now: some sources state that that summer there had been more mosquitoes than before, others, such as one Michigan State University professor, that there had been only 10% as many as before. All agree that mosquitoes like it warm and wet, and there had been barely any rain in Berlin that summer. Then again, I was at the lake. Be as it may, I found out that the bike light I brought along as a torch, even at its lowest setting, was too strong. Like batman's beacon, it summoned everything with wings on a generous radius. On the one hand, the times I thought I was being bitten, I was merely landed upon, and I indeed encountered no mosquitoes. On the other, the forest had many other residents I didn't want to sleep with. Vague distant hum of traffic, cars and trains, filled the background, a constant noise for outskirt forest dwellers. I briefly wondered whether insects might evolve who navigate by the hum of the road the way pigeons rely on earth's magnetic pole.
I found my spot, cleared it from leaves like a Bird of Paradise. Then regretted it, thinking that the foliage decreased the risk of the mattress being punctured by a pebble. The first challenge was hanging the net. I felt like inside a 90's video graphic adventure game, in which one had to figure out what items to apply how, where and in what order for success.
The mosquito net was a mantle. It had a slit for an entrance, as I would discover only after I was done hanging it for the first time. At the top inner side was a round of bandelets to tie to the thick wire ring; on the outer side was the loop to hang on a hook. The hook was part of a plastic disc to be glued on a ceiling but had also two holes, supposedly for a screwing alternative, which I now used to pass a hairband through, creating a lark's head. I had brought along some thin ropes with me; I had no design for them, I just thought, correctly, that they might come useful at such a venture. Tying an end to a mass, I threw the rope over the bough, bowing it low for me to sleeve the hairbanded disc on it and hang the net on the hook. I didn't have enough hands to make it easy, but I overall had enough limbs.
The mattress had two capped holes, a smaller one for quick deflation and a bigger one for inflation. The blow sack, about the size of a large laptop, had a matching hole at its cul, and operated like bellows. You fit it to the mattress; you spread open the sack, furl it down, thereby pushing air into the mattress; repeat. I had tested it once at home, but now I was seized by panic, as I would at each of the following nights, coming to the operation in the same conditions: I was in the forest, it was dark, late, and the mattress was not rising. I thought I had mangled something. But then it rose. Holy Ascension! It's incredible that it works.
I hanged the caninely offended bag on a branch outside my white bridal-like honey-moon non-tent, but used the unfortunate towel as a pillow. I had the clean side on top. Once I turned off the light, it was as if the forest ground around me came alive, sounds of mysterious crawling. I regretted my dismissal of a youtube advice with regards to pillows. I knew for a fact that boars abound in Germany, and around Teufelssee in particular, hoped that there was nothing in me to attract them. Still at home I looked up the matter of wolves, extant in Germany, and was made reassured, but now I was oozing the territorial markings of a dog. Surely wolves could smell that it was a nobody dog and take its incursion for a provocation? Even though I was virtually sleeping at the open, butt naked, I was hot and sweaty. I had lain down at about 20 to one o'clock, and thence slept like a baby: waking up every hour and a half and feeling mildly miserable. Perhaps because it was an unfamiliar stimulus, I thought that what kept waking me up was the stench of the towel. I fancied that being in nature somehow sharpened my olfaction; the next morning a fart of mine smelled, though fleetingly, overwhelmingly. On a photo I see that in the morning a second, orange, towel was used as a pillow, so that I must have switched them during the night. Why had I not used the orange towel to begin with? Because it was smaller? Because it was interred somewhere too deep in my backpack? Who knows. During the night it became chillier and I covered myself with that which also doubled as a bedsheet. Though its texture was nice, the mattress turned to be not pleasant to sleeping directly against.
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