Day 2: Wolfsburg – Hannover
a jolly band of alcohol runners are met — iced-coffee is drunk while fiction is being written — Autostadt is visited — a street fight bids welcome to Hannover – intercepted by a poor storyteller — a fort is built under the rain
I woke up before eight o'clock, dallied around a little. On either side a few humans were seen through the leaveage and heard passing on the paths. For the novelty, perhaps, or to mingle with the savagery of nature, I stood tall and spit upon the earth like Atum in Ancient Egyptian creation myths. At nine thirty I began packing my kip, 45 minutes later I left the spot.
∗
It was another very hot, sunny day. I left Wolfsburg's backyard wilderness and stopped by the Scharoun-Theater ticket wickets to reroll my mattress tighter. Ahead, at the edge of the concrete ground before a lawn that sloped down towards the city, three men stood with their bikes, taking a break. When I moved towards them one addressed me with junger Mann, ‘young man,’ and offered me a beer. They had a crate with them. I turned it down, teetotaller that I am, but stayed for a chat.
I thought it was only to happen after my travels, but referring to my journal now I get a different picture: at the end of July, preparing to be travelling near, I decided to brush up my waning German with media. I turned to Y-Kollektiv, a publicly funded journalistic broadcast YouTube channel produced in Bremen. I picked up a freshly uploaded video called ‘Hauptsache Alkohol?’ More correctly, it was the second edition of the by then taken down first video which had received criticism for allegedly glorifying drinking. The second was a "reaction video"; it took me a while to figure out what was going on since it was not formatted like all the reaction videos we know and love. Rather than the reaction running parallel to the original in a split screen, the footage of the reactors —the authoring journalist Caro von der Groeben & the head of an addiction therapy center Hans Peter Eckert, both discussing her behaviour, attitudes as well as the general phenomenon— was interdigitated with the original video. Those interpended segments were the stuff yawns are made of, totally skippable — perhaps to be expected from a moralistic reaction? Though perhaps were of value to somebody. Be as it may, in the original video Caro, a four times a week alcohol drinker, set out on a self-experimentation antithetical to those of Yerofeev: not drinking for 30 days. Whether she had an “alcohol problem” or not is another matter, but I, anyway, didn't find the video to be glorifying. I was rather shocked by it. Assuming that she or at least her group of friends were not so extraordinary, I found surprising the role that alcohol played in people's lives, that is, outside my narrow bubble. A text message from a friend of hers, answering her experiment's declaration: ‘I'll see you probably in thirty days.’ I was reminded of what one of my first flatmates in the apartment I still live in, a chemistry student, told me when we had a little get together before his moving-out: that he had expected me, being a Russian, to be drinking much more and that it made him feel like an alcoholic (I don't think he nearly was). In the video Caro had spent a barely tolerable time with strangers, British tourists, who got pissed drunk. And with her friends, which seemed to be having more fun than her. On the other hand, on the video she mentioned that sober people could hold actual conversations with each other. That same evening I watched for the second time the Danish “Another Round.” I had never considered myself a non-drinker, it was only that more often than not I'd prefer not to. After these, however, a new openness emerged in me towards alcohol. Were these, then, after all, promoting drinking, despite what I thought? I think that like many things, alcohol might be good in moderation, which if anything both of these expressed. After my travels I would have a brief period of rather disappointing experimentation with alcohol (but perhaps it was merely the second of a Hegelian thesis, antithesis, synthesis cycle?), but just then and there, at Wolfsburg, I stuck to my old habits. Looking back I regret my refusal though perhaps it didn't matter after all, but at that point it seemed too early in the day to take a drink — something along the lines of a 19th century British temperance movement poster, The Drunkard's Progress, where step 4 is drinking in the morning, steps 7, 8, 9 are ‘Forsaken by Friends// Desperation and crime// Death by suicide’ (lol). Though I thought the men were cross-country bikers (they looked the part), they were simply on an alcohol run, standing before a day of BBQing. I told them what I had set upon, mentioned my camping, to which they said there was not much appropriate wilderness around Wolfsburg. Little did they know..! To my expressed need to refill water they replied that there was a water fountain in the direction I came from, as well as on the square in front of the townhall. I was given direction and set down the slope, imagining their monitoring and wary of foolishly making a turn in the wrong direction.
Around the townhall I looked here, I looked there — nothing. I approached to inquire a passingby couple, briefly wondering what sort of appearance determined whether strangers would ignore or answer you. They had no idea. A woman was watering the flower-beds from the last chapter; I came to her expectant as if she was a water fairy who knew all about. She could only direct me to others, her management, ‘in yellow vests behind the corner of the townhall.’ They were; the woman gave me directions, not completely clear to me, which I followed down the street. The building by which I expected to find the water source was under construction, a high-school on the map. My unhopeful stride in the sun was unsuccessful.
∗ ❦ ∗
I entered a café at the crossing of that street and Porschestraße, attracted by the blackboards advertising Eiskaffee, though not before mulling my decision a little stretch of walking past. I now see that its name, Superleggera, “super light” in Italian, was a patented Italian automobile body construction technology; a sophisticated pun, it seems. The interior was brown, and empty; the only people were the barista behind the counter and a waitress walking to and fro, serving the parasolled sitters outside. I had the mind to ask about outlets; the barista unplugged something from an extension, lying just by the door, perhaps connected to an outside light fixture, said he didn't need it. Seemed like people working on their laptop was not a usual phenomenon there. I settled and ordered an iced coffee. I was surprised, though not at all dismayed, that the beverage, coffee over icecream topped with whipped cream, came inside a jar, a kind of hipster aesthetic, it being the highest GDP per capita city. After cooling down I brought out my laptop: to make plans, to work a little on my then fiction in progress, to not feel like I was carrying deadweight. I had planned to write thus each morning before continuing on my journey. Already then I figured out it was not going to work. I even had had the illusion of writing thus in the woods, no longer thinkable if not due to the general inconvenience, then due to the unbearable heat. I arrived with a reported 39% phone battery, checked it again after a while, made projections assuming linear charging. Noon came and left, I told myself not to hinder myself just for the sake of the battery, missing on touristic opportunities, but then again, my writing was going well, I was enjoying myself. I continued where I had left off, Ulises Acis y Griega trying to meddle in Luxman and Wow's relationship, hoping for Panusaya, meeting Paulina. I'm amused now to see lines about Luxman's own teetotalism. Am reminded now of what Yerofeev said about Goethe, that he himself had not drunk at all but made all of his characters do so — this doesn't seem to be true. My second iced coffee came in a different jar. I filled my water bottles in the bathroom's sink and left past 13:00. On my way towards Autostadt I caught sight of a bubble tea shop and, as if already softened by the café, went in impulsively. This was a drink I held in high esteem, abstractly as I rarely drank it. A guy and a gal stood behind the counter. The place was otherwise deserted, its one small table suggested take away more than a sit in. While she prepared my chosen with difficulty drink I small talked with him. I told him I came from Berlin and he said that they were just about to open a branch there. I made a quizzical remark about there not being many bubble tea shops there; he answered, correcting me, that there were. I believed him; I wouldn't have noticed even if I passed by many.
∗ ❦ ∗
Autostadt is a car themed park. The German term Freizeitpark, “free time-” or “leisure-park” is more adequate than “amusement park,” if only for it greater generality. A hybrid of exhibition space, museum and park, the large premises were dedicated to the private car. The controlled landscaping and the sense of mechanisation was felt already before the proper limits of Autostadt. To get to the park I went up the roofed Stadt Bridge which overpassed the train tracks and the Mittelland Canal that crossed through Wolfsburg. Along the bridge were flat escalators, the kind one usually finds in airports. It provided a view over the perfectly mowned green round slopes of the canal banks.
The entry hall, taking a third of the reception building, was a wide, tall, hanger like space. I went down the spiral stairs to the -1 floor, where the bathrooms and the so called Garderobe, the cloakroom, were. There were lockers available but I took the words of the ladies at the desk that my backpack wouldn't fit in. I could leave it with the desk but, I was warned, it closed at 18:00, the supposedly less strict closing time of the Autostadt itself. The man at the ticket desk upstairs asked me where my accent was from —a nice way to make such inquiry, I had first answered I came from Berlin— then said shalom and offered a piece of news about the blight of jellyfish at the coasts of Israel. For those familiar with my obliviousness to what goes on in the world it would be needless to say that I knew nothing about it. Looking it up now I see that this last summer the novelty was a drone's footage, rising up above the sea off the bay of Haifa, the teal waters densely spotted white, like a skin disease; then the drone pitches to reveal this went on up to the horizon. Otherwise the news sources, where I encounter the word nakhil (swarm) applied for the first time to jellyfish, suggest that there was nothing special this summer in this regard. And that while these jellyfish cause inconvenience they were not deadly (old news), though they block the filters of power-plants and interfere with fishing. A website was created with a “jellyfish map,” monitoring and reporting their presence.
The legend on the park's You Are Here map was lettered pink German / English, with Simplified Chinese following in grey. I crossed the ticket checkers and came out on the other side of the building. Again that lostsome feeling of freedom. I sat down on the cornermost of tables arranged before a food-truck style cabin, all deserted, unfolded my map and made plans. I arrived to Autostadt at 14:00, there were four hours until I had to pick up my backpack. Nonetheless, I knew myself and my ever unpunctuality and wanted to set up my route in such a way that towards the end of my visit I'd be approaching the reception building so as to not head to retrieve my bag in panic, that is, view the exhibitions from the end to the beginning. I saw it was senseless; the place was arranged in a circle: a lawned oblong over which white whimsically designed buildings were scattered; a large irregular pond in the middle, over which lay peninsulas interconnected by bridges.
First I visited the clam like concrete Porsche Pavilion, which I always forget is German; horses make me think for some reason of Italians. Next was a Volkswagen customer service center, the largest building in the park, where a seed of regret first sprouted. There was a gewgaw on its ground floor, a tall glass cylinder with artificial butterflies suspended motionless within. According to a rule I didn't quite get, when I shifted the weight from on foot to the other, standing on demarcated prints, the flock began to spiral. There was some feel good message of one sort or another within. What the hell was I doing there?
Upstairs more newest car models. Some men, hovering around, were explained and motioned to by other men, as if considering buying a car. On the side a round section, brightly and differently colored as if belonging to another world, a corner for respite, had a water dispenser; paper cups and, because it was Germany, two options: still and carbonated water. A man and a boy sat before a computer terminal watching YouTube. A young woman sprawled on a large leather armchair, absentminded, more bored than tired. Those who held a driving licence, among which I didn't count, had the option of taking cars for a test ride.
The nearby Volkswagen Pavilion had a greater, though that was very relative, human density. It was small and its square space was single rather than elaborately divided like the rest of the pavilions. Two Russian-speaking young ladies displayed earnestness, trying out doors which didn't always open, getting into the cars that let them in. Either too shy or not keen enough, the lack of ceremony kept me staring at the metal carcaces from the outside. I eventually entered a car and it was as exciting as I had imagined.
∗
I spent a time oscillating lying on one of the two large, round, netted swings at the top of a hillock where I had seen others doing likewise from afar earlier.
∗
Over a long flat bridge jets of water created an arced tunnel, just like outside the Magdeburg cathedral but bigger. I noticed that if I moved my face at the same angular speed, I could easily turn the blurry flurry of water into perceived individual blobs. Moreover, I could catch this sensory phenomenon with my phone's camera, to the perplexed bemusement of passersby.
At the north edge of the park was a test drive road whose texture changed from stretch to stretch: asphalt smooth, asphalt chunky, Autobahn, DDR maintenance, gravel. Beyond it were a couple of little French garden tarts: dainty and deserted, could gain points for effort and maintenance but not for actual benefit.
The Audi Pavilion was closed for renovation, blaring construction noise that reminded me unfavorably of the Berlin apartment I had fled from.
∗
In the Škoda Pavilion was an old black and white video in display, a footage of a car assembly at an early factory: workers manually screwing parts, moving larger pieces with the help of pulleys and cranes. I was fascinated but moved on, sensitive to the limited time, having assumed, falsely, that I could find the footage on YouTube at home. Amidst the cars was an ice-hokey table football table, German vs. Czech. I had read on some Google Maps review that the place had everywhere diversions for children, so that they could also be taken along, this seemed to be one example thereof. Another was the three tall jets on the pond outside whose direction could be controlled with metal rods at the shore. In the main bathroom was a hip-height sink. Having walked the round of the Škoda pavilion, I first noticed the toy car models lining shelves on the glass external walls. These were Škoda models from a century up to a few decades ago. They reminded me of the Soviet toy models I had as a child, and fascinated me more than the real cars. One of the three employees manning the reception desk, who had earlier more than obliged me by striking a conversation, perhaps dying of boredom, was now hovering around, inspecting the models as if first seeing them. I remarked that kids nowadays didn't play with toys so they were not made anymore; he corrected me and pointed at the continuation of the wall, where, indeed, were such toys for the most recent models, including the electric Škoda Enyaq iV, on display. I loved that.
The SEAT Pavilion had a time-lapsed panoramic projection of Barcelona's cityscape. At the entrance was a museic plate. The English read:
/ NEW DAWN
A new dawn in a unique city. Barcelona, the capital of design and innovation, is the inspirational driving force of SEAT.
A window on the world where time stands still for two minutes to show us something special, something we are not used to seeing. Thousands of colours, which tinge this Mediterranean setting each day from dawn to dusk, expose a constantly changing city.
Time lapse photography enables us to appreciate the subtle variations in light that bathe Barcelona over a 24 hour period. Seven locations, one photograph every 5 seconds, a grand total of 630,000 snapshots,1 which form a unique perspective that includes the city's most emblematic buildings. All accompanied by a piece of music created especially for the occasion, which transports us to an idyllic Barcelona.
I'm thinking now how much of art, marvellous art, had been created in order to aggrandize a king, a duke, a pope. Artists had had to make a living too, and therefor to have sponsors. Should the peasant admire the hand of the artist or spit at the painting of whom had repressed his living? Are we not to enjoy a time-lapsed panorama, the craftsmanship of vehicle engineers, even if they are served to ingratiate us with an unrelated product?
Shelves of identical amorphic object, mirrorless side-mirror ears, coated in finish, displayed the various colours that SEAT cars came in, including such inspiring names as Denim, Mystic (a kind of yellow), Desire (red), Passion (red), a row of blacks that only true aficionados could tell apart: Mediterranean; Black Oak; Lava; Urbano; Deep; Magic, and fifty shades of white: Candy; Estrella; Nevada; Reflex.
A mirror wall was animated with surprisingly appearing white doodles of supposedly typical Catalan phenomena that then washed away as if a magic blackboard: a doddle of a shallow two-floored human tower, “Castellers”; A menu that appeared and filled itself
TAPAS
Chorizo 2'50
Patatas Bravas 4'00
Tortilla 3'50
Gambas 9'00
Calamares 11'50
& a few scrawled dishes below; “ONA” scribbled in double line, next to a doodle of flip flops, subtitled: “Flip Flop” and “Freedom”.
An intriguing technology put into pedestrian use.
∗
I sat down in the shade of a tree on top of a hillock, observing much greenery, as well as a large tubed trellis around a footbridge, laced with purple flowers, which though I had gone through earlier I noticed was rotating only from that vantage point. I felt duped. The entry to Autostadt would have been very expensive even for a museum, but I felt that what I had paid for was a visit to a series of car retailers, a doubtful pleasure that was very accessible at home: less than five minutes walk from my apartment was a street lined with them. I recalled a woman who had approached me on the street in Moabit, during a weekend morning walk, in the preceding months. She asked me for directions to an address, either in English or German. She had a Russian accent but I saw Hebrew on the piece of paper she had held to me, so I answered to her in that language. It was clearly not her native language and I felt like I should have talked to her in Russian. Be as it may, she was on her way to an exhibit of vintage cars. I had passed by the sought after building many times, had even gone in once, and now in Autostadt wondered if that was not a better diversion. I haven't read Tom Sawyer, but I know of one anecdote, told to me by my father long ago, where Tom was tasked with painting a fence. Surely a bummer for a kid who wanted to play on his summer holiday. Another kid passed by and poked fun at him. What are you talking about? answered Tom and pretended to be having a great time. He refused to let the kid try some, relented only after much beseeching. Soon kids were queued up to have a go with the brush, paying him pocket money for that exquisite pleasure which Tom then could spend on drugs and hookers, or whatever diverted young American lads at that period. I found myself to be one of those duped kids. At least, though that was hardly a consolation, I'd be gone way before the closing of the cloakroom desk.
Nonetheless, I turned to exhaust what the place had to offer. There was a hotel within the Autostadt premises, peculiarly, which I entered as far as the lobby though I could tell from a distance it was not another exhibit space. A man was checking in at the desk. A usual kind of hotel. Outside parked a marvelous car, an open white Rolls-Royce, with an unfamiliar figurine at the front of the hood, a submissively bending woman who is arbitrarily named “The Spirit of Ecstasy” who rather merits the style “The Handicapped Downhill Skier.”
Next was the Bugatti pavilion. From the outside it looked like a bunker; by the entrance it said “Exclusive Club.” Related to the hotel? I simply walked in so it was not so exclusive after all. The entire building was dedicated to the exhibition of a single vehicle; a Bugatti Veyron, lacquered with a unique mirror finish, standing on a similar floor, reflecting the light fixture, beautiful contrasts of black and white lines. After gazing it all around, I happened upon the W18 engine the like of which was supposedly inside the car. Had it been hollowed an adult could have fit inside. Even after the lady explained to me that the engine was not under the front hood but in the middle I felt incredulous. I walked back to the car, where I could barely see it, pointed for me, around where otherwise the backseats would have been. She told me about how this now French company manufactured by hand —just like that early Škoda factory— and so their cars were few and expensive. It was a beautiful car.
∗
Ready to quit I reentered the reception building after a rest at a bench from which a motorcycle could be seen inside an aquarium, a zoo animal. It's hard to say if ultimately it was rather more tragic or more according to my plan. I had been at least vaguely aware that there was an exhibit there, and so as I had intended, the end of my visit was in the spatial beginning, that is, close to the cloakroom. The regrettable part was that it was the only building in the park worthy of attention, and that I'd end up viewing it pressed for time.
A great part of the building's space was taken up by the emptiness of the hanger, the rest was sectioned into exhibition spaces, restaurants, a shop. One exhibition space took an entire vertical section of the 5 or 6 floors of the building and displayed two parallel exhibitions, both of historic cars, to be viewed like the Guggenheim from top to bottom floor. That they were parallel meant that I had to move by way of foot bridges from one to the other and back as I didn't want to escalate a second time.
One exhibition was more “curated”; each of its halls had seven or so cars from different decades, to be contrasted with each other. Each car was assigned one of several schools of design as categorized by the curators —“streamlining enthusiasts”, “avant-gardists”, “stylist”, “modernist”— and had much text laid out around its dais, telling the story of the designer, the car itself, offering various photos. One highlight for me was the KR200 of Messerschmitt, of the WWII warplanes fame, for its semblance to a pinioned aircraft.
The other exhibition took visitors chronologically through the history of car development, beginning in the 19th century. A youngish woman, an employee, marked my great interest in the three wheeled 1885 Benz Patent-Motorwagen and asked if I had a question. I did: I wondered at the mechanism. We crossed together the ”do not cross” line to inspect the engine. Though more elaborate than a bike's mechanism, all the parts were exposed and were as simple to comprehend. The horizontal wheel to start the engine, the chains, the samovar like vat of cooling water — one could follow the trail and comprehend the chain of events from combustion to movement. She told me of its first long distance journey, a day trip on August 1888 from Mannheim, where the Benzes lived, to Pforzheim, the birthplace of Bertha and her mother's place of residency, a trip she conducted, for the sake of publicity, surreptitiously with two of her older sons, that is, without telling her husband. On the way they stopped at towns to buy water for cooling and at chemist pharmacies to buy a solvent, ligroin, for fuel. The boys had to alight to stop the car, for it had no hand brakes. A cutting edge trip, malfunctions had to be repaired and innovated on by improvised means, with a hairpin, a garter, with items and services that could be gotten by artisans along the way. Our conversation continued into informalities, I told her of my own current journey, she asked me if I was a student, and at the end of it she wished me to ‘have a good life,’ a phrase I had not heard in a long while which I found somewhat tacky but at the same time touching, suggesting there had been a connection even if a goodbye came shortly after the first greeting.
The cars of the chronological exhibition came in pairs, each of each accompanied by an upright bilingual plaque that told of the next innovation. Though I understood how a piston worked, I was rather lost vis-à-vis car engines beyond the Patent-Motorwagen; the significance of the turbo, say, beside being an improvement on engines, was beyond me. Nonetheless, the plaques, each on its own and together, presented a narrative that was interesting to follow, presenting the rise and fall of engineers and their factories, changing attitudes, trends and philosophies, broadening of class access to vehicles, specializations into such categories as family car, sports car, luxury, off-road. All in all it was a well arranged exhibition.
There was just barely some time left for me to rush through the other end of the building. Its spaces were connected by escalators and bridges. I managed to go through only two before rushing to the cloakroom desk. On the first I had missed some sort of gimmick, the absent employees must have called it a day already; the space, all green with screens on the walls and columns, was replete with apologetic promises of a bright and better future of renewable energy or what not.
Two plaques preceding the next space made it more promising; one told of the now long practice of using racing simulators in the training of professional racers: it allowed for more practice as the time in an actual Formula One ring was limited and enabled the acquaintance with foreign courses and with racing under various conditions. The second plaque told of the emergence of such simulated racing as a phenomenon of itself, officially recognized as a motor sport discipline by the German Motor Sport Federation in October 2018. Inside the hall was essentially a gaming arcade for realistic car racing simulations. Behind the counter were two or three persons. I was told it was too late to start playing but I was invited to look around. There were two visitors there, one on a racing seat, sitting before panoramic three screens with an additional one higher above for his one and fleetingly additional spectator. I looked at the other idle screens and returned to the desk. I had noticed that one of the monitors displayed the ambient temperature on the race configuration screen, and asked if it made a difference. The woman at the desk, who would soon vanish to change and go on her Feierabend, i.e. home, either misunderstanding my question or rushing out, told me that it made no difference. Another guy, now the only one left at the desk, picked up the question and answered in an unfamiliar foreign accent also my following questions with thoroughness and expertise that revealed a great passion. He said that the temperature, first of all, in real races, made a difference to the drivers. In addition it affected the traction of the tyres. I asked about the smooth tyres of the Formula One cars, and learned much I had never considered before; the road of racing circuits had high friction, were like ‘sand paper’ (he repeated several times), and that the smooth tyres offered better grip on the road. He told me that they were not suitable for driving on regular city roads, as the cars would skid. I found it fascinating, marked it in my mind to use it as a plot element some day after more thorough researching. It seems like slick tyres are after all suitable for city roads when they are dry, but might skid if it's raining or snowing, as they lack the grooves that allow for water to escape.
I arrived to the empty cloakroom desk a few minutes before 18:00. The ladies were not seen but heard, I could tell they thought they were already done for the day. As my backpack was lugged along the floor I apologized for the weight; the lady answered that all items checked instead of lockered were heavy.
What would I say overall about Autostadt? It has some interesting exhibitions but they are all there in the reception building, there's no reason to step out of it unless well mowed lawns have a particular appeal to you. Perhaps the complex fulfills an automotive commercial/ industrial function, but otherwise, as a mere civilian who likes to be diverted for a few hours here and there, I fantasize the place would go bankrupt and the various pavilions become exhibition spaces for art and skateboarding.
I had an hour until my train to Hannover. I considered taking a gander at the Wolfsburg Castle and lunching on its premises and decided against it for a lack of time. I walked east along the green bank of the canal until the furthest corner where I'd not be disturbed and settled under a tree. In a short while birds began to chipper up, the oracles that they were. I wonder if it was for that sensitivity that augury had developed: within a few minutes a storm was upon me, threatening to tear my umbrella apart. I was glad I had not gone towards the castle.
∗ ❦ ∗
On the Wolfsburg's Central Station platform I hesitated leaning my backpack against a column around each of which the floor was grayed with dirt. Wolfsburg's cleanliness was not perfect after all, it relented at its effective borders. The platform of the Hannover station, onto which I stepped down at the end of my train ride, was black with grime in its entirety. Its colour beneath was anybody's guess.
An indescribable smell down the station stairs evoked the sensation of “being abroad” in me, making me fleetingly excited. I set to look for the Lidl that by the map's account was at the station, to get water. The fact that this Lower Saxony's capital's population was an order of magnitude smaller than Berlin's notwithstanding, for the first time —and last— on this trip I arrived to a place that was as much of a “big city.” Outside on the street was an odd atmosphere; not merely the detached indifference pertaining to the people of any large city, but a restrained aggression in the air. I remember distinctly having these thoughts, phrased thus in my mind, in the minute preceding my passing by the open ground floor parking lot of the station. By the wall were two men, looking used and washed up, possibly homeless, starting a fight. More exactly, one of them began beating up the other. In my 33 years this was the first time that I had observed such real violence: raw, unmediated, earnest. Even on my army service I had but observed a kind of ceremonial violence, as horrible as it was in itself. I continued a distance then turned to film the scene on my phone, daring only to look at the screen; was scarcely a moment before I felt ashamed of this manifestation of the worst kind of bystandership, documenting but remaining uninvolved, and fled. On my footage the one was lying on the floor while the other punched him in the head. I recalled a Y-Kollektiv reportage about the neighborhood around a central station, whether it really had been as dangerous as its reputation or not, and I wasn't sure whether it was about Hannover or Hamburg. I'd later discover that it was at all about the one in Frankfurt, and what must have confused me was a watched interview with a Hamburg police superintendent that discussed a notorious spot by their own central station.
I continued around the block, sighting no Lidl, reapproached the station at anther entrance. I was now on the other side of that parking lot. A police car arrived just behind me and deployed. It took me a while to realize they must have been summoned by the incident, and would regret not having approached and offered the evidence I had.
∗
The station's commercial center was teeming with people. As I was making my way I saw already at a distance a long haired person in a mouth-nose mask standing in my way and looking in my direction. When I veered to sidestep, the person crabwised to block my path. When I was near enough to be addressed, I was. I was told a little story about the hardships of transpeople; it culminated with a request for money for the train fare, at which I petulantly walked away, prompting the person to mutter.
What decided whether I gratified beggars or not? When I was still unemployed I thought I'd be generously shelling out five euro bills to every expressive necessitous stranger, especially once I learned that a job in my prospective profession was to put me, shockingly, close to Germany's 90% income percentile. This has never happened; the five euro bit, that is. Long ago a friend told me she would buy her parents an apartment once she had a job; a while after she had had one I asked her about it, she said she rather not speak about it. Always easier to spend the money you don't yet have.
The decision whether to give anything at all was influenced by my mood, the amount of direct attention I was given, the generosity of the people around, whether I was on the move or not, the impression the beggar made. The Hannover person evoked annoyance in me; I was pressed for time and, despite everything, believed, while I was entertained, that it was not going to end with begging, which came backstab like. I'd have preferred a straight to the point ‘could you spare a dime?’ though all things considered, even the detainment to take out my wallet and money, my backpack heavying on me, as well as the need for the security of cash as cards could and had failed before, might have still resulted in a rejection. But mainly it was that I found the whole story shabby, like the panoramic view of Barcelona which had nothing to do with the performance of SEAT's cars; a story with as little relation to the truth as the coating had with the color of the car beneath the paint or the platform beneath the grime. The person asked me, as if an afterthought, whether I knew what transpeople were, which was unexpected not only because it was neither a novel nor an unheard of phenomenon, but also because I had suspected, perhaps foolishly, that I was targeted so particularly in the crowd from such a distance for my fabulous pendent earrings; or perhaps it was indeed the case but my face failed to reveal the kind of reception the person expected. When I said that I did the person spoke of them and their hardships generally, mentioning neither him/herself nor the particular “hardships” that was their lot. It struck me as odd to come to a train station without money for a fare, and to beg for it at all in a country with no ticket-gates and hardly any ticket-inspectors. I had never given money for nothing with great pleasure but the sense of ingenuity sparked real vexation. Was reminded of a scene from a movie where a punk young woman was likewise collecting money for something else; might have been a scene from the 1981 “Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo” but probably this is a mere association.
I eventually found Lidl on the 1st underground floor in the state I had expected, and didn't enter — long queues at each cashier. That I at all looked for it was because I was at its immediate environs, separated only by ignorance, hoping to obviate the difficulties that would have resulted if I reached the Edeka before the green expanse I planned to spend the night within after its closing hour.
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I found the streets, the houses, pleasant and peaceful. At Edeka —"Edeka Wucherpfennig" more exactly, an as appropriate a name for a grocery store as the name of my boss for an obstetrics doctor— I bought water and on a whim a fruity buttermilk drink. It was closing when I was out, already closed when I was done drinking and filling my bottles. I had hoped to deposit the empty plastic bottles, not so much for the cents as for disposing of the trash. I set them against a fixture, thought the young man, almost a boy, that was folding up the outdoor stands might pick them up. Offering them directly seemed too petty, and across the months also rude.
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The twilight perished as I walked into Eilenriede city forest just on the other side of the block from Edeka. I followed then overtook a woman who was likewise walking in, speaking on her phone. Looking now at Google Maps it seems that I had let myself fall short, though referring to Open Street Maps I understand my decision; on the latter the footpaths on the east side of the Bernadottealle road —which went through the park and which I didn't cross— look as dense as the ones on its west. Nevertheless, I was wrong, from the point of view of privacy/ isolation, when choosing an encampment spot, to take into consideration only the distance from the closest footpath, disregarding the distance from the closest, even if not immediate, streets.
I followed a turn of the path and, out of anyone's sight, went perpendicularly off the grid. It was an inconvenient entry point; I transversed a low but thick vegetation which was so unpleasant to go through that I briefly thought that it had been planted with the purpose of hindering actors like myself, akin to those middle arm-rests on benches elsewhere —Germany does not champion benches in general— that prevent homeless people from sleeping on them or those beautiful pigeon-deflective cornice-adorning spikes. When I emerged from this thicket I realized lamentably that I had crossed the path-bound green-polygon; after some exploration I discovered an obstacle-free footpath. It was only half past nine, and looking back I wonder if it wasn't a sunk cost fallacy —meaning the transversed vegetation— to accept the location.
It was characterized by sparse trees and by a flat bottomed, wide but not too deep meteorite-crater like clearing. Having abandoned, apparently, any concerns about detectability, I chose its middle as my ground —relying on the crater's slope to provide a lee against the potential noises of the road and the light of its lantern-posts— and began gathering fallen boughs to supplement the ones already there, left by boy-scouts, I thought. I began constructing the ribs of my soon to be Fort Ridiculous (a name apparently already taken), deriving particular satisfaction from finding arrangements that let the boughs' irregularities catch each other into stability, the twine I had with proved useful again. A Fort in name and spirit only, and if a tent then a porous one; as my friend Alex used to say, ‘you are not going to make a kayak out of it.’ Indeed, a weather prediction led me to expect rain starting around 4:00. I was ready to play WWI trench warfare and when I dug a shallow pit at the margin of the crate for my impending diresome and uncovered an earthworm, I thought to myself, whatever my fate that night would be, it could not be worse than the worm's. Therefrom comfort, just like Hamlet's nothing good or bad but thinking it makes it so: sadness and happiness respond to deviations from expectations, and low reference points make reality positive. A light, brief and early rain, a scout of the elements, caught me mid construction. I aggregated my belongings under the wooden hollowed pyramid, set my umbrella at the apex and leaned my already inflated mattress on the side, sheltering both itself and others. This reminded me of the last pages of Lego manuals which presented several alternative builds to the main one of the set. Perhaps the Swedes should borrow this idea from their neighbours. This is not so far fetched; I had inherited an IKEA bed from my friend and moving-out flatmate Brayan and since neither was there space for another bed in the room of the Moabit apartment I later moved into, nor did I want to get rid of the bed, I assembled it into a kind of a ledge —held together by twine— over the foot of the indigenous bed. For a period it supported a TV I picked up on the street until it returned its soul to its maker. Our maker. Ceased to be. An ex TV.
At the conclusion of the rain I erected a second tripod, spread my mosquito net over, and slipped in. To begin with, edged with expectation, my sleep was less than sound. At 5:17 I began recording an audio log to pass the time; ‘it started raining forty-five minutes ago. Forty-three, but who's counting.' My umbrella was tied to the net above my head à la Carl Spitzweg's 1836 Der arme Poet (arm aber sexy?). I spread my famous towel over me as a blanket, the theory being that by buffering them it would make the drops less botherful, and that with time it would be warmed by my body heat. This worked, but on every shift I felt the coldness of the environment.
Switching on a light revealed, just like outside Prague, a dark orange, brown-headed slug. Curiously —for I thought that dampness was exactly what they were attracted to— it stopped on the dry side right at the visible border of soakedness at my neck's height on the mattress. There's sometimes too much of a good thing. It was a moderate slug. A spider made its way, predatorily, I supposed, and being partial to the mollusk I made short shrift of it. As for the slug I decided to name it Tversky though I needed to workshop it.
I had always thought of slugs as water-loving grounded creatures, for whenever I found them it was on the pavement when it had rained, but I wonder if I was misled by this perceptible top of the phenomenon's iceberg. Within half an hour I found Tversky exhibiting an inclination shared with the Czech slug, which I therewith generalized to be common to their kind, namely, upwards. It stood, or whatever passed for standing among them, on my mattress, stretching. It found a breath of the mosquito net which touched the edge of the mattress and started climbing. It scarcely transferred its entire mass when it fell flat backwards, unharmed; it was a short fall and soft landing. An aspiring slug. Life doesn't always go the way you plan, I told Tversky. An hour later, after I had done my business during a respite of the rain, I found it halfway towards the top, crawling upside down. Not knowing that nothing was waiting for it there, but perhaps it was mere height which it was interested in. Perhaps most of the time slugs are ensconced somewhere in low nukes and crevices, underground, and emerge during rain in flight lest they drowned. Or maybe, rather, these were slugs that were washed down by the rain and blown off by the wind from the canopies they had been perched on.
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their math is somewhat wrong, but I assume it was not one of the engineers who wrote it.