The Berliner may feel like a big city dweller, but the age-old instincts are still there. He is currently picking up the scent in Brandenburg’s forests.
Mushroom pickers don’t talk much, especially about their “spots”.imago/Schmitt
Berliners see themselves as city dwellers, they ride the subway, turn night into day, eat in restaurants or the snack bar around the corner, buy food in the supermarket. He has lost his close connection to nature, as he believes he is independent of her. The crown of creation, the Berliner, does what he wants, at least he thinks so. But the truth is that the ancient instincts are dormant in him, and he never really got out of the Old Stone Age.
This can be observed these days in Brandenburg’s forests. The Berliner approaches them in his car, but as soon as he has let the car door close behind him, it starts. Grown men, reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood with their basket over their arms, leave the forest paths, push branches aside, make their way through the undergrowth, their eyes fixed on the moss-covered ground, which is like a mattress. They pick up the scent: Ah, here a butter mushroom, there a chestnut. But where is the actual object of desire, the porcini mushroom?
At the parking lot, a young man gets out of a car with license plate B. He’s tattooed up to the ruff, one would suspect him more in Berghain than here at the edge of the pine forest in Schenkenländchen, south of Berlin. “And?” he asks. It doesn’t take more than that little word among collectors. You understand each other, you are part of the horde. “Little. Only the first harbingers,” we reply, also trying to be concise.
This atavistic relapse always in September – it shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, humans have spent most of their development history as hunters and gatherers. There is no better meal than the mushroom pan prepared with butter and onions in the evening, you go to bed full and tired from the fresh air, and when you wake up alive the next morning, you are happy all over again.