A joke was circulating in the GDR: “What do you do when you meet a snake in the wilderness?” The answer: “First get in the back.” Maybe there was something special: oranges, licensed records, drinking fixtures?
People have always stood in line at all times. It all began in the Stone Age cave when the fattest pieces of mammoth were distributed. This continued in ancient times. Many are familiar with the blasphemous scene from the film “The Life of Brian”, when the delinquents stood up for crucifixion and were admonished: “Everyone just a cross!” And if you look – seriously – the pictures from the last hundred years, then one sees queues after queues: in front of the soup kitchen, in front of the employment office, in front of shops. Or also: in summer before the lido or before the flight to the holiday resort.
But would you have suspected that the long lines would return in this way? Thousands are lining up these days to have a syringe pressed into their arm. So there are still enough people who don’t think cold washing and nibbling carrots are enough to fight off the virus.
I also stood in a winding queue with around 150 people on Frankfurter Allee to get boosted at the window of a doctor’s office. At the window! Like buying a currywurst! One, quick, three – arm free and pure.
Later one of my daughters said: “I would like to do a study of whether ex-GDR citizens are patiently waiting in line.” I can say that I was more impatient than the people around me, most of whom were still young. Even when someone walked down the line and said there were 50 doses left, most of them stopped stubbornly and tapped their cell phones unmoved. There was no excitement, no resentment.
Harmsen
The vaccination window – an “insider tip” that was soon no longer one.
I also secretly hoped that more vaccine doses would grow somewhere in the practice. Only when someone came and said there were only ten cans left did I count the 20 people in front of me and set off. There was no more chance for today! As a Berliner you can only say: “First you want to boost quickly, then you stand in the dust.”
When I turned around, I saw that 70 people remained standing unmoved. Conclusion: Today’s young people are patient because they are absorbed by the mobile phone – and they are also not good at math.
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