I don’t know what to write about. So much has happened in the last 14 days. So much that has moved me in the last two weeks.
The civil service that is now supposed to come back, the Ukrainian ambassador, the painful collapse of the tech industry, real estate prices that are supposed to fall again, the nine-euro ticket. And that’s just a selection of the things that concern us all.
As part of my work, I also have to process impressions. The research of the last few weeks. Toxic chemicals in the groundwater, chemicals that are so unhealthy that, at the end of my research trip through north-eastern Italy, I advised a tourist at the airport not to fill up her drinking water bottle. Then the British prisoner of war Shaun Pinner in Ukraine. He is an acquaintance of mine, whom I accompanied, again as a journalist, on the eastern front in Ukraine. When the war was still forgotten. Shaun Pinner and this war were unknown to most people. Not anymore.
And now, today, on the day I’m writing the column, I’m sitting in a Paris hotel and spoke to shy Rheinmetall employees at an arms fair. I wanted to know more about their new Panther tank. Stood in front of this huge device that seems straight out of a video game. This tank is so big it cast a shadow. And in this shadow I wanted to know: Why is a tank called a Panther?
“Tradition,” said the man at the fair. And I’m wondering if this is about a tradition that has to do with Russia. But I couldn’t ask that question anymore, so I was invited to grilled chicken and Coke Zero.
Everything belongs together, but I don’t know how
So many thoughts and such different events that are all related. I sit on airplanes, in cars, look out the window and try to make these connections like a mad mathematician. The chemicals, the economy, the war, the nine-euro ticket and at the end of these reflections: Shaun Pinner. I know it belongs together. All that. But I do not know how.
And then, when these thoughts become too much, vibrating like the behind of a frightened insect, I just think of Brandenburg. At the end of my spiral of thoughts is this federal state.
I’m fleeing, like so many other people. Before the news and before my own reality. I flee to this one dry meadow hiding behind a reedy bank. I was there briefly at the weekend, two days, and threw cakes into an anthill. I wanted to see the wood ants carry this cake away. I removed ticks from my thigh and put sausages in front of a burrow.
A folding chair, an old cushion from the GDR and a quilted blanket
In the flat grass of this dry meadow I found the claws of a crayfish and looked at them for a long time, yes, admired them. This meadow in Brandenburg is like a clean room in the middle of reality, everything stays outside as soon as I enter it.
The worries become joyful problems that always have to be solved. Who will bring coffee, what kind of cake will they eat, and would it be worth bathing?
A folding chair, an old cushion from the GDR and a quilted blanket with a floral pattern from the same period. I’m lying there between sky and meadow, a small spot, and everything that was occupying me until recently is interrupted. Not forgotten, no, but at least interrupted.
As a Berliner, I know the healing effect on the mind from fine doses on trips to Brandenburg. But now, especially now that we are all realizing: Corona was the lesser evil, this part of Brandenburg, up north, reassures me. I dream Shaun could eat cake here, maybe with the Ukrainian ambassador, maybe they would come with the nine-euro ticket. The train from Gesundbrunnen passes through twice a day. I would pick her up from the train station in shorts.