berlin-on-sea

The building across from my window was bathed in sunlight, the sky shiny-blue. A gorgeous Sunday to take the bike and wizz up to the fleamarket on Boxi. I was hoping to get
- sunshine
- fresh air
- a tea pot
- a milk foamer
- and perhaps a scarf for my unruly growing hair.
I arrived at boxi a little sweaty and parked the bike. There was music, there were people everywhere, on the square and around, sitting at coffee tables on the side walk having brunch and lazy social coffees, big people, small people, punks and fashion-freaks, young families, gay couples, hispanos, french, anglophones. It was good to see that F'hain (the neighbourhood) hadn't yet lost its main quality - its ability to offer a complete random mix of people. I walked around, looked at a pile of clothes and picked two tops. I hesitated on taking a scarf as well. I wanted to give no more than five euros and calculated internally what was acceptable for me and what the owner of the stand would accept. I went up to him and said I'd take the two tops for 5. He accepted without discussion. I should have at least tried to take the scarf.
Further on, there were 70s lamps and furniture, old vinyls, CDs, books, hats and army head protection, toys, bad artwork, better artwork, and there, shiny and pristine, a milk foamer. K had instructed me to get either a milk foamer or another, bigger coffee pot. The expresso coffee pot we have in the flat is minuscule, posing all sorts of ethical and practical difficulties: Either one has a tiny dose of coffee with a tiny dose of cold milk, in which case coffee addicts like K remain unhappy. Or one has a tiny dose of coffee with a larger dose of milk, to fill a bigger cup - but then the coffee is tepid, and the afore-mentioned people are equally unhappy. OR one uses a whole pan to warm up milk, thus consuming more electricity (as a bigger burner is needed for both pan and expresso maker), and there's more washing up to do. My personal favourite to exit this unbearable crisis was the milk foamer which would go on the same burner as the small expresso maker and give lovely foam to all foam lovers around.
So here I was, standing in front of a stand which provided a larger expresso coffee maker, a milk foamer, and two tea pots to choose from. I picked the foamer and a tea pot and asked how much the stand owner wanted for that. The first guy said 10 per item, the second one said 8 for one and 6 for the other. I remained silent for a second then offered to take both for 10, which the second accepted immediately, although he seemed to regret it as he realised he had said yes.
I wrapped the teapot in one of the tops and packed everything in my large bag. Mission accomplished. I then sent an sms to A, my flatmate from three years ago who now lives in the area, to see whether she'd be up for coffee. She wrote back saying she was putting her little daughter to bed and she'd be happy if I came by a little later. Which I did. Her little daughter is absolutely cute - I'd only seen her sleeping or on photos before - one encounter in the flesh excepted, when she was but a tiny little few-month-old baby who refused to be in my arms without screaming and crying, but loved being in K's arms as he told her loads of absurd stories. I hardly took it personally. In any case, she's lovely now but not yet very talkative. She enjoyed playing with my milk foamer and generally spilling milk all over the table while transvasing milk from one cup into another and then back into the foamer, occasionally wiping the table with paper tishues.

A's mother came by to pick up the little girl, and A and I took our bikes to the Volkspark, where we walked around for a long while, sat in the sun, talked a lot [about intercultural dialogue, and more generally afro-european communication difficulties, expectations, visions of society, her future and mine, her flying to Sudan this summer to get married etc.], observed people playing beachvolley and frisbee, and enjoyed berlin's special mood when the sun is out. A city where everyone is outside, smiling and enjoying times of leisure. She said she was particularly pleased to have a conversation that wasn't centred on children for once.
I was then instructed that we'd switched to summer time and that it was much later than originally thought - and pedalled along the streets still filled with leisurly sociable coffee drinkers, back home where an anxious K was eager to taste the results provided by the milk foamer. I also immediately put my new teapot to good use and felt my quality of life had reached a whole new dimension now that I can carry the equivalent of three cups into my room. The joys of modern life.