my banal friend [A]

[a] had always been a bit of mystery to me. when she wrote a few weeks ago saying she would come to berlin for the weekend, I was naturally happy and enthusiastic and made clear that she was more than welcome. she called early one morning and got me out of bed, and the phone call was so pleasant, as if we'd been in touch regularly. She pushed her visit back once, then once more, and eventually called again to say THIS TIME she was coming.

[a] is German, from the south, but i met her in paris, where she's spent almost ten years. she's now moving back to Germany, which is also part of why she popped in to berlin to visit me. I met her in late 2000 at uni - in the toilets actually. We were both in a class on social problems in great britain and I'd found her aura attractive and friendly. After the class or during a break, she smiled to me, a big warm friendly smile, as I came out of the toilet booth - and that had never ever happened in the toilets at Paris 8. I immediately liked her and we started chatting.

I can't really remember how often we met - I have the feeling it wasn't that often, but I realised this weekend that I'd somehow met most of her paris friends on various occasions. I never got in touch with her on those rare occasions when I was in Paris over the last years, because I was never sure how comfortable meeting up would be. I now think that was silly - but I simply couldn't really grasp her as a person.

[a] always said money wasn't a problem. "money comes and go". back then, i found that attitude very unusual - I couldn't imagine managing on my own in paris and felt that i would feel very panicky if, like her, i'd had no fixed job. but for her, "jobs come and go", and she'd always somehow managed. I admired this relaxed confidence. Gosh, I was only 21, and she was about as old as I am now.

[a] is an artist. she paints. she also used to work in an old person's home for two months every summer back in germany. she said she enjoyed being with old people, and linked this to her art as well - she liked using material that she found on the street, that was old, that other people felt was useless but that she felt had stories to tell and could still be used and transformed.

there was something v. paris about meeting up with [a]. Her chambre de bonne up up up on the seventh floor of her building on boulevard lafayette, the tiny twisted staircase that took one up there, her room overlooking the busy city's roofs. I was from the banlieue, I lived there, and being in Paris, in someone's home in paris, was still totally new to me. I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but I think she invited me over for dinner after our encounter in the toilets. we walked through paris, it was night, it was autumn or winter, we chatted in english. she called her boyfriend up, a new yorker, to tell him I was coming, another guy was there, a swede, we ate drank chatted - I wasn't used to having dinner at friend's, to having wine, it all felt like a different world to me. Back then I spent all my social time with Xa and Cam and then boyfriend Ni, playing badminton, having picnics, spending time in parks and playing music. We didn't cook for one another, us all living with our respective parents. we went to eat out sometimes. Now of course, I wouldn't find anything strange about eating at friends', and it's funny to remember now how bizarre it all was for me back then.

When I came back after my six months in berlin, in 2001, we met up again. She'd broken up with her boyfriend and decided to remain single for the next couple of years. I was coming back with my heart full of "I found the man of my life" and she patiently listened. We met in the museum cafe where she worked, somewhere around montmartre I think. At her place, too. And eventually she set off for ecuador, just like that, alone, with little spanish, and no real idea of where she would stay. She ended up there having no money because her card refused to work, hungry and starving on the street and making aquaintances with the people of the streets of quito - as so often before in her life, ending up in tricky situations but always protected by her aura and not being subjected to violence. She said she also spent a while with the hari krishna people, and I couldn't really put the spiritual dimension, that is so far from my life, together with my confused image of her.

Anyway, zoom back to the present. I came back from work on friday and saw that messages were waiting on my phone that I'd forgotten home - and realised she had arrived in berlin a half hour before and that I had to find out where she was. Eventually she turned up at my metro station and sent an sms asking to be picked up. I pedalled over and saw her nowhere. At the terrasse of a cafe though there was this woman with huge sunglasses enjoying a beer in the sun. She looked so normal, could that really be [a]? She waved at me and indeed it was her - she looked very different to what i expected. she had a little make up, her hair had been paid attention to, she looked more like a working class woman trying to look dignified than the fresh unconcerned artist I remembered. She looked --normal. She said she was reading some sort of romantic comic diary book, and told me enthusiastically about her new job - which will consist in large part in driving around and travelling a lot, as sales representative for some fair trade product or other. It sounded like too much driving and polluting for me to have sounded enthusiastic about, and I was puzzled about her enthusiasm for the tacky book as well. Had I been wrong about her all this time? But then I remembered to think about people in terms of processes - which I so often forget to do - and felt she was still as interesting as ever.

Now in her early thirties, she had for the first time decided to take a "normal job" to see how it felt and to come back to germany. She said she was entering a "banal" phase. I had to remember that she'd spent all of the past years with little money and living unconcerned by consumerism. I eventually felt she was entitled to enter a different phase although I was a bit worried about it.

We went out for dinner at the nicest pizzeria in town round the corner from my place. The restaurant is always extra crowded and busy, and we walked on the terrasse to find a place to squeeze in - when I heard somebody calling me. I looked down at the table next to me and saw my lovely friend [m] and her girlfriend [c] - and next to them, two empty seats. We sat with them and [a] started bubbling out all about her new situation - and I was still unsure how to feel about it. The emphasis on the driving was particularly disturbing, from an environmental perspective - and this was reinforced by the presence of [m] and [c] who are both very environmentally aware. I wondered what they thought of [a].
At the same time though, her candidness and maladroite self-acceptance was endearing - and most of all the curious mix and uncategorisable patchwork of her personality - and her obvious warmth and love for others. She asked [c] who had given her the love bite on her neck and refused to believe it had been [m] - eventually admitting she had never met a lesbian before, that she knew of. She said paris was full of gay men (including her best friend), but no lesbians. I think [c] and [m] were very puzzled by that.

We spent all of friday night and saturday all day chatting, until I eventually felt absolutely exhausted by it all, and dulled down. We walked a little bit through touristy mitte, but my energy levels were already too low to take the masses of tourists. Still, we caught up with one another's lives and it was comfortable to get the feeling I know where she stands now.

Sunday I had a brunch to go to - a getting together with the people interested in developing the non-commercial agriculture project, as well as non-commercial life in general - and it was good to have a break and be back in my little alternative berlin world. When we met again in the afternoon for a short while before she caught her bus back to hamburg, all was good and comfortable again and I'd definitely decided [a] was as special as ever. Banal yes, but special all the same.