Today I had a dream of moving to Hamburg. It was big and nice and German reminding me of Halle with its little squares of streets. Back in Halle we used to look down to the ground floor where a married couple walked with a little yellow plastic watering can and the fattest cat I've even seen lied on the back garden stairs lazily flapping its tale from side to side. The sunshine seemed as lazy as the cat. This is when I was taught to pronounce bourgeois, sitting next to tomato plants, herbs, treetops, gougouing pigeons and boxes and boxes of beer. I guess they would have said that we do not 'prefer comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire. Actually our life was pleasantly comfortable, eastern or hessenian suffering and all that was extremely unpopular, it might have been the summer or maybe these times had passed overall.
Hamburg on the other hand didn't have the contrast of the communist districts and fat cats, unlike Halle, but still felt homey, it was a dreamland that belonged to me more or at least as much as to the others. I settled in a flat of young professionals who were wearing little artsy jackets. It was all quite fashionable and fresh. I felt excited and decided to learn German too.
Ha! Found you :-) Interesting you had a dream about my hometown. Have you ever been there in real life? I'm wondering if you'd still find the little squares of streets... I think there are a few - in the Gängeviertel for example. I have not been to Halle though so I can't compare them.
ReplyDeleteI'll bookmark you :-)