Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's Blog, page 14

Today in Photo

Weird mask store (sadly closed by the time we passed it but did we want to go in anyway?) Trying to do a bunch of museums this month, we both have a Museum Pass that lets you in to 18 museums for free and this week I'm planning a few treats for myself (K will join if he has time). Photo of him at the Hamburger Bahnhof, a Prussian era railway station now turned into a contemporary art museum. Some shit was just boxes on the floor and call it art, some was cool though, like all the video installations they have from the 80s. After that K said "are you OK to wander?" and I said yes, little knowing he was going to make me walk SEVEN KILOMETRES. My legs were wobbly when I got out of bed this morning. #berlinna #hamburgerbahnhof #masks #urbanjaunts

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Today in Photo

All quiet on the U Bahn front (as long as you have your phone.) #commuting #berlinna

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Today in Photo

SO fun doing up a house from scratch despite the inconveniences. Especially when there's Ebay Kleinanzeigen, Germany's online second hand marketplace. K and I are having a great time buying all sorts of small and large things for very little money because it suits our frugal souls and gives a sort of DIY hacky feel to the whole experience. This Picasso print for instance. Ready framed and ready to hang over our bed and much nicer than anything I'd have been able to afford in a regular shop. Maybe you think we should be focusing on big items like a bathroom cabinet or a full length mirror but I always feel like a house is only a home once there's books on the shelves and art on the walls. Otherwise how can you tell you're home? #homebodies #berlinna #thriftdecor #picasso #sittingwomaningreenscarf

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Today in Photo

Inspired by this vintage German set of cautionary tales in verse (among them Pauline who played with matches and got burnt to death, a little boy who sucked his thumb and a man came along with scissors and chopped his thumb off and another little boy who didn't want his soup and starved) I decided to do my own illustrated set. Very German so I ran it through Translate for the full effect. This is a woman who didn't wait for the light to turn green so a car killed her. #watercolour #struwwelpeter #cautionarytales #wheningermany #ampelman

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Today in Photo

Morning cat's eye view. #olgadapolga #citycats

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What I'm Reading

What better way to learn German than via kids books, eh? Set out by myself this evening to buy these DDR-era books off an old man who spoke no English so my broken German had to do. "How old is your son or daughter?" he asked me and I laughed and said they were for me. Then he showed me allllll the other thousands of books in boxes he wanted to get rid of. "Next year when your German is good enough, you can take these," he said. From his lips to the language gods' ears. He was selling them for €1 each so of course I bought five. From left, clockwise: The Giraffe, Emma Longlegs, Little Grandmother Goodwoman and her pets, The Small Ugly Bird, The Wonder Pills and The Myths of Mother Goose. Already cracked them open with my trusty dictionary app (Leo) so this will be fun. #bookstagram #learninggerman #mrmbookclub #kidsbooksforgrownups

What I'm Reading

New year, new reading challenge. I did not finish my Storygraph goal for 2021 but you can read about my favourite books in my newsletter, link in bio. I might be the only person you know who did not immediately fall in love with Amor Towles' previous book A Gentleman In Moscow, it was just not for me. I don't want to say I'm OPPOSED to this very popular resurgence of uplifting literature because that makes me sound very joyless and I like joy as much as the next person. But all these books, you know, your Man Called Ove types or one of those books where an awkward person makes friends with the world (The Rosie Project or Eleanor Oliphant) they're so fun to read but I always feel a little manipulated by the end. Like ok. This is a good story but it has left me no richer by the end of it. Like a murder mystery I guess, but I love murder mysteries so I'm not sure what kind of point I'm trying to make here. Anyhow! I enjoyed The Lincoln Highway, couldn't put it down even as I sneered at the obvious writing-with-one-eye-on-the-screenplay. And I'll watch the inevitable movie. Fun. Recommend if you're in a reading rut. Just don't look too closely at it or you'll see all the strings. #100in2022 #bookstagram

Today in Photo

Finally some art on our walls! The living room feels a little less bare (had to remove the carpet because it was just a dust and cat hair magnet and I was sneezing all over the place.) The first picture is actually from the first exhibition we attended in Berlin, last July. It was about English speaking writers in Berlin in the 20s and 30s and was really well laid out, lots of sound installations and a thumbnail portrait of Berlin at the time (very gay.) I kept the pamphlet they gave me at the door because I suddenly had this vision of framing it and hanging it up in a future flat. It says "Happy In Berlin?" and that seemed like a good omen, that and the connection to other writers who have lived in this city over the decades. The second picture is a painting by K's mother and I chose it from her collection because I liked the blues and the reds which is slowly emerging as the "colour scheme" we have for this room. With yellow. And grey. #settlingin #houseproud #berlinna

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The Internet Personified: Conjugations

My polite persimmons,

Welcome to all new subscribers! I have no idea how you found me (magic? links in bio?) especially at such a quiet time for me, but welcome nonetheless. This is my very personal newsletter which I send out periodically—sometimes when I’m feeling very chatty, once a week, but other times, like this one, once every two or three weeks. Think of it as a super long letter from me to you, and if you don’t know know me yet, don’t worry, you soon will. (She says, threateningly…)

Berlin COVID rules have just changed as of this weekend. Now they’re saying if you want to go to a bar or a restaurant, you have to have both vax doses plus either a booster shot or a test. This is a great way to get a lot of people to take the booster, as we did early this month. This time our vax centre was this mall, a short walk from our house, we went up in the lift with people going to the gym next door, and emerged into a official-looking area, where we filled in forms and waited. No choice of vaccine this time: if you were under 35 and/or pregnant you got Pfizer, over and not got Moderna. Being neither of those things, I got my third Moderna, and for those of you keeping track at home my fourth vaccine since last summer. That combined with the fact that I might very well have had COVID some time last year, means that I feel pretteeee good. Pretteeee immune, all in all, but let’s not tempt fate. I go to the little test centre down the road for my free rapid test about once a week, it’s an old nail bar turned COVID testing centre so it’s all pink with a gold rotary phone and neon lights spelling out NAIL BAR just above the head of the guy who twirls the little stick in my nose and puts it on the strip. It’s all very Class 9 chemistry experiment.

Language Lessons Part II or wow German is hard

I need to get tested every week because I’ve started language classes again. This time I’m in a class of almost all women, and we’re studying German A2.1, which is so much harder than the class I did earlier. A1.1 was all about learning how to introduce yourself and saying basic things: am I married? Do I have children? What do I do for a living and so on. In A2, the dreaded Akkusativ comes in, so it’s no longer “where do you live?” but “where are you going?” the answer to which is both a harder sentence to formulate but also depends on these itty bitty little changes of grammar which are crucially important to make yourself understood. For instance, everything in German has a gender, as you probably know: the table is male, the lamp is female, the bed is neutral and so on. But if you are putting something on the table, or near the lamp or hanging it off the wall, you have to remember which gender goes with which thing and then tweak that to a completely different word to indicate what you’re doing. And that’s just when things stay still. When you’re moving an object from point A to point B, you must also remember the gender, but with new rules forthwith. I know the rules okay, as you can see, but putting them into practise is a whole other thing which I’m not sure I’m going to master in the two weeks my course has left. Oh well. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the German language is notoriously difficult with all sorts of random rules so you can be like the Germans, super specific about exactly what you mean and what you want.

One interesting thing I learnt though was that “my friend” (and of course the Germans have a different word for my “male friend” and my “female friend” although no word yet for my “gender neutral friend” although you can indicate that in writing) always refers to a romantic partner. If you’re just going to a party with a friend who you have zero romantic interest in, you say “this is a friend” and everyone gets it. Cool, huh?

I also learnt how to frame a “because” sentence, like “why are you so sad?” “because I have no friends here” sob sob, which I guess is useful, but hard for an English speaker because you’d construct the sentence like this in German: because I no friends here have.

In case you’ve never learnt one of the European languages before, the A2 etc I refer to are part of something called the CEFR levels, that is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which is a sort of broad strokes generalisation of where you should expect to be after each level. A2 is “can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters” which I guess is all the “put the telephone on the table near the chair” stuff that we’ve been banging on about.

A funny thing has happened though. Suddenly I can understand SO MUCH German, like it was a coconut and I’m able to extract all the meat. Our teacher speaks it exclusively in class and fast too, but when it comes to forming a sentence, my brain just sputters between connections. Isn’t that strange? To be able to understand so much and say so little? A little like a pet, I suppose.

The return of a room of one’s own

German efficiency, the famous everyone’s-always-quoting-it “German efficiency” is mostly a myth, I’m learning sadly as I live here. The thing about Germans? Is that they like to do as little work as possible so everything is built for convenience. The supermarket is filled with examples of this: you buy your fresh bread and you put it in the bread slicer, conveniently located right under the loaves, you choose what sort of thickness you’d like and shink-shink-shink, your morning toast is all sliced and ready for you. Okay but, you’d argue, isn’t that efficiency? And I’d still argue that it’s laziness that drove them to invent all these wonderful time saving things. Miss your train? Don’t worry, another will be along in three minutes, unless it’s the weekend, then you’re slightly fucked. Our shower curtain rod has these adjustable ends so you just stick it on the wall, adjust the length and it stays, no need to drill holes or anything. Being a very lazy person myself, I appreciate all the ways Germany’s like “no it’s fiiine, chill, there’s a super easy way to do this.”

However, when it comes to human effort and human labour, it’s not great. Getting an appointment with say, a handyman, could take any amount of time from “it’ll be done tomorrow” to “I’ll come between five and ten after March 10th on any possible weekday so make sure and be home for me or you’ve missed me again.” Our building has a lift which hasn’t worked in four months because they’re “waiting for parts.” And when we tried to buy a fridge off Amazon it took about the length of time that we’ve been living here. The first fridge we ordered was in December, about a week before Christmas and Germany pretty much shuts down for Christmas, so we thought fine, after Christmas we’ll get a delivery date, which didn’t happen, so then we waited for the first Monday following New Year’s Eve and still no update so we cancelled that fridge, and bought another which was also supposed to arrive in two or three days, but the delivery date kept moving along and the fridge didn’t. All this meant that the enclosed balcony—the “winter garden”—where I planned to write, which already had my desk set up was a sort of walk-in fridge, because we closed the door to the living room, left the window open in this one and it was icy cold enough to keep our food from going totally bad.

Now we finally have a fridge, and because this kitchen was already built with cabinets and everything before we moved, we had to get a super specific under-counter without freezer one, which is why the hassle, and so I am back in my study, which faces a building and right now, it’s dark outside and all the lights in the building opposite are on, so I can see into each house as they can into ours. One is full of plants, the other has a man by the sink, a woman is pouring out her pasta water as she makes dinner, it’s all very Rear Window. I love watching them, is that creepy? I have a great view of the street too, my fishbowl study is all windows so I can see people going back and forth and sometimes I notice their fashion if it’s exciting, but really, I’m most interested in other people’s dogs.

Where are you all going? I want to shout at all the pedestrians, Where do you go to my lovelies? You know the song.

Friends your own age

Long time readers of this newsletter may remember that back in the summer I joined this Facebook group called Berlin: Girls Gone International. (If you don’t remember, don’t worry, here’s a link to that newsletter just to refresh your memory.) Anyway, here I was, and still medium-friendless, not quite as friend-ful as I was in Delhi, shall we say. So I lurked on the group but I wasn’t seeing much of interest until a woman posted about wanting to meet people maybe around her own age, which was 37.

The Internet: PersonifiedThe Internet Personified: Arm aber sexyMy darling gazebos, I absolutely feel like Amy in Little Women, taking a moment to pick up my pen and write to you all about my adventures on the Continent. (Although I haven’t stolen my sister’s trip, nor am I about to steal her fella, so this comparison ends there.) This will probably be a letter written to you across a few days, currently it’s Sunday …Read more6 months ago · 3 likes · 4 comments · Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

Wait a minute, I thought, I’d like to meet people my own age too! It gets harder, you guys. I mean, when you’re new, it seems like all the other new people are in their twenties. Everyone who is your contemporary is already settled in, already with jobs, and friends groups and maybe kids, even, so they don’t have much time to play with you, let alone become your new instant bff.

So I commented on the post, got added to a Telegram group and made my way across the city that weekend—K was away visiting his parents—to meet a group of women, all my age or thereabouts. It was great, and I made one really good friend (already!) out of it, so see, put yourself out there if you’re in the same situation as I am.

BUT re: putting yourself out there. It is TOUGH. I understand. I’m no shrinking violet, and yet I’m still daunted. It’s a lot of taking the initiative and messaging first and being okay with rejection and trying again next week and so on. It’s like dating, but also not like dating, because all you’re hoping to get from the evening is some personal connection.

Reunions

If you read that old post, I mention how I’m very curious about someone who goes around the city tagging it with “Clit.” I got so fascinated by the end of the summer, I was looking out for the tag wherever I went. Well, it turns out Clit Person almost definitely lives somewhere around here. All down our road I see “clit,” across the station walls and even on ATMs sometimes. I think their style is evolving too—they used to just write “clit” in black and leave it at that, now they’re doing funky 3D lettering, playing with perspective and I’m quite proud of them, I’ve got to say. I mean, it’s still quite ugly, Clit Person is no street artist, but it feels like I’ve found an old friend.

Related: a lot of the stuff we have for the flat is either free from someone, second-hand from someone, or literally taken from the curb, and one of those taken from the curb things was an old Ikea shoe cupboard (Germans are like Indians, no shoes inside the house) and someone had already tagged it before K picked it up from the road. Sadly not Clit Person, though how great would that have been?

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A few things I enjoyed reading recently:

Kottke’s “Things I learned in 2021” list.

Inside one of India’s biggest influencer families.

You probably already know Wordle, but I’m obsessed.

And some newsletters I enjoy:

The WhippetThe Whippet #138: Nothing rhymes with money-launderingGood morning! To new readers: I stop talking about myself after the newspaper icon, if you want to skim. To everyone who knows me IRL: sorry I’m still talking about how great contact lenses are, this is my identity now. To everyone else: I got contact lenses and they’re the best, I’ll never go back to glasses, you’ll have to pry them off my cold dead eyeb…Read more14 hours ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · McKinley ValentineAfter SchoolA newsletter about youth culture and consumer trends.By Casey LewisGriefbaconold friends and the parties they throwThere is nothing to do about grief, so we make a lasagna and take it over to the old building. There is nothing to do about bad news so we text some people and then eight people in a room together is a party. We tell stories. There is nothing to do about anything. It’s Sunday; we are all trying to shut out the day, an…Read more3 months ago · 50 likes · 4 comments · Helena Fitzgerald

Have a great week! Speak soon, email me back or leave a comment so we can chat.

xx

m

Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.

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Today in Photo

Red velvet ropes around the rapid test centres. Cases booming here in Berlin so they're a hot ticket. I'm getting tested once a week to keep an eye on *waves hand* all THIS. Switched from surgical masks to N95s as well, what the Germans call FFP2s. Now to wait. Odds are that we'll all eventually get it but I'd like to put it off as long as I can anyway. #berlinna

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