Wake up around 9 to the sound of the roommate clearing the dishwasher. I stay in bed for a while, drifting in and out of half sleep, and I'm so used to the deafeningly loud bells from the church next door that I sleep right through them.
10 am. Get up and make coffee. My roommate is long gone, off to work, so I've got the apartment to myself. We rarely see each other except on weekends.
I open my email to keep up to speed with what's happening at the office during normal working hours then start studying German. I listen to German pop music as I try to wrap my mind around the grammar lesson (reviewing accusative and dative cases) and eat a couple of kiwis and Speisequark (kind of like Greek yogurt on crack).
11 am. Trade PJ pants for jeans and head to the nearby grocery store, just two blocks away. The sky is cloudy but bits of sun peek through, and it's warm under the patches of sunlight.
Climb the five flights of stairs back home and I assemble the veggies I bought. Today's menu:
feldsalat (don't know the name in English, sorry), tomatoes, marinated garlic, cucumber, chickpeas and feta. White wine vinaigrette over it all. Yummz. Eat and surf facebook, answer some pressing work related emails that have popped up, and review German notecards. I'm serious about this language learning business.
Around 1pm I get ready for work. Hastily tidy the kitchen more out of consideration for my roommate than the desire to actually have a clean kitchen. Pack my lunch for work. I peek at the sky outside and the sun is totally gone, hidden behind gathering clouds. I pack my umbrella, too.
I head out for work at 2pm, getting an early start so I can walk there and get some exercise. My
path takes me across the old Wall and a light rain falls as I cross into East Berlin. Tourists have their windbreakers on, hoods up, as they listen to the tour guide. "Tourists, ugh," I think disdainfully. Then I remember that I am supposed to be thinking loving thoughts (per my Buddhist dabblings). I decide the tourists are commendable for braving the shady weather and dodge them as they crowd the sidewalks.
I actually enjoy the walk in the light rain, but as I cross over Schoenhauser Allee the drizzle becomes steady and I break out the umbrella. I bought it in Amsterdam and the shape is a bit funny - it's more of a raindrop shape than an octagon, designed to combat Amsterdam's sudden gusts of wind. I get a couple of cold German "WTF" stares, but then again they might just be looking at me. With Germans you often never know. It doesn't matter anyway -- after 10 minutes the sky clears again.
I arrive at the office around 3:15 and a couple of my team members are already there. I answer emails from clients and questions from my team, meet with other departments, deal with small crises, and make sales calls in between it all.
Email/music break on the balcony around 5:30. Go back inside and one of my team asks, "So, are we going to have our meeting?" Shit. I forgot. Go outside, have our 1 on 1 meeting. She's a trooper, willing to put her head down and work hard and not complain about all the recent changes in the sales organisation. Still, I feel that something work-related is bothering her and she's not being totally honest with me. I've been having to crack down a lot more on everyone lately and I can feel that I am slowly crossing the line from "colleague/friend" to manager, and I wonder what she would have told me if I was just another team member.
I'm starving at 6. Eat the salad I packed and listen to music while doing manager stuff on the laptop. Turn the volume up to drown out the sounds of the open office -- Brazil is going full out on the calling, a girl from HR is challenging people to ping pong like it's a duel to the death, and the loudest person on my team is in an intense call. Then the questions start. Someone's CRM is fucking up. Someone else has strange questions from a prospect. Yet another person has questions about the newsletter. The phone rings. I eventually just pull one earpiece out of my ear so I can stop asking people to repeat their question. Someone from Product Design comes over to talk. I pull the headphones off, pausing the song in the hopes that I can return to my quiet happy place later. Much later.
The coworker from PD leaves. The German Boy (henceforth called
Dingens, the German word for "Whatchamacallit") messages me on facebook. He's going back home this weekend so he can't come to my friend's birthday party. We chat about his plans, work, and his motorcycle back home that he'll finally be able to ride again. I remember hot summer afternoons spent on South Carolina's country roads on the back of my then-boyfriend's bike, and the exhilarating feel of the wind cooling my sunbaked skin as we ride anywhere and everywhere.
I answer emails. I make calls. I field more questions from the team. Around 10 I'm starving again. Salad is long gone. I make a grocery store run and bump into a guy from the startup who is leasing the empty third of our office. We chat for a few minutes about my company and my team's weird working hours.
Pack up around 11:50. Head to the Sbahn station with Barbie. My train comes and I get on. On board I am surrounded by Spanish, French, Turkish, and Asian-accented German. A typical Berlin crowd. The man on the seat in front of me, visible through the clear plexiglass wall, sips a beer as he sits alone.
I get off at my station and notice how full the station is, despite it being nearly 1 am. A punk girl with pale blue dreads sits with her scruffy puppy. He's watching the passerby with liquid brown eyes, and I resist the temptation to pet him as I would've done in San Francisco. An old woman stands next to them, waiting for the train. A couple kisses each other, embracing the other as if it were their last day on Earth. A girl with a rolling suitcase turns from side to side, obviously unaccustomed to the station and wondering which way to go.
I walk the 2 blocks to my apartment and finally I'm home. The roomie is asleep, or holed away in his room playing Playstation before bed. Again, like always, it's like the apartment is all mine. I drop my bag in a corner and hang up my jackets in an attempt to keep the room tidy. Finally I pour a glass of Chardonnay, and grab my laptop to write this post.
