M A friend and I are ready for vacation again. But we don’t want to cruise through Slovenia on a gravel bike or go bungee jumping to Dubai. We long for lack of stimuli, silence, nothing. And where can you find that? Well, where it’s flat. In East Frisia.
But we still like it a little unusual, so we rent a castle with a sloping floor. For urban neurotics in nostalgia fever, it is the perfect choice. Our apartment has a stove, and when you look out the window you can see an impressive copper beech tree. On our foray through the enchanted forest, we climb over ditches and wind our way through bushes.
One day we find firewood and take it with us. As the oven crackles, I read My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh and brag about how many pages I’ve progressed.
A. is unimpressed. He chills, usually with all fours stretched out, in the sleep asana. We do our shopping in a small shop around the corner. A. always stands there, completely absorbed in himself, and picks out the most beautiful apple in slow motion. I have to admit that he’s driving me a little crazy with this.
Endless snow
But I annoy him with my bad mood, which sets in just in time for my period. Suddenly it’s snowing like crazy. One morning – okay, it’s 2 p.m. – I open the curtains and look in: “WTF!!!” A. and I immediately pull out our smartphones and start taking pictures. With or without a Biedermeier lamp in the frame, zoom in on the white splendor and out again. Snow under our feet, snow in our mouths. Schneee… We act like junkies who have finally gotten their fix.
But snow isn’t just Happy Peppy, snow is also bus failure. Day after day we stand at the bus stop but nothing moves. It doesn’t take long before we feel like we’re in “Groundhog Day,” where a grumpy TV reporter is stuck in the snow and relives the same day over and over again.
“But which of us is Bill Murray?” I ask as we once again trudge to the “bus” without much hope. “You, of course,” says A. and I burp provocatively in his direction. Then we nudge each other in the shoulder like two teenagers on Testo. “You started it!” – “No you!” In short: We’re starting to get a little strange here, but there’s also a woman living in the neighborhood who decorates the forest as if it were her living room.
A garland made of self-collected berries hangs on a trunk, and we discover its tiny heart at the entrance to the forest. We also meet a passionate collector of Zippo lighters. There are more than a thousand pieces in his display case at home. I don’t know if it’s because of my encounter with the Zippo man, but suddenly a brilliant idea comes to me. How was it again with our 90-year-old film hero?
Broken spell
He just had to tweak his personality a bit and he was free. “Today I’m choosing to be in a good mood,” I say and give A. a make-up smooch on the mouth. “Was something?” asks A, deeply relaxed as always. But the magic is broken, the tracks are clear. But it doesn’t take long before we’re stuck in Hanover. And I hardly dare say it, but this time too it wasn’t due to force majeure or because the train was broken. The reason for the standstill is that I’ve gotten angry again.