I Take It Back

I was still hungry. I wasn't done writing. I ordered a Champignon Stange from the viv-Lounge counter: mushrooms encased in a long tube of crispy wheat, dotted with flax seeds and sesame seeds.

Two pairs of parents entered. Five kids. One boy climbed atop the Brio platform. Banged block against block. Crashed tracks to the floor. Ouch. His little brother perched on his mother’s lap and mewled like a wet cat.

How quickly it happens. viv-Lounge = Dante’s Inferno

My cousin says it's intolerable, Prenzlauer Berg, all the twenty-something yuppie-bio-mamis from the West, who drove the Ossies (East Berliners) out and act like motherhood is the end all and be all of life. My cousin and her husband are pitching hard for me to move to Mitte. It's home to artists, they say, our age. Small contemporary art galleries. Classy restaurants full of adults (only). Parents (like them) who actually have perspective.

What I love about P.B., though, is the wide open squares. The broad cobblestone streets. In P.B. I can breathe. In Mitte I feel squeezed.

Then again, in Mitte I can hear myself think.

The Brio boy is SCREECHING.

What was that I said about wanting a baby? Get me OUT of here.

Comments

[Julie]

well, at least the mushroom pastry sounds nice. xo.

[Lilan]

Oh my god the mushroom stick is DIVINE. Wish I could send you one.