Berlin Travel Diary: Monday with the locals
I woke up early yesterday due to insomnia and took a shower to wake myself up. I spent a rather quiet and dark morning with two cups of coffee, catching up on messages from friends and getting some writing done. After a while, I felt sleepy again, so I took a nap until around 8.30 am.
Feeling refreshed, I made arrangements to spend the day with my friends D&K. B & I left our rented apartment and moved to their place for lunch and a Monday work day. B, who was also with us, had to leave in the evening after work, while I would be staying with my girl pals from today until I go back home.
While the three of them worked, I shifted tasks between napping, working, reading, and distracting them during breaks. In the late afternoon, I took B to Ostkreuz Station to help him figure out the train to the airport. While on previous metro lines, I observed undeterred Berliners faced with eccentric (from my perspective) commuters, a lot of whom are drunk but harmless.
After dropping off B, I did a grocery run with K at Rewe. She expressed how doing groceries feels therapeutic for her, and I can relate. It was an enjoyable mundane task done together, and it was also another simple opportunity to learn and understand the local residents' everyday lives. I even looked up the German terms for the ingredients we needed to be more efficient in our grocery run. Now I know how to say the following ingredients in German:
Green lentils - Linse (Grün)
Onion - Zweibel
Garlic - Knoblauch
Carrots - Karotte, Möhre
Tomato paste - Tomatenmark
Fresh tomato - Tomate
Walnut - Walnuss
Veggie stock - (Gemüse)brühwürfel
Balsamic vinegar - Balsamico, mediteranner Essig
We cooked dinner together, and on the menu was Lentil Bolognese. During dinner, we reminisced on relaxing Filipino songs from our youth which D played on speakers. K strummed her guitar and played keys on her piano alongside the tracks resounding around the apartment. D concocted a drink I've never tasted before, a combination of Lillet and Schweppes Wildberry I’d definitely redo back home. Last night was somehow a perfect combination of friends, music, and dining, just like the old times. It felt like home.
With this, I had a very good and deep slumber. Another day in Berlin filled with simple pleasures, learning, and good company.