I've just discovered the most beautiful little park on the edge of the Bornheim district, full of sweet-smelling exotic flowers and placid people exchanging whispered conversations or kisses, or simply staring thoughtfully at the beauty around them. Part of the park is modeled after a Chinese garden, with an old stone pagoda and a pond full of lotus. It makes me walk more slowly, wondering what my own rush is in contrast to such stillness.
I'm on my way to a cafe to meet up with a group of ex-pats whose social calendar I noticed in an online community. I have no idea if we'll have anything in common or not, but it's nice to know they will at least be fluent in English. I'm okay at having basic conversations in German, but it takes more fluency to convey a sense of humor or wit, so I'd rather make friends in English.
Everything looks lovely in this slanting evening light, even old men; baseball caps; cell phones; shoulders; stray cats. A few yards in front of me, an Arab man in a business suit pauses by a large pot of trumpet-shaped orange flowers. He lifts one to his nose, and his mouth lifts into a blissful grin beneath his mustache. I admire men who smell flowers in public.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I, too, admire men who smell flowers in public.
Sounds like you're having an interesting time so far. Kudos on managing to write anything at all after listening to a press conference on a foreign subject in a second language. It's a good thing they didn't ask me to do that. I would have just come back to the office and cried.
Post a Comment