Foraging for Normalcy
October - December, 2020
As expected, the Coronavirus numbers began to swell in Berlin as soon as the temperature dropped. Even though the government quickly re-imposed regulations that had been loosened since the first wave, the efforts were essentially too little too late. Throughout the fall the infection numbers rose steadily, and concessions like keeping schools open to maintain a fraction of normality in day-to-day life proved to be half-measures that only delayed the inevitable. By the end of November, Germany was no longer being commended for its proactive response to the virus. It too had allowed the pandemic to skyrocket out of control. And where was the biggest Coronavirus hotspot in the country? Neukölln. Where we live.
Once autumn began, the differences between loose restrictions, light lockdown, and complete lockdown were pretty minimal to us, as we had no intention of traveling anymore and had long since stopped going to bars and restaurants, using public transpiration, or meeting with groups larger than one other couple. Mazz continued to ride her bike to and from the lab every day and kept the window open in her office while wearing a coat and mask, much to the chagrin of her coworkers. Invigorated from all the exercise and outdoor time we got in Switzerland, Kirb started running several times a week, and though he never learned to enjoy the actual activity, he did appreciate getting faster and fitter. Occasionally we’d have one other household over for dinner parties, enjoying a bit of camaraderie and wondering if even that was irresponsible.
The only time we left Berlin during the fall was in October, when we were invited to Brandenburg by our friends Auntie Lizard and Christoph to spend the weekend at his mother’s house in the town of Karstädt. Christoph’s mom and step-dad were out of town at an onion festival and had asked him to take care of the dog, and he graciously extended the invitation to us. Compared to day after day in our tiny city apartment, a weekend of backyard bonfires, mushroom hunting, and dog petting sounded too good to be true. The train ride was only two hours and everyone inside was wearing masks, but it felt like an eternity trapped inside an infectious germ tube. When we emerged on the other side, we found ourselves in a quaint and quiet village in the country, excited to spend time with friends (and a dog!) in a proper grown-up house.
Christoph is a master of the wilderness and has a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of mushrooms, which is great because we love picking and eating them but have virtually no idea which ones are safe, so every time we found one we had to call him over like he was a teacher and we were kids on a field trip. After a pleasant afternoon wandering through the woods not far from his home loading up our bags with cauliflower mushrooms (Glucken in German), he decided to take us to a specific area a little further away, as he had a hunch we might find some parasol mushrooms there. We drove down country roads to the spot, parked, and within a minute he had spotted the single biggest mushroom either of us had ever seen. We asked him what he planned to do with it and he got a mischievous grin. He wanted to use the entire mushroom as the base of a pizza. We were slightly skeptical, but intrigued, because, you know, pizza. Back at the house, we flipped the giant parasol mushroom over and loaded it up with sauce and mozzarella, then babied it in the oven, draining the liquid that would pool up in the baking sheet to allow it to crisp up. The result was surprisingly tasty.
In Germany it’s not uncommon for people to have tiny little cottages with gardens called a “Schrebergarten,” single-room getaways in dedicated colonies where one can grow food and flowers and enjoy a little escape. These clusters of small houses are speckled across Berlin and have been popular all over Germany since the 19th century. They used to be popular in Karstädt as well, but sometime after the unification of East Germany they fell out of fashion. Now the cottages in the small town are mostly abandoned and the orchards and gardens that surround them have largely been reclaimed by nature. As we walked through the tall grass we stopped by each of the fruit trees we found and picked whatever apples and pears we could reach, filling two large sacks with perfectly ripe fruit which we used to make delicious autumnal treats once we got home.
A few weeks later, Mazz noticed people foraging in a park near her office, so we figured it was best to bring Christoph and Auntie Lizard along for a mushroom hunt so we didn’t poison ourselves. We were excited to learn how many different and colorful mushrooms were edible within the city limits, and in just a few hours of strolling we were able to find several baskets full. Our festive Halloween dinner that night had piles of surprisingly tasty orange saffron milk cap (Edelreizker) and purple wood blewit (Violetter Rötelritterling) mushrooms accompanying roast chicken and potatoes, with a hearty king bolete (Steinpilz) for breakfast the following day.
A general anxiousness and malaise that had been clouding us for years like non-dissipating smoke finally lifted when just enough of the American populous decided in early November that they didn’t want to live under the rule of a narcissistic fascist anymore. A bottle of sparkling wine sat patiently in our fridge for a week, waiting for the tallies to be verified. We got the news via text from Spritzboi and Jessica in Luxembourg while we were cooking dinner and in turn informed our friend Mark down the street, who knew the moment the phone buzzed that it was time to come over to our house to drink and celebrate. We’re not centrists, and we don’t love Joe Biden or his admiration of a deeply broken and outdated status quo, but boy are we glad that Donald Trump isn’t the president of the United States of America anymore. We’ve now been in Germany almost twice as long as we had originally intended, and there is a part of us that actively wants to return to our homeland, but another 4 years of despotism and complete disdain for science, knowledge, and education would have obscured that possibility significantly. That said, the fact that 70 million of our countrymen voted for the side of racism, authoritarianism, and anti-intellectualism is almost equally hard to stomach when we think about what it means to eventually return to America.
This isn’t to say there aren’t some real clods in Germany. There are plenty! As fall pushed on and Coronavirus numbers began to climb significantly, new rules were put in place like requiring masks outdoors on the busiest streets in Berlin. To help enforce this, the city spray-painted signs on the sidewalks in German, English, Turkish, and Arabic. Within days, the signs all up and down Karl-Marx Straße in our neighborhood had been vandalized by pandemic deniers. Thousands of people had an anti-mask/anti-lockdown demonstration downtown. It may feel like America has the monopoly on dumbshits, but there are plenty of people all around the world who are keen to act in the opposite of humanity’s best interests.
Sadly, traveling to Luxembourg for Thanksgiving simply wasn’t an option this year, marking the first time since we moved to Europe that we wouldn’t be celebrating the holiday with our beloved Spritzboi. He had never eaten American Thanksgiving before meeting us, so we decided that since we were stuck in Berlin, we should probably introduce the holiday to some of our other uninitiated European friends this year. As one does, we spent two entire days cooking a meal that takes less than 30 minutes to eat, but it was a glorious spread. And though Mazz has been making the same pumpkin pie recipe for 20 years, this marked the first time she had ever used fresh, non-canned pumpkin, as we had no access to Libby’s. We roasted a Hokkaido pumpkin, pureed it up, and it made a spectacular pie, so good that it made her wonder why she hadn’t ever bothered to try making it with a fresh pumpkin before.
Even with the world consumed in the all-encompassing garbage fire that is 2020, we were thankful for many things in our lives this year. We have good health, we have wonderful friends, and we have a tiny apartment that is constantly filled with jokes and laughter. Fall turned to winter and the inevitability that we would not be able to come home for Christmas to see our family and friends in the Pacific Northwest became a reality. Like everything else this year, we rolled with it the best we could. We ordered a little Christmas tree and Mazz decorated it with origami ornaments. We figured out how to buy and ship presents internationally with weeks of leeway to account for a very broken American postal system. We did lots of video calls with our families and friends. Like everyone else, we’ve had to learn how to adapt this year, and it hasn’t always been enjoyable, but lord knows our experience hasn’t been a fraction as shitty as it has been for countless others. For that we are genuinely grateful. On our little blog here, we coined 2020 “Plague Year.” Let’s hope it’s followed by 2021 and not “Plague Year Part II.”
To all our family and friends around the world, we love you and we miss you and we hope to see you soon. Hopefully on a beach in Greece. Let’s try to meet up there.