the pavlova that came down from heaven

The hunt for a good coffee-shop is obsessing me.

Today, I decided on a café that will be my new hang-out spot where I while away bohemian afternoons, think great thoughts and unwittingly annoy the waitresses with my refusal to ever leave. The place certainly has potential. It does a decent chicken salad and edible vegetarian wraps, is aesthetically pleasing and doesn't attract too many mothers with screaming babies. And the weird guy who sits in cafés and stares at women doesn't go there.

Image source

Its tour de force, however, is the heavenly pastries, the queen of which is the utterly magnificent  pavlova.  Not since I stole a pavlova in a hotel kitchen on a New Year's Eve have I tasted such a divine creation. It is so unbelievably good that I hardly ever buy it. Maybe I feel it's too good for a simple human being like me.

So I went there today. I braved a lashing, cold rain in my determination to claim my new home away from home - donning a rain coat with a National Geographic logo on it, as this gave me an appropriate feeling of being an explorer of new lands - and arrived dripping water on the stylish floor. I ordered a cappuccino and a wrap ( with more than one envious glance at the pavlova, which seemed to have a supernatural glow around it ).

The wrap was surprisingly good ( wraps have an inherent tendency to disappoint ). The cappuccino was too small but otherwise satisfactory. The people were interesting and the atmosphere was cosy.

So I sat there and tried to think of this as my new home. 

But I fidgeted, rushed through my wrap, felt uncomfortable. The room was too open. No nooks to hide in and quietly observe people with my back safely to the wall. I was too visible.

So I sighed, and left. This was not the place.

But I will come back for the pavlova occasionally. When I feel worthy of its otherworldly glory.

two introverts on a desert island

We row out in a small boat. I have stopped biting my lip ( since we passed the place where my father died ) and allow myself to relax and look around. The sea is calm and the sun is warm on my bare arms.

He rows, with ease, through the shallow water and knows where to avoid hidden rocks. We pass terns, swans and ducks, as well as small cottages on overgrown islets. We see no people. When we reach the right cottage I set my laptop on the patio table and get to work, while he climbs into the excavator and starts digging up rocks.

Later, we make lunch together. When the excavator breaks down and I'm tired of working, we lie down on the patio to sunbathe and do a crossword. I'm good with crosswords but he is better. We google Swedish poets and try to fix the excavator ( my part is to push a lever ). We walk barefoot around the islet. He is tanned, I am pale, he tells me I'm beautiful.

When the sun sinks lower and the air gets chilly, we return home. I get mud between my toes when I step out of the boat. The year's at the spring ... and all's right with the world.

coffee and pie in the sky

I have never found that perfect coffee shop that I see on Pinterest.

The one with rustic wooden tables, heavenly spiced coffee and bohemian, gorgeous men doing artsy things at the next table while waiting for the love of their life ( a.k.a. me ) to show up. The one where I come up with the idea for a wonderful adventure or write a novel that will change everything.

At least not here, in my town. There are plenty of dreary cafés that haven't changed since the Soviet Union was the pinnacle of fashion. There are some quirky, retro places that are nice for hanging out but where the coffee is hit and miss. There are a couple of places that have perfected the art of coffee but whose atmosphere gives you suicidal impulses.

I even have a recurring dream at night where I drift around town  (sometimes my own, sometimes an unfamiliar one) looking for that perfect, perfect café that I know is located on a sunny upper floor somewhere. I know once I reach it, I will stay there forever and find happiness.

I never quite manage to find it in my dream either.

whirling juggling circus act

There was the glorious summer morning, warm and fragrant like a garden, with a salty breeze from the sea.

And there was a woman with tousled hair and no make-up, dressed in old sweatpants and a white T-shirt, sitting barefoot on a balcony in the midst of all this May beauty. A mug of coffee and a laptop with TV shows to be subtitled - the kind of work that doesn't really seem like work at all.

Was it a dream, or was it really my life this morning? Who would have thought, that cold, grey day in March when I cried for my lost job among muddy fields and dark clouds, that I would have a day like this?

When the afternoon grew too hot, I closed my laptop with satisfaction and headed out to while away the rest of the day. Drifted around with my mother until a rain shower surprised us and cooled the air. Went back to the balcony, where we had icecream and coffee and watched the world for a peaceful hour.

Later, a take-away pizza, rainy streets, dreams of love, and being asked, "Are you Turkish?", which made me smile.

This life may be precarious and unsafe - I don't even know where my next paycheck is coming from, if at all. But I promise I will savour it.  Freedom and summer.

* * * *

"Precarious, life is. A flying leap. A sweep of hand. A star flung across the night. A lucky catch in this whirling juggling circus act." - Rivera Sun

professional life, the 2014 version

Working at the kitchen table. Or sometimes on the sofa.

Irregular working hours but no stress. Beautiful office. Possibility of coffee breaks in the sun, with a sea view ( if it wasn't so darn cold ). Instead of great salad lunches, it's now whatever-is-found-in-the-fridge lunches.

More time for life. Back to being poor. A lot of time spent putting my house and business in order, in a desperate attempt to gain back some control over my wildly spinning life. Crying over paperwork, sometimes.

Also some really interesting work, for once. Discovered something new that I'm good at. Dreams of a new career, mixed with doubts about the same. Where is this going?

Going for a run almost regularly, just to get out of the house. Much more up for social life than before. Kind of, almost, enjoying this life ( except the paperwork part and the being poor part ).

It's freedom. But everyone else is living such settled lives and I've been thrown out into chaos again. Will there be a happy end?

seeking comfort among the pirates

Sometimes, you come home after a day around people.

And the only thing that can make you love yourself again is a cup of hot tea and listening to something like the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song, house remix.

the A-list

* Annoyance.
* A take-away burger.
* A drive through a flat landscape, past tractors plowing fields in a cloud of dust and excited seagulls.
* A discussion about a translating job that turned into an excursion around a factory floor and learning the finer points of garbage trucks.

A.K.A. my day, in reverse order.

the Zinfandel days by a river

Perhaps not my first choice of European city for a mini-break. But you go where the cheap tickets take you.

The only thing I really knew about  Frankfurt am Main  was that it has a huge airport. Now I also know that it is the home of the euro, has a lot of skyscrapers for a European city and used to host the crowning ceremony of German emperors - including Charlemagne.

Now the city hosts some huge trade fairs but between the fairs, it seems rather surprised when confronted with non-Germans. Firmly rejecting foreign credit cards in many places, for example.

It was a coincidence that I ended up there for my tiny holiday, but it turned out to be the ideal city if you - like me - love both history and skyscrapers.

In Frankfurt you sit on the river bank among flocks of geese and people smoking the hookah. Every time you look up to the sky, there's an aircraft there. In Frankfurt, they have placed all the hotels so that the tourists have to go through the Red Light District - even if the sex clubs don't bother you, the drug addicts are a bit scary. The restaurant and bar staff speak English when they take your order but switch to German when they serve the food and bring the bill. There are a lot of handsome men.

The architecture is mixed. Looking at this picture I took, it actually looks Photoshopped. But it isn't. 15th century, meet the 20th century!

Other wonders of Frankfurt am Main:
* cheap wine
* subway trains that suddenly go above ground and magically turn into regular trams
* headstones in graveyards, often inscribed with a very childish sans-serif font and looking rather cheerful
* river barges, transporting not only cargo but also the captain's Mercedes and speedboat

How you should spend three days in Frankfurt:
* Buy bottles of wine in the supermarket.
* Wander around the city at random.
* When you get tired, sit on the river bank or in a park. Drink wine.
* When you've emptied a bottle of Zinfandel, write a note and include a German poem, put it in the bottle and throw it into the river Main. Watch it sail out towards the Rhine and beyond.
* Repeat.

how beauteous mankind is

Getting a job is easier these days. Or harder.

When I was younger, I looked for job ads and applied, then sent copies of university diplomas and written references from previous employers.

Nowadays you just get together for a little chat with a prospective employer, sometimes over the phone - they ask, "What's your background?" and I tell them I am a professional translator and mention vaguely the sort of jobs I have done in the past. They probably Google me, but there's not much to find there.

And then they give me the job.

The tricky part is that in order to get to this point, you usually have had to be recommended to them by someone you and they know. 

But - what? I say the words "professional translator" and they just believe me? I think I like this world.

in the hall of the troll king

Roman Payne said it well - and oh, he knew how I feel about hotel rooms ( they're magic ) and subway trains!

Spent a few days in a big city recently, in a neighbourhood where I felt faintly nervous about going out after dark - the number of drug addicts and suspicious characters gathering in gangs in dark alleys might have had something to do with it.

Yet, I pulled my friend with me down to the subway station ( not the safest of places ) as we were walking back to our hotel. I wanted to smell the burned metal of the train tracks and hear the rumble of approaching underground trains vibrate in the walls. I wanted to watch men in dreadlocks and giggling women in high heels hurry to their train. I wanted the possibility of glimpsing a huge rat in the tunnels. I wanted dark looks from under homeless hoods and the spark of danger in the air. I wanted an urban night where anything can happen. I wanted the Big City, hundreds of subway stations and millions of stories meeting under strip lights.

"I would like to bottle this smell," I sang, delirious. "The one of steel and old urine. I would like to record this sound of a faraway train deep underground. I would listen to it when I can't sleep."

My friend thought I was mad, and rightly so.