Berlin, Day 10
The herd of kinderbeasts that we have the misfortune to live below have been particularly exuberant the last few mornings. Occasionally, perhaps every two or three hours, they settle down to graze or destroy stuffed animals or whatever it is their parents try and get them to do for a moment’s peace from their ceaseless galloping.
Astonishingly, it may actually be just one lone kinderbeast who torments us from 6-something each morning until being let out to romp and terrify nice polite German children at a kinderpark nearby around 11. Then, finally, the light fixtures stop rattling and clinking, and there’s time to put the cascaded books back onto shelves. Really.
What kind of parents allow their children to stomp on wooden floors from 6 a.m. with clogs on? If any of you reading this are putting up your hands at this point, I am going to come straight to your house and scowl at you. In Scottish. My parents would have caught me by an adjacent limb or ear and flung me in the moat (as I have taken to calling the stagnant pool of water that gathered under the front steps of my Glaswegian childhood mansion) had I thundered across a floor as frequently and ferociously as these urchins upstairs do.
Perhaps the one good thing about the existence of the kinderbeasts is that has provoked me to start learning German. Not in order to further Scottish-German diplomatic relations, but in order to stomp up the fire escape and remonstrate with the kinderbeasts’ keepers. I’ve made magnificent progress in my ten days here and have made it all the way to the middle of the half-hour-long lesson two. A glorious accomplishment! Unfortunately, the remonstrating will have to wait until I’ve progressed beyond “I don’t speak German” and “”Wo ist der Tequila?” For now I’ll just continue to scowl at the ceilings. In Scottish.
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