Essen...brot mit anderen...aus der Mine!!!

In Marta’s house you can sleep only if you go to bed when the kids go to bed! Children are beautiful if they are not your children and you see them just one or two times in the year and for few hours only. I realized that I still don’t have the necessary patience!! In the future... I don’t know.

We are in Essen, where mines have become museums, cultural and entertaining places. In particular this has happened in the district called Amsterdam.

Marta lives with her children. She moved here some years ago. She is a mother and she works as well and this isn’t easy!!! We’ve met Maria, she is very keen on yoga and nature. She is a mother too. And you can meet her and other mothers in the small park near “Golden Bar”. Usually mothers spend time in the Golden Bar chatting and drinking tea, coffee or beer while kids’re playing with sand in the playground. And sand goes inside their pockets, shoes and ears. Children climb on trees, go to the Indian kiosk, scream, cry and run. All of this in perfect harmony with the literary coffee, where Marta works in the morning.

The dough rises. Marta has invited a lot of people and if only stopped raining, we could share our bread in the park. But this doesn't happen, so we stay in two flats where people come and go!! The bell’s rung already and house is full of pleasant fragrances.

BERLINO:THE EAST BECAMES THE WEST

We were dazed so we wandered around the train station, where a camel was reading, on the stairs, its newspaper! An advert. This happens! We arrived in Berlin last Thursday (7th of May). In the morning I woke up early, I took a shower and I shaved myself then I went out from number 10 of Habsburger Strasse.

Here, it’s spring as well. At the “Raza” I didn’t finish my big caffe latte, so I went back to the Big Pink House. Where I find the direction to Biolab, a shop where I bought some kilos of organic flour.

In the Caravan everything has gone well. Dough rises perfectly. And this time our “technique”, by chance or because of our stubbornness, has been almost religious,

Fortunately not all 40 people, that we’d supposed to come, showed up. We were about 30 people. Some of them were sleeping while some people arrived and some went away.

The Caravan is a project of cohabitation and sharing which is also open to the guests. (http://berlin.projectvolunteering.net ).

Before we could get there, we walked across the city carrying 6 kilos of rising bread covered with blankets and set on two boards. We did it as women used to do in the past. When women used to cook dough in the oven of the nearest bakery.

The unusual and cheerful “procession”, among people inside Ubahn, was accompanying by Manuel. He is a young Livornese musician, Viki is a German student and Trevor is a young New Yorkese composer. Trevor accompanied our “procession” with his ukulele. He played and song, from house to house, and this encouraged the rising of dough .

The missed people of Big Pink House are Mary (our CS contact) and Alvaro. By the way ….. where is Alvaro???

The most curious thing was Berlin, that looked and smiled at us… nothing strange in this city “incredibly normal” and in continuous movement from 1989 until today.

The year that saw walls knocked down (walls that someone would like to build in Italy….( I’ll try to avoid the “idiot-Italian” depravation, that desolately degenerates).

Almost all the people that we have met in Berlin, have chosen this city because of its openness, for its multiculturalism, for the opportunity of comparison and for ferment that renews itself.

But all poetry, here/today, ends in stalls of colourful and fragrant markets.

We are on the East border that has became the West one! Welcome back home!

Berlin is as I’ve expected and seen: in the weekend “Milanesi” and also initiatives and social experiences that resist at unrestrained consumption.

It is the last day in Berlin and I still have a lot of things to write on. For instance an Italian iceman told off and drove out two girls who were kissing each other outside his shop. The shop is in a residential area, one of the most nicest and quietest district in Berlin.

Schoeneberg overflows with bars, clubs, restaurants, different kind of shops and antiquarian shops.

Here lives the biggest community of gay/lesbian in Europe! The city is led by a gay mayor! Poor Italian iceman………….After the regrettable event, the Italian iceman was on all newspaper. And there was a gay/lesbian demonstration where everyone kissed each other, just outside his shop!

By the moment the stinking Italian air blows away, in a Berlin that commemorates the end of Berlin wall after twenty years!!!

Usually the last bread is always the best! The same thing’s happened to the bread which has been divided among the Big Pink House hosts and guests. There was Anna who helped us. There was Angelo who moved in Berlin before the fall of Berlin wall. And he has been lived all changes of this city. We named him “Free Spirit” so we can recognise him between the other “angels”. He lives in the most multicultural area of the city and Europe, maybe of the world. There, 40 different nationalities live in 500 flats. Another example of civil cohabitation! There was, also, a girl from Martinica and another girl that I don’t remember where she was from. Massimo, another Italian, who manages a guesthouse. Paul a guy from USA. USA is another port in open sea.

We finished the evening with the lasts pieces of bread baked with walnuts. The bread was nicely sacrificed to a jar of chocolate. The sixth kilo, last one, it was brought to a neonate girl!

In Berlin, we met a lot of people. Lili is a Bosnian girl. Dobra is Serbian and sings divinely, she can make a song with just two Italian word like “strawberry and lemon”. Ilaria, is a very kind researcher from Cantania, she has spent two days with us. Luciano lives in the “Caravan” and he is Romanian. Tessa and Trevor/Croll. And Kirstin, a German journalist, who dreams to cultivate cappers in Saltern. Kirstin told me how was Berlin when the wall still was there and she loves Berlin as multicultural in Arts, rights and opportunities!!!