(This is the belated April entry - too much going on in that month this year. Old German rhyme: "April, April - soon does as it wills!") While the leaders of the loudest NATO "allies" do rhetorical somersaults while their citizens are being decimated, daily, Germany has done a little better - so far...

ODEON
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Another Yorck cinema, this one is one of about 3 of the most traditional ones in that group. Not much to look at from outside - except for the 2 glass viewing cases in the front yard - inside it is a thing of beauty: A proper small wood-and-glass ticket booth near the left & right entrances, after which you pass through into a small foyer with bar-and-ticket-cashier, with a wall of the month's celebrity birthdays on the right. Inside a classic single-level cinema hall with tall curtains and beautiful decorative lights on left & right walls! A hidden gem!

Killer Clowns
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I'm not saying that the nominal leaders of the U.S. & the U.K. are solely to blame for all the CoVID deaths this year in their respective countries. In fact, the British magazine THE ECONOMIST argues at least partly otherwise for the U.S..

But I do find it extremely heartless & non-exemplary to say the least that they are using the crisis to further their own political agendas, which for both i.a. means "opening up" again - a probably foolish push into more unnecessary deaths, while their reinfection coefficient R0 is above 1. (I'm no mathematician, but I seem to remember reading that by about 1,3 the rise starts becoming exponential again!)

And all this while smiling blithely into cameras. If I were living in the U.S. or the U.K., being "at risk" in terms of my age and recent health history, my motto would Remain: #StayAtHome!

TGIF, another May Day
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This Friday, restaurants and cafés reopened in Berlin. Man, had I hoped for that! Of course, realising how incredibly lucky I am to live in a country, where government and provincial leaders reacted quickly to the Corona threat (only two-and-a-half months ago!) by locking us down within about 2-3 weeks; German virologists, specialised for SARS cases (again, man, is the world lucky that this is not the 1st SARS epidemic the world had experienced to some extent), were drawn upon by health ministry and Kanzleramt (ministry of the office of the chancellor). One of these virologists, Dr. Drosten, has taken time to do long informative podcasts, so that many, many Germans were better informed than people in other countries. On how the virus spreads, and how to behave accordingly.

Anyway, I visited an almost totally empty McD's with outside tables, and after a few curly fries felt like a normal person again. Some very hungry sparrows loudly claimed their tiny parts of my meal, as well.

Later in the day, I passed a group of young women, standing near a building (not really "socially distancing"), and one of them instructed the others loudly: "You sleep in the same bed with a guy for months, and then suddenly you can't, week for week... That's just not on!" I, pony-haired old man, managed not to prance or grin while directly passing them, but half a dozen steps later...

At 10 p.m. a somewhat surprised moi was sitting on a bench on a traffic island in Gneisenau Str., holding a piece of pizza in one hand, while the other was demasking. Surprised due to having forgotten the "loosening" order, that allowed opening of eating places today, also directs them all to close by that time every evening. For the moment.

A strange day!

[Keep well. Keep your distance, too, even while possibly "reopening" your life.]