There are days in the Cologne summer when you suddenly feel it. Now, right now, it’s here. The most relaxed time of the year. The time of unexpected moments of happiness. How often have you cycled past your favorite ice cream parlor in Nippes? There’s never been one of those little tables free that create an atmosphere like you’re sitting in the market square of a small Italian town. Now you can enjoy the ice cream time without the stressful looks of the people waiting. When is he finally going to pay?
The last people staying at home take their lunch breaks outside
In the shadow of the Siebengebirge in the Rheinauhafen, the name of the granary built in 1909 and now home to luxury apartments, a caretaker service is attempting a completely pointless activity. Caretaker 1 is smoothing the sand with a rake on the empty playground, where children are having fun with shovels, buckets and molds somewhere on the Mediterranean or the Dutch coast.
The rake man slowly makes new paths, even though there is nothing to rake. Who knows, maybe the last people left at home will come out of the office before lunch and reserve their place on this seemingly untouched dream beach with a towel. Caretaker 2 lets the leaf blower whir and enjoys the moment he created alone, the single leaf dancing across the lawn.
Emptiness at the Rheinauhafen in summer.
The street sweeper is kneeling next to his cart in the shade of a crane house and is calmly petting a dog whose owner he has apparently known for years. From sight and nodding. There is hardly ever time for a chat and a treat. Today there is, today the buckets on the Rhine are empty. And there is nothing to sweep.
How many people must Cologne have relieved itself of for this to be possible? Is it 200,000? Or more? Even the badly battered Ebertplatz with its bar, the illuminated deck chairs and the bubbling fountain by the artist Wolfgang Göddertz, in which a few children splash who have not gone to the Mediterranean or the Dutch coast, almost seems as if one could reconcile with it. Even if the street vendors still sell drugs instead of jewelry and silver chains are more likely to be ripped from people’s necks.
In the evening off to the blackberries
In the allotment gardens, the exchange of fruit and vegetables has almost come to a standstill, which is only natural, because plums and raspberries, cucumbers, zucchini and lettuce are crying out for harvest on all plots at the same time. But even here there are rare moments of happiness. When importing plums, for example. The Porz harvest seems to be overflowing this time, while in Weidenpesch there is a worm.
Blackberries in the Takufeld Emil from Ehrenfeld enthusiastically picks the delicious fruits.
And because all the potential buyers whose raised beds are at Aldi or Lidl are currently raiding the buffets on cruise ships, four kilos of Porz plums, disguised as two trays of crumble cake, are sent on a trip to the allotment garden in Weidenpesch to be eaten under the plum tree there. So that it knows what to deliver next year.
In the evening, when the shadows are getting longer, there is no greater pleasure than picking blackberries in secret places. They are now really ripe and sweet and grow wildly in what could be described as lost places.
Months later, the jelly will remind us of those few days of summer when Cologne was so empty you could have heard a blackberry fall.
