On Sunday Brunch
The sky over Berlin is gray. The early autumn coolness hangs in the air and it is nearly time to partake in that ritual my generation venerates so much: brunch. You may be an expat, but certain platitudes and clichés make it impossible to forget where you are from. You put on an album of Herbie Hancock or something else to set the mood. Sophisticated but easy to listen to. Or perhaps some recording old enough to have the crackle and hiss of an old record player in the recording, despite the fact you’re listening from a BlueTooth speaker. The notes don’t really matter, only the vibe.
You prep the biscuit dough while waiting for your roommates and have a cup of coffee from some Italian Device and scroll through twitter, and when they are up and ready to go the fun begins. A delicate ballet of galley kitchen maneuvering and timing so that everything hits the table at exactly the right moment.
Nothing derails a Sunday quite like brunch. The whole affair makes it seem as though the entire day is one extended morning. Three biscuits with gravy; some bacon; an egg — sunny side up, of course, coffee, and enough mimosa where you have lost track at this point. You simply have just come to accept that nothing is getting done today. In fact, you aren’t moving for the rest of the day, potentially the week.
The day stretches languidly onward as you lazily flip back and forth between coffee-stained pages of this week’s New Yorker, wondering to yourself: “Do I really want to commit to an article that long? I’ll be reading it for the rest of the morning.” Then you realize it’s three o’ clock in the afternoon.
You pour yourself another mimosa.
