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It feels a teeny bit naughty to be sitting in someone else’s garden.

© Katy Derbyshire

Going Dutch with German Writers (18): Is Rihanna Pregnant?

In which Katy Derbyshire and Kirsten Fuchs swap parenting tips over Radeberger pilsener on Tempelhofer Feld and locate a convenient trio of bushes.

Who?
Kirsten Fuchs writes books – most recently a collection of columns, Eine Frau spürt sowas nicht – and texts for radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and live performances, mainly at the monthly Lesebühne Fuchs und Söhne. She’s one of the funniest writers I’ve seen on a stage. 

Where?
Tempelhofer Feld. It’s a windy evening and huge dark clouds are looming on the horizon, so we seek out a little hut in the community garden. It feels a teeny bit naughty to be sitting in someone else’s garden, but it is public.

What?
Radeberger pilsener bought at a shop on the way

What did we talk about?
Once we get settled in on our bench, we admire the hut. There’s a cushion and a little pot of dried flowers and a gay magazine, which gets us onto the subject of Bravo magazine. Apparently it’s no good any more because kids can get all the things it used to offer via the internet now, says Kirsten. So they’ve cancelled the “Doktor Sommer” problem page and run headlines like “Is Rihanna pregnant?” and on page seven they say, “No, she’s just put on a few pounds.” It’s a terrible rip-off. We both have fond memories of teenage magazine problem pages, the way we laughed at them in front of our friends but secretly took their advice. Kirsten tells me about the time they had a woman come in to school, who took the girls off separately to talk about sex. Kirsten got angry because when the woman tactfully tried to raise the subject of masturbation, one girl said she had no need for it because she had a boyfriend, which put anyone else off saying anything and made them all feel bad.

I have a vivid memory of telling a boy at school that girls didn’t masturbate. I’m not sure whether I knew I was lying or not. Kirsten says the poor guy probably still believes me now. I say he told me trumpet players are very prone to haemorrhoids because they blow so hard at the top of their bodies that something has to give at the other end. Kirsten laughs at me for still believing him now. A friend told me brass musicians make the best lovers because of their well-trained lips, but I can’t corroborate the theory. We talk some more about teaching our daughters how to wash their nooks and crannies, and other (un)sanitary subjects. It feels like we’re in a private place, not in public with people all around us.

Everything has to be caught on camera

The park’s not crowded because there’s a World Cup match on.
The park’s not crowded because there’s a World Cup match on.

© Katy Derbyshire

We’re facing a main thoroughfare but the park’s not crowded because there’s a World Cup match on. A woman cycles past, filming the surroundings – and us – with a tiny camera. There are some men on what seem to be electric skateboards, and one of them films himself from all angles using his phone. The kids these days, honestly, everything has to be caught on camera. Kirsten tells me about this video of people posing for film when they think they’re posing for photos, and how it’s oddly disturbing because they’re all so expert at looking good. They must practice at home. Neither of us is at all good at looking good in spontaneous photos. At this point I remember to take some photos, but I make sure neither of us is in them.

I’m also disturbed by grown men skateboarding but Kirsten thinks it’s fine. Parents are allowed to have hobbies nowadays that our parents didn’t. What did our parents actually do in their spare time? Kirsten’s mum didn’t have time for hobbies; she was a full-time teacher with two kids and spent all day working and running the household, and then she’d fall into bed exhausted. A typical East German working mother, she did all the housework in their family. Both our dads had hobbies, though. It was pretty unfair, Kirsten points out, that their hobbies made them seem like more interesting people, and that we have more vivid memories of time spent with our dads – because there was less of it, but it was also more exciting than the thousands of humdrum things we did with our mums.

Is it strange for Kirsten to live in Tempelhof now, having grown up in the East? Not at all, she says. It’s not like she’d be surrounded by Ossis if she was in Prenzlauer Berg or somewhere. And she can’t stand those Ossis who pride themselves on never having left the East. Her first flat of her own was in Kreuzberg, and she loved it there but at some point she was priced out. And now she’s very fond of Tempelhof because it’s full of screaming kids and old ladies; it feels like little has changed there over the past hundred years. She likes to imagine the screaming kids in her backyard a hundred years ago – there’s a sense of continuity about the place. I don’t like to do that, I tell her; my building was a Judenhaus and it’s difficult to think about the suffering that went on in the space where I live now without getting upset.

Crossover Winnetou fan fiction

Das Gute. Pilsener bought at a shop on the way.
Das Gute. Pilsener bought at a shop on the way.

© Katy Derbyshire

The park closes at 10:30so we head back out to the streets of Neukölln. But we each still have a beer on the go and we both need the toilet. Kirsten’s daughter is four, and fascinated by English right now, so Kirsten knows the useful phrase “to do a wee-wee”. We consider the complications of going into a bar to use the toilet while also pushing a bike, and decide against it. In the end we sit down on a bench on Schillerpromenade and take turns to use a carefully grouped trio of bushes to relieve ourselves.

Has she always written? Oh yes, says Kirsten. She used to write before she could read – she’d dictate stories to her dad and he’d write them down and then she’d copy out the letters without understanding them. She found one recently, a story about Winnetou and – hmmm, another fictional Native American from a different source, whose name escapes me now. It was crossover fan fiction then, I point out. She smiles indulgently. And she kept a diary and always wanted to write, but never imagined it as a job. In East Germany, most authors were working people who wrote in the evenings, she says. But she does earn her living writing? Yes, and it works because she does so many different things that it all adds up. Impressive.

We’ve had two beers each but I’m tired and finding it hard to put my ideas into words. I keep starting sentences and then breaking off. I’m trying to formulate a thought about how people make money out of being creative. About people who work in advertising and make lots of money. Neither of us would like to work in advertising though. And either Kirsten’s mind is leaping about as erratically as mine is or I’m missing a chunk of the conversation, but the next thing I remember her talking about is the way comedy writers steal from Lesebühne writers, and from each other. The writers at the Lesebühnen would never steal from each other – they take pride in their own work so it’d be pointless to swipe someone else’s ideas.

Someone else's garden hut.
Someone else's garden hut.

© Katy Derbyshire

Kirsten is easy to get along with; she’s not one of those funny women who need to make a punchline every few seconds. And she seems perfectly relaxed in the company of a stranger. Maybe it helped that we dived in at the deep end with all that talk of genitalia at the beginning of the evening. She’s very down to earth – certainly there aren’t many other writers I can imagine weeing behind a bush with. It’s a school night for both of us, so we walk back to Herrmannplatz together, talking a bit more about our mothers, and being mothers, and setting a good example, and our memories of the times we experienced our parents drunk. I’m not going to write down the embarrassing things we saw our parents do. Kirsten arranged a babysitter especially for tonight, it turns out, and I’m really flattered. Now she wants a cheesy-crust pizza. I’ve never eaten a cheesy-crust pizza but tonight is not the night for anything more adventurous than sitting in someone else’s garden hut and urinating in public. It’s been fun.

Hangover?
Not directly, just that melancholy drop in adrenaline after an excellent night out.

Katy Derbyshire

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