The night was sleep-deprived and the morning tired, Red Square freezing cold and Lenin not to be visited today. In restaurants that looked like living rooms, a Berlin feel only different. Big city in the snow with smoking chimneys in front of azure sky, whose color was dull. Gianni lost his gloves. We shared, sometimes he carried my right and I my left, then vice versa. We ran after a timetable that could have been a completely different one and in the evening we made reservations at a restaurant made in Soviet style. Cats on cabinet walls stroked around picture frames and flower pots in time with the 50s television program. On the windowsill a goldfish in a jar. Mixed-pickles salad and beet with herring and a bottle of wine to celebrate – for the equivalent of 50 euros, the cheapest bottle in the restaurant. We got drunk and that was pleasant, told each other why we had chosen each other and drank until the bottle was empty and then it was clear we had to slowly get on the road. This was also a good idea in that we both wanted to smoke badly. One box in one evening and then it was empty and we bought a Russian stamp at a kiosk and walked on, knowing only roughly where to go. The path, a snow-covered green strip between two streets, illuminated in the darkness with all kinds of red-green-blue-yellow Christmas creatures. For us Central and Southern Europeans, the magic had long since faded in January, here it took hold and we took a photo, for whatnot, in case it became an Eastern, Central and Southern European child: your batty parents, just before.