Sometimes I go to the Thoben Bakery near my house. Thoben Bakery is a mystery to me: it sells only flat rectangle cakes like “Streuselkuchen” and “Käsesahneschnitte.” The furniture and the walls are in the color red, which doesn’t succeed in making it a cosy place. But there is no radio playing at Thoben, which I like, and dogs are allowed to enter, which is nice for the dachshund Otto.
I mostly only drink coffee at Thoben. And I'm doing so when a fashionable woman enters the bakery. Fashionable people are rare in my neighbourhood Alt-Tempelhof. The woman talks in a familiar tone with the sales woman and calls her Lisa. Then she sits down next to me and starts writing on her laptop. “Do you have internet?” I ask. I find out her name is Lina Berlina and she's a fashion designer who moved from Indonesia to Berlin about 20 years ago. She lives around the corner of Thoben, just like me. Another woman with baby carriage joins us. They know each other. “We’re Thoben friends,” the woman with the baby says. I'm excited to be part of this new Thoben friendship.
Rarely people appreciate the charm of Alt-Tempelhof when visiting but W. does. Before, we used to meet at the café of the Ufa-Fabrik near the Tempelhofer Hafen but now we meet at Thoben. We both have Erdbeerschnitte. The strawberries are swimming in their red gelatine which makes it look quite arty.
Lina and I are sitting outside on the terrace of Thoben. At our table are sitting two elderly ladies. The population in Alt-Tempelhof is predominantly on the elderly side. They start quarrelling with a neighbouring table of elderly people about the wobbly table. I end the quarrel by taking a napkin and fixing it under the table's leg. Satisfied, the ladies start at their Bienenstich with whipped cream.
Lisa, the sales person at Thoben, is a woman of a few to no words. When I enter, she already starts making the coffee and skips asking me what I want. Since I know the price of a cup of coffee (it's 1.20), we could do the whole thing without exchanging a single word but I can't help to say thank you.
Instead of Thoben, I sometimes sit on a bench at the pond in the nearby park. My neighbour on the bench points out: "Der Tag hat sich viel schöner entwickelt als angenommen. [The day developed much nicer as expected.]