Author Archives: Kate Katharina

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About Kate Katharina

Kate Katharina wltm people with stories for literary fling and maybe more.

The Loo Roll That Wished He Wasn’t

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A few weeks ago, we ran out of toilet paper. I went to Lidl, hoping to find recycled paper that respected the reality of my sensitive rear. Most “second-hand” stuff is unfortunately scratchy. I wanted to buy about six rolls of soft, ethical loo paper. Unfortunately all that was left were packs of twelve. They came with a handy carrier handle, so I wandered home swinging my toilet paper beside me. When I got into the kitchen I realised that we were also out of “kitchen” paper. Rather than going out, I decided to ask some hard-hitting societal questions. Should tissue paper really be room specific? Where does it end? “Bedroom Paper?” “Sitting Room Paper?” “Utility Room Paper?” I decided to separate one of my loo roles from the pack and hang it up in the kitchen. Since my flatmate is rather a conventional type, I felt I owed him an explanation. I began writing a story on the toilet paper about a “loo roll that wished he wasn’t”. Now, we take it in turns to write the next chapter and we have too much respect for the narrative to tear a piece away.

Books in Berlin: “How do you meet men?”

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Image source: salon.com

He had fine bone structure and an English accent. I put him a little short of his 40th birthday.
He waved a pair of sunglasses from his pocket.
“I’m so sorry to be rude,” he said, putting them on and obscuring half of his face, “but the sun is blinding me.”
“Not at all.” I said.

He was an IT teacher, a former diving instructor and the partner of a Swiss diplomat. Now he was learning German at a language school. It was difficult. He was a science and maths person.

We talked about teaching and travelling. He had a boyish wonder about him, a kind of naivety. He was softly spoken. He was kind. He had seen me alone and sat down beside me.

A lady came up to us. “Rupert!” she said. “I was trying to call you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said.
He turned to me. “Apologies, I don’t know your name.”
“Kate.”
“Kate, this is Georgia,” he said.

Georgia was dark, attractive, with black curly hair. Later, she told us that she was 43.

She was intelligent, expressive, sharp. She watched people carefully as she spoke to them.

The conversation meandered.

And came to sperm donation.

“You know, there was a story in The Spiegel a while ago about a Dutch serial sperm donator,” said Rupert.

“I edited it,” I said.

“You did? How funny!” said Georgia.

The man in question had fathered eighty-two children and ten more were on their way.

He didn’t just deliver his sperm in a container. He catered for women who wanted to conceive the natural way. He visited them, they made him dinner and paid for his transport and then they went to it. There were good and bad experiences. But really, he just wanted to make them happy.

“He wasn’t a looker,” said Rupert, “but by the sounds of it, he was at least of average intelligence.”

“Ha!” said Georgia.

“I have so many beautiful, successful friends in their late thirties,” Rupert went on. “And they’re all single.”

“But where do you meet men?” asked Georgia. “I mean… I’ve been with my husband for twenty years so it’s been a while since I’ve dated, but isn’t it hard to meet people?”

She turned to me.

“What’s your situation? I mean, are you single?”

“No,” I said. “but for me it was very simple really. I met my boyfriend in the university library.”

“Yeah, that’s easy,” she said.

Then Rupert told us the story about how he had met his partner.

“I was a diving instructor in Crete. And I know what you’re thinking… She was not my student.”

She was on holiday with her girlfriends. But what she didn’t know was that this was a “singles holiday.” She had brought a pile of books to read, but her friends said there were more important matters to investigate.

She talked to Rupert, who was used to being flirted with. It came with the job of diving instructor.

But she made him nervous.

“That’s how I knew,” he said.

They travelled around the island together. And now they move around the world, wherever her job takes her.

The story was winding to a close. Somebody started tapping on a wine glass.

Books in Berlin

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A few months ago, I sent my story about The Mouse to an Irish editor, who told me very politely that it wasn’t right for his publication, but to try again. Though we’d never met, the same man then invited me to a book launch in Berlin.

That launch was tonight. I had to write down the underground station and draw myself a little map so I could be sure to find it.

The book being launched was The Apartment, a novel by Greg Baxter, originally from Texas but who lived in Dublin for a few years before moving to Berlin. Baxter meant to come to Dublin as a stopover before settling in a beautiful European city but somehow he got attached to a mortgage in a ghost estate in north Dublin. It was awful, so he decided he would invent the most exciting city in the world, and live there in his head instead.

The road I was looking for was on a hill. I passed by old, tall buildings and some grotty newsagents selling strange things, like university hoodies and stickers. The area had a feel I can’t describe: it was a little short of pretty, somewhat incomplete. The evening air was warm and sweet.

When I found the address, I wondered at it. Here was a brand new apartment complex on a dusty street with names and buzzers on the door outside.

The fancy cafe next door was attached to the apartment block. I wandered in and a German lady said “we need to put posters up. Nobody is going to find this place.”

She led me to a lift, and told me to ring the bell when I got to the fourth floor.

When I got out I was facing a large white door. I rang the bell and the door swung open.

I found myself in an enormous, mostly empty penthouse with a huge balcony that stretched far across a courtyard. When I came in, a bubbly English woman, who I found out later was a bookseller, said, “Red or White?”

I took my glass of (red) wine to the balcony, where a little cluster of literary figures was chatting in a corner. “I’m a writer” I heard one say, as the other talked about his agent.

I sat bolt upright on a wickerwork garden chair and dug my nails into the rim of my glass.

I could see myself grinning in the reflection on the side of the balcony.

Red evening sunlight cast beams against the walls. I wore a sleeveless dress. As the guests began to file in, I noticed I was among literary agents, diplomats and a few of Baxter’s neighbours.

I could hardly have been more out of place. This wasn’t quite like the times LSB and I turned up uninvited to the book launches advertised in the window of Dubray books on Grafton street. Here I was, alone in unusual surroundings and among distinguished people and all I could do was hold on to my wickerwork chair, smiling perversely.

I wondered who, if any, among the guests was the publisher I had corresponded with.

A moment later, a man sat down beside me.

Greg Baxter, author of The Apartment image source: the Guardian

Asparagus Fest!

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Asparagus Fest!

I can’t go anywhere in Berlin without meeting a bundle of asparagus. It’s “Spagel” season, and locals are going to town with asparagus recipes.. and festivals.. and newspaper stories.

Three Ideas That Have Changed The Way I Think

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1. Creativity Is Not What You Think It Is

If you are struggling to think of what to say, or how to say it, or of what to bake or how to dress, you probably need to stop worrying about being “original.” One of my favourite realisations last year was that stealing is okay, and that without it, there’d be no such thing as the “creative process.” I used to think “original” meant “never been done before.” Now I know it means “never been done in this way before.”

Austin Kleon, a young artist whom I have written about before, couldn’t think of anything to put into a short story. He sat in his home in Texas, dreaming of being an artist but his mind felt like blocked toilet. Then he took a copy of the New York Times, and with a marker, started to blot out the words he didn’t like. Before he knew it, he was choosing the words he blotted out very carefully. He had become a poet, and now his books “Newspaper Blackout” and “Steal Like An Artist” are bouncing off the bookshelves.

2. Encouragement Is A Gift

My mama is magic in a lot of ways. But one of her special powers is in her capacity to encourage. When I was young and scared she held me in her arms and said “Ich kann es und ich will es auch.” (I can do it and I want to do it too). So I learnt to swim and climb and jump and to take nearly everything that people told me with a pinch of salt. Encouragement works like a magic powder added to water. The second you release it, it moves through you, opening up, spreading out like a flower burst from a bud. It can change your life. And usually it’s only a few carefully-chosen words or a little smile away.

3. Too Many Choices Is A Bad Thing

What will I buy? What shall I wear? Who will I marry? Where will I go? What should I become? What should I write my novel about? We’re overwhelmed! Freedom is precious and good but too much choice can stifle us. Here is Barry Schwartz explaining it all:

What ideas have changed the way you think?

Eye Candy

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A few days ago I found a note from DHL in the letterbox. It said that a package had been left for me in the shoe shop next door. I had to wait until Saturday to pick it up as the store closed before I finished work. The package was from LSB. I think you’ll agree that it was worth the wait?

The Graveyard

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My parents brought me running shoes when they visited me at Easter. Yesterday I tried them out. The day was mild and dewy.

I was looking for a park, but instead I ran into a graveyard.

Inside it was still; the birds were singing. Daffodils peeked out from under little heaps of earth. Leaves rustled. A red squirrel skirted past me.

Plastic pots and watering cans lay in a pile of withered flowers.

I passed some buried children; tiny mounds, close together. Words and prayers and a teddy bear.

A woman pushed her bicycle past the graves. The wheels crunched against the gravel.

Further on, I found enormous iron casts from the 1900’s. Whole families were resting there: soldier sons, an 18-year-old girl ripped away from her widowed mother. A family’s heartbreak documented into thick stone slabs. Always the same word: Unvergessen; “unforgotten.”

Then from the trees, slowly a withered old man pushed his Zimmerframe and got down on his knees to tend to a grave.

I watched his tiny frame crouched over a tombstone and his wrinkled hands shovelling the earth in little scoops.

My tears fell like unexpected rain. I was ashamed.

I turned and ran away, past the graveyard shop where they were selling over-priced potted plants, past the red-brick church on the roadside, past the cinema and grotty record store, past the kebab stand.

In the park, dogs bounded through the woodland, toddlers dipped their hands into the water fountain and families played catch. And the birds sang.

Can you remember the last time you got lost?

The Stress Test

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Katekatharina stressed (I couldn't open my tin of tomatoes.. I'd been trying for weeks)

I was walking down Kudam, west Berlin’s main shopping street, yesterday when a man with bulging eyes stopped me in my tracks. He smiled sweetly.

“Would you like to take a stress test?” he asked.

“Yes please!” I replied.

He was delighted.

“What’s your name?”

“Kate.”

“And where are you from, Kate?”

“Ireland.”

“Ireland?”

“Yes.”

“Do you speak English?”

“Yes, but German too of course.”

He laughed. “Oh yes, of course!”

A moment of awkwardness passed as he peered at me.

“Let me introduce you to my colleague,” he said.

“Oh, sure.”

“Em, kkKarl,” he called nervously to his superior. “This is Kate.”

Karl, an older man with a harder face but equally penetrative eyes turned to me.

“Hello,” he said and shook my hand.

“Hello.”

“Take a seat.”

“Thank you.”

“First of all, look at these metal rods I am holding,” said Karl.

They looked like dumbells.

“Obviously they are not going to give you an electric shock,” he said. “Look, here I am holding them and nothing is happening.”

“Yes,” I said.

He handed me the rods and I clutched them with all my might.

“I am going to ask you a question, Kate.”

“Okay.”

“The energy from your body will flow into this machine.”

“Right.”

“Think of somebody in your life.”

The counter hovered around zero.

He waited.

Finally he said, “who were you thinking of?”

“My mum.”

“What kind of a relationship do you have with her?”

“It’s good.”

“Do you ever have differences of opinion?”

“Oh, sure. But nothing big”

“But there are sometimes disagreements?”

“Yes.”

He paused a while and then said “What do you do professionally?”

“I’m an intern.”

“In what capacity?”

“I’m working as a journalist.”

His mouth flickered unpleasantly.

But he said, “I want you to think about your job.”

“Okay.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

“Are there ever stressful moments in your workplace?”

“Yes.”

The scales budged a little.

“Do you see that? This is the negative energy floating from your body.”

“Ah, yes.”

He paused.

“Would you like to know how to eliminate negative energy from your life?”

“Perhaps.”

“Would you like to buy a book which will change your life for the better?”

He whipped out a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

“No thank you. I think I’d like to find out a little more before committing to a purchase.”

He handed me a plastic booklet outlining the main tenets of the Church of Scientology. I skimmed it and thanked him without committment..

He snatched it back and flashed me a murderous glance. I continued down Kudam.

Three Women That Don’t Know They’re In My Life

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1. The Prostitute

She has white-blonde hair and long, thin legs. She stands by the red-brick buildings of Hackesher Markt. She wears white leather hot pants, tan coloured tights and furry white snow boots. Her cleavage is pushed up by a skin-tight leather jacket, which she keeps half unzipped. She has red lips and cool, blue eyes. Last Saturday night, it snowed in Berlin. She watched a group of Italian men walk up the street. She stood in their way and smiled, casting her eyes up and down their bodies. First they were uncomfortable, then aroused. She put her arms around one and pushed her body towards his. She pressed her breasts to his chest. All the time, she took sidelong glances at his friends. The snowflakes were sticking to her hair. She was cold.

Berlin's Affluent Red Light District

2. The Girl at the Bakery

She sells sour dough bread and pastries at a bakery at an underground station and her red uniform includes a crumpled tie. She has an old-fashioned kind of face, which refuses to be offset by her hoopy silver earrings, lip piercing and the two thick black scrunchies, which hold back her wavy hair. When she serves customers, she is upbeat. There is something naive in her face which I am drawn to. I think she would flair up at injustice and I think that she is happy in her job. Once when I was eating a Nussecke and sipping on a latté at the bakery, I saw her chat quietly to a colleague. The tone was conspiratorial. It surprised me.

3. The “Tickets Please?” Girl

She could be a child but she is not. She is small and has big brown eyes and dark curly hair. She lives at the entrance to my underground station with homeless men and their giant dogs. Her voice rings in my ears. She says the same thing every day. “Tickets please?”. (Fahrscheine bitte?”). She says it like she is a bored train conductor, but really she is a bored homeless person collecting tickets to sell on. She’s not on drugs because her eyes, while large and droopy are alert. She wears puffy clothes from the 80s and she works much harder collecting tickets than her male friends.

The One-Meter Bar Of Chocolate and Katekatharina’s Mega Easter Competition

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A few weeks ago I met an important man in his office on Unter Den Linden.

LSB dives into the chocolate Reichstag

The same evening, the new German president Joachim Gauck was being sworn in. The surrounding area was awash with media types clutching furry microphones, adjusting broadcast platforms, parking vans.

I didn’t know the man I was meeting. He was a Spiegel-employee friend of my boss and I was doing him a favour. He was planning a holiday in Ireland and was overwhelmed by the detailed itinerary his travel companion had compiled weeks in advance. He wanted me to amend it.

He made me a latté and we sat down and poured over the meticulous plan.

“You won’t manage all that,” I said. “Not if you want to sleep.”

For the next few hours we teased out the relative merits of Longford and Louth, Killarney and Kilkeel.

“You can give Derry a miss,” I said finally. “Just go to the Giant’s Causeway instead.”

“Is it Derry or Londonderry?” he wondered.

“Oh, that depends on with what foot you dig,” I said.

Joachim Guauck was being sworn in on the television in the background.

“I’m sorry for keeping you so long,” he said as I was making a leave. “Do you drink wine?”

“Yes I do.”

I have a very expensive bottle here.”

“Oh?”

“Alternatively, do you like chocolate?”

“Oh yes, very much so.”

“Well then I have just the right thing for you.”

Out of nowhere he pulled out a metre long stick of Rittersport chcocolate.

“For you!” he beamed, wielding it at me. “As a thank you.”

Loyal readers will know how much of a chocolate advocate I am, but even I was stunned at the scale of my killing. If you are sceptical, examine the chocolate in relation to the medium-sized cat.

Last Saturday, LSB and I went on a chocolate tour of Berlin. We started off at Fassbender and Hausch, where we could afford a single truffle each.

Then we went around the corner to the Rittersport museum and shop. We learnt about the cocoa been, and about Klara Ritter, who invented Ritter Sport because she wanted football supporters to be able to fit a 100 gram bar of chocolate into their pocket when they went to matches.

Choco stack

Then we decided to design our very own bar of chocolate. We chose three fillings from a possible 27. We tasted the chocolate the next day. It was heavenly.

If you become a fan of the katekatharina facebook page, and correctly guess two of the three flavours we picked, I will have a bar of Rittersport personally designed for you and post it to you, wherever in the world you may be. If you can get ten friends to become fans of the page, I will design a chocolate bar for you too.

Entries must be received by midnight Easter Sunday. Just leave a comment on the page with your suggestion. One entry per person. Check out the page for clues until then.

Me at the chocolate Reichstag