If you’re anything like me….and since you’re reading my blog, you probably are….you are sitting on the edge of your metaphoric seat, anxiously scanning your favorite websites and waiting for the proverbial Shoe To Fall. I know I am. As my dear friend J and I would say, “The vectors aren’t good.” Sitting here on a Tuesday morning, the new virus is spreading with irrational hops around the globe, ice flows are melting, racism is rearing its ugly head in Germany again, and the Orange Menace seems less prepared than ever to deal with any of it. (Nice picture of the Taj, though. Like the color-coordinated tie and belt.)

Okay, so in cases like this, the Sages of the Ages are pretty clear. Set the horrors aside, find your inner peace, and try to do something positive for yourself and others if possible. My decision a couple weeks ago was to spend more time in Berlin’s museums, perhaps one of the most astonishing collections of culture available anywhere in the world. To that end, I bought a year pass to the State Museums, a group of 18 (one is currently closed) museums federally operated. I have promised myself I will visit at least one a month, and I will spend more time communing with Beauty. I suggest this for your consideration as well.

This past Sunday I headed off to to one of the more obscure cousins in the collection – the MEK, Museum Europaischer Kulturen, Museum of European Culture. It’s located in the suburb of Dahlem Dorf, one of the higher priced spreads in town, and nearby the Freie Univeristat. Here’s a shot of the rather imposing front entrance:

I’d been a bit wary of this museum because I was concerned it might be a thinly veiled effort to promote white christian culture at the expense of everything and everyone else. But I was pleasantly surprised. While not surprisingly a lot of the collection on view focused on German culture, there was a concerted effort to place the items in a pan-European and pan-cultural perspective. In the video introduction, I saw this poignant photograph of former Chancellor Willy Brandt at a holocaust memorial:

This moment, known as the Kniefall von Warshau, occurred on December 7, 1970 when Brandt attended the dedication of a monument in honor of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Apparently quite spontaneously, Brandt went to his knees and stayed their silently for about 30 seconds according to witnesses. Brandt was in Poland to formally acknowledge the borders that had resulted at the end of the Second World War, returning a good bit of real estate to Poland. It seems, however, this moment defined his trip, and perhaps much of his political career.

But in typical German style, I am learning, no moment stays too sober for too long. Nearby these thoughtful ideas hung a poster to “the Ideal European,” i.e.:

Well, at least if the Brits were responsible for cuisine, that’s not a huge loss…

I was impressed that the museum’s collection is currently organized around the idea of migration and cultural contact – a subtle but effect jab, IMHO, at some of the nationalism and xenophobia trying to raise their ugly heads. The exhibit made the point that people have always been moving about the globe in search of better lives, and that the European experience is just all the richer for it. The first item that greets the visitor was this lovely Venetian gondola, dating from around 1910:

Since the collection focuses on “artefacts of European everyday culture and human lived realities from the 18th century until today,” according to their website, I wasn’t surprised to see a lot of local costumes and pottery, much like a standard ethnographic exhibit. I’m only going to torture you with a couple things.

This outfit is gorgeous, for starters, but it also represents an element of European culture I hadn’t heard of before – the “Candlemas Runner,” a part of the Christian liturgical calendar and a harbinger of spring. Together with some other characters I had never heard of – the Kitchen Boys, the Kitchen Girls, the Slapstick Man, the Peep Show Man, the Pea Straw Bear and his Tamer, Horses and Soldiers -this guy walks around the village and “wakes up” spring with that bouquet/wand in his hand. (I seriously want me one of them coats.)

More Christianity here – a special photo for my dear friends Carol and Brad Dewey, a picture of a lovely Christmas nativity creche, this one from the Pulia region of Italy and made of paper mache in the early decades of the 20th century. I am particularly charmed by the expression on the face of the walleyed cow. As a walleye myself, I appreciate the artistic support.

Sadly, this is a small museum and before too long I had made the rounds of its six exhibition halls. I didn’t have enough steps to go home (I aim for at least 6500 each day), so I took myself off to the only place I knew I could walk on a cold rainy day without catching my death – the Mall of Berlin, oddly opened on this Sunday afternoon 13:00-19:00. (I say “oddly” because normally all retail establishments in Germany are closed on Sundays, a custom that takes a bit of getting used to as an American, but one I have come to appreciate with time.) So from sacred to profane, from the high church of Church to the low church of capitalism, off I went to get more exercise and a bit more contact with the world.

However, today the place was buzzing. Buzzing, I say! And I soon found out precisely why. The Mall was throwing a party, and we were all invited. In the atrium area, in addition to the piano player, there was….

a caricaturist, carefully reflecting young love….and perhaps more curiously…

…a small barbershop and shoe shine establishment. There was also, to the left of this shot, two massage chairs and a very long line of hopeful clients. What the heck? I asked the concierge, and he had no idea. Just a way to bring people into the mall, and to soften them up for some last-minute winter sales bargains. To that end, there was even…free champagne (and orange juice, for the non-imbibers). I said to myself, self I said, “Carpe diem.”

So this is my message to you today, dear readers. In these challenging, anxiety-provoking days and weeks, we must try, with ever fiber of our beings, to hang on to the good, the fun, the true, and the true loves. And even if seizing a day feels too long, in this time of tweets, selfies, and ever-breaking news, we can seize the hour, and seize the moment. Try to do that, and I will as well. Cheers, dears, and stay as strong as you can.