I was supposed to meet up with a young man in Mauer Park whom I had met previously in a small wild oasis in northern Berlin. After waiting some 15 minutes at the park entrance someone else I had never met before showed up. He was interested in my green Raleigh bicycle and started asking me some questions about it.

A Fool Meets a Samaritan

His name is Reiner, and after some conversation and half an hour of futile waiting and texting to the other guy, I accepted the invitation to go with Reiner to his apartment in the Berlin borough of Wedding, which has since provided the backdrop for many a philosophical conversation. In particular, the air of his living room has been filled with our grievances over contemporary society in general, the environmental destruction we bring about by our reckless pursuit of endless and unsustainable economic growth, and not least the problem of people being forced to do work they despise.

Since this summer, we have, now and then, been talking about me writing this article, half jokingly from my side, since the theme presented here does not relate directly to the blog´s main themes of travelling by bike and wild food gathering. In a more subtle way, however, the themes of the two archetypes, the fool and the samaritan seem to me very apt for explaining some perspectives on life and ways to relate to each other that are crucial for for dreams to come true, and for projects to be sustainable, and – from a wider perspective – necessary to bring about a socially, environmentally and economically sustainable society.

The fool is an archetype from the tarot system utilized here simply as a behavioral archetype without the tarot system´s esoteric implications. This character denotes beginnings, innocence, spontaneity, a free spirit. On the Fool Tarot card the fool is presented as a young man, standing on the edge of a cliff, gazing upwards towards the sky, and forwards to new adventures, without a care in the world, and seemingly unaware that he is about to skip off a precipice into the unknown.

This kind of “foolishness”, I think, is crucial for overcoming any barriers of entrenched cultural practices, in order to bring humanity forward to the realization of the “impossible” scenarios of better futures, as they seem to always be considered by the “commonsensical” among us, (the proponents of conventional perspectives and status quo). Eventually, maintaining status quo is ecologically, (physically), impossible, wherefore the “social impossibilities´” of alternative ideas is the only realistic way forward. (Read some of Herman E. Daly´s articles and books for the best and most thorough argument and alternative system thinking). We can, after all, change our ways, but not the laws of nature and the finiteness of Earth´s resources.

The samaritan as an archetype doesn´t need much explanation. Here it refers to the unselfishness advocated in the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke chapter 10 of the New Teastament. Again, I use it loosely here to characterize the embodiment of unselfish acts by any of us, when we choose to do something for others in need simply because doing so is a valuable end in itself regardless of potential consequences for ourselves.

Neither the fool nor the samaritan refer to any one person but to anyone who make the one or the other archetype come to life through specific activities. Letting me, (a stranger to begin with), stay overnight in his apartment, Reiner played the part of the samaritan, by easing the strain to my budget from finding accommodation at Berlin´s hostels.

The Wild Cherry

Another type of accommodation I have explored during the summer of 2018 in Berlin, is camping in the city´s parks. Since letting a tent with belongings stay unattended is surely not the best way to make sure to keep one´s belongings, I wanted to find somewhere, (at least somewhat), secluded. It was the beginning of August, I had left Grunewald and had been suggested to stay in Treptower park. There I woke up one morning being met by a dark-haired guy the moment I stuck my head out the tent. He was naked, which by now should come as no surprise to me considering my experiences in Grunewald.

He was not shy. Pedro was his name. He asked me, if I had stayed there in the tent overnight? “Yes”. “Have you?” I returned the question. “No” I followed up with: “So, what are your plans here?” “To have fun.” He replied. “Do you like men?” “Not in a sexual way”. “That´s a pity.” “So what made you come here to Berlin, Pedro?” He told me, he had come to Berlin from Portugal because of his German girlfriend, and that she not only knew, but was totally fine with his pursuit of adventures with other men in Berlin´s parks.

In the morning the day before, two girls had been doing their fitness routine close to my tent. When I had asked to join them, they had told me they were busy and had to get to work soon. And now, though Pedro was friendly, waking up with him having a nude picnic just next to my tent I realized this was not the kind of secluded accommodation I had been seeking. So I asked him, if he knew of another, more isolated, place. “Yes, Plänterwald,” he told me, “just a few hundred meters down the road.”

The tree I had been sleeping under had one cherry left hanging from a branch. I ate it and soon left for the few hundred meters journey to Plänterwald, and , thanks to Pedro, found a place where I could stay alone at night as well as conceal my tent during the day. Now I wouldn´t have to carry my belongings with me all day long, or expose them to marauders, freebooters, and other needy people lurking around the bushes.

The Acorn Miracle

By October I had stopped living among trees, bushes and acorns, and had been told by park attendants to leave Plänterwald only once during my stay there. A time of hostel living had begun as the city park camping life had ended. For me.

I was sitting in the living room of a hostel in Kreuzberg, as this young guy, George, whom I had never met before, started asking me questions about the reception´s opening hours and available accommodation at this or some other hostel. After a while, his search for available rooms at Berlin´s hostels had all turned out unsuccesfully, and he had to realize that he had nowhere to sleep for the night. I suggested he contacted Reiner, but he couldn´t reach him.

Later in the afternoon I had gone foraging in Diedersdorfer Heide, south of Berlin, and had exchanged contact info with George. I had agreed to meet him outside of Plänterwald in the evening. Going into the dark park area, George was sceptical. “Was there wild animals?” I told him one could hear birds, and, if lucky, see a squirrel. Plänterwald is just too far into the city for the wild pigs to go there. Most dangerous of all in Plänterwald would probably be the acorns falling down a few meters from the treetops now and then. I think the death-by-acorn-falling-on-your-head mortality rate is zero, and, anyway, I had been hit by none of them. Ok, George overcame his doubt about the place, and we went into the darkness, only lit up by the flashlight in my hand. I pulled apart the “makeshift bush” I had made by putting some twigs, branches, leaves and grass together, opened the bag concealed there, and pulled out the tent and sleeping bag.

Asking him next day, how he had slept, he told me it had been perfectly fine, he had been able to calm down and it had turned out to be beyond his expectations. It was kind of a miracle, he told me. To not have been hit by the acorns? I thought. One pullover, two jackets and the sleeping bag had made it kind of warm. The only thing that had actually bothered him was….. (the sound of?) the acorns.

The Samaritan´s Day Off

One morning, as I was going for a foraging trip, the load on my bicycle had begun to come undone. I had taken the bike to a place close to Berlin´s Central Station, in order not to leave it too close to bicycle thieves at the station, as I wanted to take the train and then do a foraging walk in Speewald, my destination. Standing there, with the ropes and bags, sleeping bag and tent unfastened, I decided it would be too much trouble to fasten them to go some 100 meters, then chain the bicycle up and unfasten the bags again. So I left my bags on the ground and went those 100 meters to the place where I chained up the bicycle.

Coming back to the place, where I had left the bags, they were gone. Since I had been gone for only a couple of minutes, whoever had taken the bags would not be far away. I started looking around the place. There was a homeless guy sleeping under a tree a few meters away. Or was he pretending? Had he taken my stuff? I realized my thoughts had started to betray my stoicist aspirations towards emotional resilience to such minor misfortunes. In plain words, I was angry. But no, he was actually sleeping. Innocent. Then I spotted an area with trees and a lot of trash, and a freestanding wall fencing off the area. A few steps would take me through the trash and to the corner of the wall, and just around the corner would be another plot of land concealed from where I stood. Based on the trash littering the ground and the absence of a regular pathway, this was not an area where people would normally go. However, again based on the trash, some people must go there. I wondered what was concealed by the wall behind the trees and the trash.

Having turned the corner I found myself on some abandoned ground. I walked some 15 meters and was met by a man, who told me I should not go any further. Behind him stood some five makeshift tents, clearly a self-made refugee camp made up of a few tents dotted along this other part of the freestanding wall. I soon spotted my bags at one of the tent openings, and therefore went forward despite the man´s appeal to the opposite. I was not willing to spend neither the money nor the time to buy new equipment for myself, so I had to retrieve my bags from their camp. I put on as friendly an expression as I could, as I told him I would just go and get my own things back and then leave. There was no problem, I assured him, I would just go get my things. The man stood and watched at one tent, as I walked over to the tent where my bags were stood and then picked them up. Sensing I was not hostile, a group of young boys soon gathered around me. One of them explained to me that the things had just stood there on the ground. It only seemed reasonable that they could take them. Ok, then. I answered him that I understood, I would have done the same in their situation. But as they started to ask me for some money, I had to refuse, feeling that would be to condone the act of taking my things, though, probably, this incident is far too unique to be of any significance as some kind of precedent. I then left the place.

A Fool in the Woods

As I hope is made clear from this blog´s previous article Fall For Foraging, I have been eager to show that foraging is not an activity only for the spring and summer seasons. And during late October I started feeling that the hostel life – which now shielded me from the cold and rain that had been absent for a long hot summer lasting until late September – was now keeping me too much away from the wild food. Also, returning to wild camping would ease the strain on my budget.

So I started planning for a late autumn camping trip. I found useful pieces of advice on how to stay warm while camping in cold weather, especially from the blog bergreif.de, (a german wild camping blog), planned my itinerary, and started to prepare myself for an entire late autumn month of wild camping.

On the 3/11 I left Berlin and slept the first night in Diedersdorfer Heide in Brandenburg just outside of Berlin. The following day I came to realize how much of a dog walking place this is, and how little dogs appreciate the presence of brightly colored objects from which the scent of human can be detected. In any case I wanted to pack my tent and bags and continue my journey southwards.

A couple of days later, in the late afternoon shortly before sunset, I had arrived in Spreewald about some 100km south of Berlin. I knew Spreewald already, but going there by bike instead of by train I now explored new areas of this huge nature reserve. I have to be a bit vague about the precise itinerary here, but, as I rode my bike along the road, I came to a dirt road with no signposts. Believing that nature´s wild food gems are often hidden away where most people wouldn´t go, I chose to not follow the signpost towards my planned destination, Lübbenau, but to take the anonymous dirt road instead.

Did this idea pay off? Well, if reaching a huge meadow strewn with an abundance of the biggest mushrooms, this meadow seemed like a mushroom forager´s heaven. But what kind of mushrooms were these?

I spent one night sleeping on the meadow. One elderly couple passing by on the dirt road by bike were the only people I saw the following day. In terms of securing ones belongings, however, it takes only one person to go to your tent and rid you of everything you have brought with you, so I moved the tent a few hundred meters into the red pine forest next to the meadow. Just outside this forest, and inside it, a rich microcosmos of mushroom biodiversity revealed itself.

I was consumed by this fungal universe so entirely that I ended up staying on the spot for a full week, alternating between field observations, online mushroom and other wild food research and lighting the fire under the Trangia cooking gear I had brought, cooking up rowan- and blackthorn berry jams, a Brussels sprout dish, fried bananas and sauteed mushrooms from the red pine forest ground among other dishes. It was a week-long treat for my eyes: indulging in the sight of the dew strewn meadow mornings, the trees strewn with autumn-colored leaves and the fascinating abundance of sprouting fungi; and for my taste buds: indulging in the jams, sautés, boiled nutrient bombs and spicy fried fruit; for my sense of smell- taking in the aroma of fungus, pine needles, soil and vegetables and fruits; for my skin and lungs: sensing the cool, moist air; and for my ears too: transmitting messages to my brain of meditative relaxation in the form of the soft tweeting and singing of the birds in the pine tree canopies. A complete symphony for all senses.

Apart from the birds in the treetops, there were no animals to be seen. Was I alone then? I truly didn´t feel so. I was, after all, surrounded by all these mushrooms!!! Well, and on the last day someone approached me. Between the red pines ran a hardly noticeable track. And – as I was cooking some jam – a car drove along the track and stopped at the point closest to my camp. Here was clearly someone who wanted to get in contact with me, and – wanting to avoid trouble due to the alcohol-fueled stove, which I thought might be against some forest regulations, even though the humidity of the area was around 95% – I decided to approach whoever had stopped the car so close to my camp and now stepped out of it to also approach me.

I was met by a hand stretched out to greet me and a smile and a generally friendly appearance. The man told me he was the owner of this land, and asked me if everything was ok, what I was doing here, and for how long, and whether I was also cooking? To the question when I would leave again, (I was not being told to leave), I told him I would on that very day, which I had wanted to anyway. The man also told me he was the owner of a pension in the nearby town. He gathered a trunk full of the mushrooms on the meadow. “Which ones?” Parasol mushrooms. Then he drove away.

Leaving Spreewald I went south and explored another UNESCO designated biosphere reserve by the name Oberlausitzer Heide- und Teichlandshaft, and went on from there to the beautiful town Görlitz, so close to the Polish border that throughout the day I received a continuous stream of text messages to my smart phone alternating between welcoming me to Poland and Germany.

The Samaritan returns…

What is the human value of sharing? I think we can easily fail to appreciate the significance of sharing beyond the sheer material value gained, when receiving something shared. Not least in a city like Berlin, where theft is rampant. Clinging to one´s belongings can easily seem the most reasonable response. But I think we miss out on social cohesiveness, our sense of belonging together, if we don´t share.

First, of course, the receiver of something benefits from acts of sharing. Sometimes this receiver is yourself, sometimes somebody else. But in each and every case, obviously, there has to be someone who does the sharing. More profoundly though, beyond the transfer of some good or object, sharing can bring us together. Acts of sharing have great bonding potential, not least in the case of sharing food, which can be both made and eaten together, enabling us not only to share, but also to engage in an activity together. On top of that, if the food being shared is wild food, the most obvious, interesting topic for the dinner conversation is hard to miss.

Even from an egoistical perspective sharing can be of great significance. Don´t we benefit psychologically from acts of sharing, doesn´t it make us feel better? Doesn´t it also improve our likability and standing among others? And doesn´t it increase the chances of us being on the receiving end some other time because of the sympathy people feel for someone generous?

Beyond the questions of egoism and altruism, sharing can be a culture cultivated to make sure that everybody has his or her needs covered, and that strengthens the bond, not only between someone sharing and a receiver, but by means of individuals bonding in communities build on sharing as a core value. This kind of community, and the culture of sharing more generally, is widespread in Berlin, just like theft and crime. I have seen the non-profit organization Berliner Tafel in action, handing out food to locals in need in the church Passionskirche in Kreuzberg´s Bergmannkiez. Another example can be found right next to the hostel where I stay in Friedrichshain, a so-called schenkladen, a non-profit place, where various items, such as books, clothes, cookware, etc. can be handed in and then taken by someone else. No monetary transactions take place, and as many as five items can be taken for free by anyone going to the place managed by unpaid volunteers and financed by donations.

…Around Christmas

Its December, and I have found myself a Berliner hostel family and a hostel kitchen in which to play around with wild and cultivated ingredients alike in hostel Schlafmeile in Friedrichshain. In the hostel´s kitchen we, the Schlafmeile family, also share the meals we cook from time to time, or put food stuff on the shared kitchen shelf. And one guy likes to bring bread that bakeries often leave outside their shops after opening hours.

In order to make sure I keep myself completely free from grudges, I thought why not give something to someone who has taken something from me? I will never find the people who stole my bicycle this autumn, or the people who have taken food from my bags, while I was distracted by the hustle and bustle of a train station or a busy street. But what about the refugees in their makeshift camp near Berlin´s central train station? Feeling the Christmas spirit spreading, I wanted to hand them my homemade bread and therefore went back to the place of their camp. However, the then abandoned place had now begun to take the form of a construction site, and the camp was no longer there. Hopefully, they are now staying under an actual roof surrounded by real walls.

Instead of the refugees now no longer residing close to the central train station, a homeless man staying on a busy street in the city center, Mitte, had some of my bread instead, and a woman in Friedrichshain refused the offer. Also on earlier occasions have I had the pleasure of handing out some food or warm coffee and having a conversation with some of Berlin´s homeless people.

I wish for more solidarity and for better connections between us all and with nature. Less TV. More and better connections between us, and more active life and better connection to the nature, (edible or not) from which we are becoming increasingly disconnected. Merry Christmas.