Frankly … social  2023: A Tentative First-Quarter Assessment

What are the lingering after-effects of the three pandemic years on everyday life in Germany in the first quarter of 2023 and what lies ahead? Maximilian Buddenbohm takes a look around town.

With the first quarter of the year already behind us, we might take a moment to ask what 2023 has been like so far. Does it already have a distinctive character, any defining elements? The has grown up a bit by now, so we ought to be able to gradually make out where it’s heading.

Around here, it’s the first time since 2020 that the first quarter of the year wasn’t blatantly and devastatingly marked by disasters and historically exceptional circumstances. By which I don’t mean there aren’t any: we still read the news and we all know about the current disasters. But for many of us around here, the largest-looming feature of everyday life is not the pandemic anymore, or the war, not the climate or even inflation. Unless you’ve just come down with a Covid infection (again), disasters have receded into the distance. Then again, if you happen to be taking care of Ukrainian refugees, as one of my sons was during a recent practical at a day-care centre, that’s bound to remind you of all the things going on out there in the world. No, the disasters aren’t far away, but for the time being, everyday life and routines are uppermost on many – maybe even most – of our minds.

So what’s it like now that things are back to normal, or now that most of us are at least acting as though things were pretty normal and mundane out there as well as here in our families, at home and at work?
Well, things are not the way they were, that’s for sure.

No post-pandemic euphoria

It seems to me as though the general underlying scepticism that set in during the first summer of Covid, if memory serves, has stayed with us collectively. And it makes sense now. We can’t find our way back to the old mindset and the old self-assurance, there’s hardly any sign of post-pandemic euphoria. Maybe we can’t even clearly make out whether we’re moving forwards or getting anywhere at all. We carry on, going about our daily lives, but rather cautiously, hesitantly, guardedly. We have modest expectations and prefer to go slowly. We read the news, shake our heads and don’t rightly know what lies ahead. “Who knows what’s next” has become a stock phrase, a commonplace of everyday small talk.

The government’s policy is as tentative as we are – and so is the weather. Spring is coming slowly this year. All these rainy days are dampening our delight about the (all-too-slowly) rising temperatures, and the blue skies are reserved for summer – they’ll be coming our way later on. At least we hope so.

It’s pretty hard going, though not catastrophic, and we’re hanging on till we come up with a new direction. So, now that we’ve got our everyday lives back, what do we do whilst waiting for whatever may come?

We must get together sometime

People are going out these days in a big way. Even if they’re low on funds, they cut down on other expenses instead. Even if consumer confidence and purchasing power have plummeted in recent months, the bars and restaurants are visibly packed. People clearly still have enormous pent-up demand and going out is important to them. In some restaurants, a pizza now costs five or six euros more than before the three pandemic years, the wine has become prohibitively expensive too, and yet you still can’t get any pizza or wine without reserving ahead of time. In my part of town, which is considered a trendy neighbourhood, I can’t just step out for a meal anymore: I can’t get a table or even a seat anymore, everything’s taken, it’s so crowded wherever you go. It wasn’t like this before – not on this scale.

Some people are celebrating reunions. They try to figure out how long it’s been since they last saw each other: one year, two, three years? Unable to get their timelines straight, for it’s been too long, they end up settling for “sometime before all that”. The opener “So how’ve you been?” is followed by extended updates on work, family and health: who got Covid and how bad. That’s the way the conversation goes at quite a few tables and bars, you need only sit somewhere for a while and eavesdrop – which should be a compulsory exercise for chroniclers of all stripes anyway. It’s the same with me, by the way: I’m not even through with the reunions yet, there will be some more in April and no doubt in May, too. I get a call: “So you’re still around! We must get together sometime! Let’s do something together again!”

Rediscovering cinema and theatre

People are also going to the theatre again, to the cinema and clubs, concerts, even museums: they’re finally going out again, doing stuff. Society is up and running again. I go to a cinema that’s only been around for a few years, and almost all the moviegoers seated near me, the whole row, are saying, “We’ve never been here before!” But now we have, at long last, and it sure was time we did! This is a shared feeling, and after the show, in the general scramble to the exits, I hear people saying to each other, “Yes, let’s do that again sometime soon.”

I go to another cinema just a few days later. It’s one I used to frequent with the girlfriend I’m here with again tonight, and yet we can’t remember when we were last here and what we saw. We ransack our memories in vain. Things were different the last time we were here, it could have been another lifetime, at least that’s how it feels.

Afterwards I walk home from the cinema, it’s a half-hour walk across town. I go through a part of the city I haven’t been to in three years. I can’t believe how much has changed here, it’s full of new shops and restaurants, hardly anything is left from the old days. The city seems strangely unfamiliar to me. How much has happened over the past three years. I wonder if my own neighbourhood changed like this during the pandemic and I didn’t even notice because I saw it every day, just as you don’t notice your kids growing and changing. And then, all of a sudden, there they are, fully grown.

I finally go to the theatre again too. A woman sits down beside me, greets me politely and with an odd solemnity, then looks around. She looks at the stage, on which you can already see the scenery: looks promising, bound to be a good show, she nods contentedly. She looks out across the rows of seats in front of her and then behind her: the place is packed, a full house. She peruses the playbill on her lap, caressing it slightly as if it were a precious book. Then glances up at the elaborate lighting and the ceiling, beams at me and says, even before the play has started, “Heavens, this is beautiful!” And I understand what she means, I think so too. This is my first time at the theatre “since then”, and when we say “since then”, we all know that means since March 2020.

Needless to say, this is just my take on things, but I know it’s often close enough to mainstream sentiment for me to venture a tentative assessment: so far, 2023 has been a year in which we’re looking for occasional shared moments of beauty once again.

Worse things could be said about any year, I suppose. But I agree with the widespread scepticism and cautious hesitancy – for heaven’s sake, I sure don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched: who knows where we’ll be at the half-year mark. So it’s true: we remain cautiously optimistic, we’ll wait and see. Meantime, maybe we’ll check out what’s playing at the local theatres and cinemas again.

Or first we’ll go out for a drink – if, that is, we can get a table anywhere.
 

April 2023