I have never been someone to get very involved in April Fool’s Day. It barely crosses my mind as a special day in the calendar year, let alone a day that I should be on the lookout for deceit and trickery. At about 630 in the evening, my flatmate texted me saying “Hey I’m just at home with the police, someone broke in…” I froze immediately. There are few things worse than hearing about a break-in. Not only does it mean that anything of value is likely gone, you also lose a sense of security that you previously had in your home. We were planning to meet at the cinema to see The Grand Budapest Hotel that night, so he said he would explain when he saw me. I was shocked that he even wanted to go to the movie anymore, I mean I was feeling rather shaken up, but he said there was nothing we could do and we might as well still go out. A positive attitude, I thought. After having a moment of thought, I asked him to check my bedside drawer for my passport. I had assumed (without asking) that my laptop and camera were gone (the only things I deemed valuable in my room), but I wanted to be sure that I didn’t have to go through the headache of dealing with a stolen passport. He said he would call me in a minute.
When my phone rang, I went into my office meeting room for some privacy and he told me calmly that my passport was still there, but all our computers, cameras, TV were gone. He said our door was completely effed and the lock had been broken. He was working with the people downstairs to get it fixed. I was pacing the meeting room in shock. Finally, after about 5 minutes of conversation he starts laughing and through his laughs I hear “April Fool’s”. I wasn’t even registering the information and had to ask several times “Wait…so we didn’t get robbed? Everything is still there?” Everything was fine. To be honest, I wasn’t even mad. The relief I felt in hearing that everything was fine overshadowed any possible anger I could have felt. Later when I met Albe and Daniela, they told me about the other tricks they had been playing all day. I sort of wish I had gotten more involved in April Fool’s watching their joy as they reminisced on each one. I think April Fool’s is hardwired into some people, Daniela kept trying to tell me that the movie would be in German as we watched the (German) previews, but at this point she couldn’t get me (although in my head, I was thinking “Please don’t be in German”). Fortunately for me, it was all in English. The movie was great by the way, I would definitely recommend it to anyone. Wes Anderson is always great, but I found this movie to be particularly good, and it’s only 90 minutes, which is normal for him, but in general, such a relief given how many movies span 3 hours these days.
I hope no one suffered this April Fool’s, I am certainly happy that it is over, and I made it out relatively unscathed – I still feel a sense to hide my laptop when I leave the house, and double lock the front door.
Berlin 