Filter coffee today: slow as the clouds

I n slow motion, the morning clouds disappear behind the job center. The building looks like it is a model of a city with mirrored skyscrapers. That's why I call it the skyline of my neighborhood. The clouds move slowly, as if they were being blown out by an invisible mouth. The mild sun combines the feeling of the beginning of autumn with that of the beginning of spring.

Some even walk around in a T-shirt, but not me. Despite immune juice and vitamins, I, like all my friends at the moment, got sick. That's why I take sick leave at the Kindl Brewery practice and am happy that they are accepting new patients. Because from her window I can see my apartment. If a bridge were built right now, I could be there in thirty seconds.

Then I go to the café on my street and order filter coffee. The barista seems briefly unsettled. She says you can't make it extra hot like I always ask for cappuccinos. That's okay, I say and we laugh.

I drink the coffee in front of my front door, on the windowsill where I often sat when my knee was recently operated on. In the background I hear the voices of children across the street from the school, the noise of a construction site, the howling dogs of a new resident.

Then my neighbor comes out and we talk about rising operating costs and disappearing coal dealers - he has been ordering from the same one since 1986.

The public order office distributes tickets to parked cars. Some dogs smell each other while being walked, some beer bottles glisten in the hands of the beer drinkers who stagger past me.

Time flies. Like the clouds, I am lazy today. Like them, I move slowly. Even though I have a cold, I'm in no hurry to go back to bed.