Hamburg, 29.05.2025: Disappearing Rings and Licorice Shops

Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie concert hall, kleiner Saal

Yesterday (writing this on the 30th) was for the most part a rest day. My sore throat and cough continue, and since we knew we’d go in the evening to a concert at the Elbphilharmonie concert hall, we all thought it was best for me to rest. There were plans for W. and K.’s friends V. and V. to come for the midday meal, with W. and K. cooking the asparagus we had bought at the Winterhude market the day before. 

Instead, W. and K. decided to visit V. and V. and to bring asparagus there and make it to enjoy with V. and V. While that visit took place, I napped, read a bit, caught up on the news. Then Steve and I took a very enjoyable walk to the shopping center area of Wohltorf, the neighborhood in which W. and K. live. Along the streets in front gardens, lots of roses, all colors, some of them nicely fragrant. I snapped photos of these and made a little photo album of roses of Hamburg on the Ascension Thursday holiday. 

Almost everything was closed for the holiday, but in the Wohltorf shopping center, we found a bakery, Rohlfs, open and stepped in. I spotted Mandelhörnchen, which I like very much, so we bought four of these to have with W. and K. at a Kaffeepause. Then we walked through the little plaza on which the bakery is located and stopped at an ice shop, a small booth, really, in the plaza and had ice cream — hazelnut and sour cherry. Both were delicious, made, we thought, by the very friendly Italian man staffing the place. 

After that, we walked back to W. and K.’s apartment, with me snapping photos of shop signs and windows that caught my eye, including a Lakritzerie. A city that has a shop specially devoted to selling licorice is my kind of city.

W. and K. got home in the late afternoon and then W. cooked asparagus for the two of us. He served the boiled asparagus with a plate of ham slices, both raw and cooked, ham he had bought at the Winterhude market. In addition, there was a bowl of boiled potatoes. The meal was good and it was kind of them to come back and cook for us when they had already cooked and eaten with V. and V.

Then the concert: it was very good, but there were times when nothing I did could stop me coughing. I suppressed the cough — and these spells were very infrequent, only about two of them — but the man in the row below me, who was not a very nice man, we’d already concluded as we noticed him listening to us and turning his head to watch us, began to rock his head with violent disapproval. Then in a few minutes, he himself began coughing.

So at intermission, W. suggested that perhaps we leave. We thought that was a splendid idea. Home we headed, with W. spotting a young couple heading into the Elbphilharmonie to see the inside and offering them his and K.’s tickets so they could listen to the second half of the concert. Got back to the apartment, had cups of rooibos tea with Mandelhörnchen, and off to bed for a very long night’s sleep, from which I awakened feeling somewhat better.

P.S. Something that happened on the 26th that I forgot to record earlier, when I wrote that W. and K. went to dinner with friends that evening and invited us to rifle through the refrigerator and eat anything we found for an evening meal. We did just that after I’d had a quick shower. Steve came into the bathroom as I was finishing the shower and when I stepped out of the shower, handed me my ring, which I’d put on the edge of the sink.

I try to avoid getting water on the ring, since it’s turquoise, which is a bit absorbent and can crumble if it’s allowed to soak up water. I’m not sure what happened after Steve handed me my ring, whether I just held it in my hand or put it on my finger. I was distracted toweling off, putting pajamas on, etc.

From the bathroom, I walked to the kitchen and began rummaging in the refrigerator for things for us to eat. As I did that, I unfortunately tumped over a container of vanilla yoghurt that wasn’t sealed and spilled yoghurt on the floor. At this point, as Steve got paper towels to clean up the yoghurt, I noticed my ring was missing.

We began looking for it high and low. I had been only two places — bathroom and kitchen. It could have gone missing in no other parts of the apartment. We looked, scanned every nook and cranny of both rooms, crawled on the floor to find it. 

The ring remained maddeningly elusive. I decided to give up the chase and read a bit in our bedroom. As I did that, the thought occurred to me — M. Poirot and his little gray cells — that the logical place for the ring to have been lost was in the refrigerator. It was just after I was looking for things to eat there and spilled the yoghurt that I noticed the ring missing, after all.

We had both called ourselves already doing a thorough search of the refrigerator for the ring and hadn’t found it there. Both of us had had the thought that maybe it had somehow fallen into the yoghurt container and had fiddled with a spoon in the yoghurt: ring not there.

This time, however, when we went back to the refrigerator for another thorough search, Steve lifted up a package of sliced salami, and there the ring was. I had dropped it or somehow lost it as I looked for things to eat in the refrigerator. It was surprisingly cold when I put it back onto my finger at long last.