{"id":727,"date":"2016-02-02T17:48:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T16:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.algorithmics.is\/wordpress\/?p=727"},"modified":"2016-10-22T19:27:30","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T17:27:30","slug":"the-baker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.algorithmics.is\/wordpress\/en\/2016\/02\/02\/the-baker\/","title":{"rendered":"The baker"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"troll-imadeWEB-1\"<\/a><\/em><\/strong>Every morning, the men but also a few women used to philosophise on the bench, while people arriving at the East train station hurried to catch their bus and get to work or school on time.\u00a0\u00a0 The workplace of the men and women on the bench outside the East station was this bench.\u00a0 This was a good thing because they therefore saved the money for the fare to take a transport mode which in this country passes as public.<\/p>\n

In this country, we don\u2019t let a passenger board just because he promises the bus driver that a lady is waiting for him at his destination and she will pay his fare, even though he knows very well that no such lady is waiting.\u00a0 This was how a passenger, who was anything but blind travelled across the whole country, visiting Heimaey in the islands and Vestmann and was very surprised when he was refused access on finally opting to take a plane to explore his next destination.\u00a0 The prospect of a lady waiting for him to pay his fare was insufficient.<\/p>\n

Tryggvi wanted to know what I thought of this and was surprised to hear me say that it made no difference if a bus crossed the country with ten seats free instead of eleven.\u00a0 In return, I was also surprised as I didn\u2019t know Tryggvi was like that.\u00a0 I only understood better when he explained that the boy in question was only nine at the time.\u00a0\u00a0 I hadn’t guessed that this fraudster whom the bus driver had allowed to climb on board was only nine years old, because at nine, most children would say \u2018mother\u2019, \u2018my aunt\u2019, \u2018my grandmother\u2019 or \u2018my sister\u2019 but never \u2018Kona\u2019<\/em>: \u2018a lady\u2019.\u00a0 Nine-year old Icelanders don’t therefore say mother, aunt, grandmother or sister, they say \u2018a lady\u2019.\u00a0 And occasionally at this age some of them are already \u00a0Landshornaflakkari , vagrants.<\/p>\n

The country where alcoholic men and women provide sustenance for the needy on a bench in front of the East station, is another country.\u00a0 In this country, children would say mother, aunt, grandmother, sister or something similar, if in panic they have forgotten their ticket or simply the truth.\u00a0 However, this won\u2019t help them to get to class to write the terrifying test which represents their last chance to move up to the next class.\u00a0 No, it won\u2019t help them at all.\u00a0 Whether the boy had been terrified by this important test to the point of forgetting his season ticket, or even if he played by the rules and preferred asking the driver if he could travel this time without his season ticket rather than risk being called a cheat; none of that would help him.\u00a0 And if the bus driver waited, less than 50 cm from the stop, while the traffic lights changed from red to amber, then to green, this would not help him either: for him the door would stay closed.\u00a0 His imploring bangs on the windows could have been heard, but his plea would have remained without response.\u00a0\u00a0 Bus drivers also have the right to exercise their authority.\u00a0 Just like in this country.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, not far from the East train station, is a \u2018Good Bakery\u2019 run by a lady baker.\u00a0 Customers love this place, since the proprietor makes her pastries herself and sells Russian cakes or Apfelstrudel in the Turkish style along with the standard industrial pastries like the poppy seed spirals, etc. For workers, there are the homemade soliankas, at prices they can afford.\u00a0 On the window of the bakery, the proprietor used to write phases visible from afar.\u00a0 For example, I noticed the following sentence, when I was already sitting on the bus.<\/p>\n

We can build beautiful things, even with with stones that lie in our path. <\/em><\/p>\n

The following morning, I asked the proprietor, who already spoke German well, who it was that wrote this phase.\u00a0 She gave me an astonished look and told me that it came from Goethe.\u00a0 Each weekend she wrote a phrase on the shop window and rubbed it out on Monday, as she was cleaning the panes.\u00a0 But the day before, she had arrived too late to clean the panes.<\/p>\n

\"Its-your-road_05.12.13-1024x768\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After this, she always wrote the name of the author under the phrase, since she had registered that in this country, we are interested in the who<\/strong> and not in the what<\/strong>.\u00a0 And so we saw one phrase after another appear:<\/p>\n

Be the change that you wish to see in the world<\/em><\/p>\n

Week after week, always a different sentence.\u00a0 And the author’s name was always under the phrase.\u00a0 Until one day, the bakery window was decorated with a phrase bereft of its author:<\/p>\n

Without love
\nAny sacrifice is a burden
\nAny music is but noise
\nAnd any dance tiring<\/em><\/p>\n

She waited for my question for four days, then she couldn’t hold back.\u00a0 As she placed my Russian cakes in their bag, she asked me as if to pass time, whether I was interested in the name of the author of this phrase.\u00a0\u00a0 The lack of a name was intentional then.\u00a0 But what she didn’t know was that she had chosen the wrong phrase for her ruse, which I thwarted by answering:\u00a0 \u2018Yes, but I have known his name for a long time.\u2019<\/p>\n

Since then, no names are provided under the phrases. As the philosopher Daniel-Pascal Zorn rightly said:<\/p>\n

If you believe in philosophers, you have learnt nothing from them<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Wittgenstein-300x225\"<\/a>And since any gift should be followed by a return gift, I gave the baker a phrase which she noted and which took its place in the bakery window for an entire week.\u00a0 Without giving a name.\u00a0 Since what should we think of a what<\/strong> that needs a who<\/strong> to be a what<\/strong>?\u00a0 If a what<\/strong> owes his survival not to himself, but first of all to a who<\/strong>, what is the point of his survival?<\/p>\n

The sting in the tail: The Good Bakery is just opposite a school.\u00a0 Children gladly shop at the bakery, or they read the phrases from the bus stop opposite, while waiting for the bus that will take them to their tests.\u00a0 The schools in this country don’t teach philosophy.\u00a0 Philosophy comes up to the school, but has no wish to enter.\u00a0 It is happy to be in front of the door, and also, so to speak, in the street.<\/p>\n

At the East train station in Munich, the needy appreciate being close to charitable men and women who use a bench as their workplace The needy always drag a little trolley on wheels behind them and rummage through the rubbish bin next to the bench with long sticks to see if they can perhaps still find a little gem waiting to be saved, such as an empty beer bottle that some machines will exchange for a few coins.\u00a0 Since the government introduced a social programme, which it named after the HRD of a large company, because he fulfilled the required qualities of disloyalty and favouritism, well after that time, the needy collect the returnable bottles in the rubbish bins.\u00a0 And they always find what they are looking for, this is way they willingly come back, to the alcoholics.\u00a0 The charitable men and women sitting on the bench see none of this.\u00a0 They have more important things to do.\u00a0 They have to philosophise.<\/p>\n

And the nine-year old boy with his ladies?\u00a0 All I know is that he must already be close to forty, if he is still alive and perhaps he can still read tales about his journeys.\u00a0 In the archives of the Reykjavik newspapers.\u00a0 Under the title:\u00a0 Landshornaflakkari<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As the fisherman Stef\u00e1n H\u00f6r\u00f0ur Grimsson said so well in his poem Ors\u00f6k:<\/p>\n

\u2018As absurd as it might sound, we should let any man assert that he knows himself, but to say the he knows another man is either impolite or polite as any civilised man who eats his food wisely knows. \u00a0\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

He was a fisherman poet.<\/p>\n

Translation: Jackie Dobble<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"de\"<\/a>Die B\u00e4ckersfrau<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"fr\"<\/a>La boulang\u00e8re<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every morning, the men but also a few women used to philosophise on the bench, while people arriving at the East train station hurried to catch their bus and get to work or school on time.\u00a0\u00a0 The workplace of the men and women on the bench outside the East station was this bench.\u00a0 This was … The baker<\/span> weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[274],"tags":[276],"class_list":["post-727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-road","tag-munich"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uOIU-bJ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":758,"url":"https:\/\/www.algorithmics.is\/wordpress\/en\/2016\/02\/09\/history-will-take-care-of-the-rest\/","url_meta":{"origin":727,"position":0},"title":"History will take care of the rest","author":"Bj\u00f6rn Eriksson","date":"9. 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