Dead Spiders and Perspective
I had just flown in to Berlin with a friend to attend our good friends wedding - her 3rd wedding celebration mind you: To the same man. If you’re gonna do it, do it right, as WHAM sang!
We clamber onto a very packed train to get to Berlin City, and somehow manage to get some seats. My friend had bought some healthy goodies for our second breakfast of the day..,we’d been up and at it since 4.30am. She opens one item, a container with yoghurt, and blueberries in a separate compartment, very tasty looking. Lo and behold there sits a spider, sprawled across two blueberries, alive and well. ‘Yuck’, she says. ‘Yuck, I echo. But then I remember and state: “I heard somewhere, we eat approx 8 spiders in our lifetime, while we are sleeping. It won’t do you any harm”.
“It’s fine to eat spiders. They are perfectly healthy”, says the man sitting beside me.
I laugh. He remains poker-faced, saying “I wouldn’t eat them this time of the day mind you”.
“When would you eat them?” I ask.
“In the evening”, he says.
He returns to looking out the window at the landscape.
Meanwhile, my friend has picked the spider out, and put him on the floor of the train, and an Italian man squashes it with his foot!
“You killed him” my friend responds.
I exclaim, “now it’s going to rain, you murdered a spider”.
He smiles. My friend does not.
A few minutes later, my friend picks out the next part of our train picnic and passes it to me. As I open the container - this one is chunks of watermelon - I offer it around to our new train carriage buddies, all of whom turn down my offer.
To the man who eats spiders in the evenings, I say “let’s see if there are any spiders in here”.
He responds, “Germans do not eat watermelon. Watermelon does not grow in Germany. As you can see, 9 out of 10 Germans will refuse your offer”.
I am thinking this may be because watermelon does not grow naturally in Germany and perhaps many Germans attempt to eat in line with what the land supplies. I also want to let him know that all our other train carriage buddies are Italian, and so their refusal is not proof of his statement.
But then he states; “Watermelon is used as decoration only with other foodstuffs, it is not to be eaten”.
I stifle a giggle. Feels a little like he is judging me for eating watermelon, and there I am thinking I am being healthy!
I make sure to eat my watermelon pieces start to finish! He must think I am so obstreperous!
A while later, my friend and I leave the train feeling slightly traumatised. Her, because the spider was killed by a giant Italian foot. Me, because it seems I am not fitting in with the German way.
Let’s summarise:
The Italian kills the spider
The Irish believes killing a spider will cause it to rain
The German eats spiders in the evening and poo-poo’s eating watermelon
Global traveller friend (she refuses to be identified with any particular nationality, having spent most of her childhood living between 3 separate continents) feels deep sorrow for spider who scared her off eating her blueberries and yoghurt, but who got murdered.
Perspectives? Cultural Belief System? Funny what you learn and what can transpire when interacting with strangers on the train.
We arrive at the 3-day wedding celebration, and are served watermelon at some point every day! There are spider webs being built avidly in every nook and cranny, but I don’t once spot an actual spider.
I leave on the final day with a count of approx 800 bites, but have been assured they are only German mosquitos.
Moral of the story? Not sure. Maybe it’s, ‘we are all human, with our own perspectives and versions of reality.’