And one last glass while lying down
What was once a barbershop is now a bar counter: In Munich, a new one opens every few weeks—a wood-paneled room, a few bar tables, and a half-liter for €3.90 (instead of €5.90). The newspapers talk about a trend, and as someone who's no longer quite so young, you think: And once again, they haven't come up with anything new. Because, of course, the bar counter is no different than Heino: The concept is ancient, but with a few marketing tricks, you can still squeeze a lot out of it.
But why do so many people enjoy drinking their beer while standing? Is it the low price? The casual, sociable atmosphere? Or do health considerations play a role, given that every other office now has a standing desk or height-adjustable desk? I wouldn't rule out the possibility that one person started it, and everyone else followed suit. It's been the case throughout human history. How else could one explain the triumphant comeback of the humble tennis sock?
Well, I really hate standing. It must be laziness, or maybe it's comfort. In any case, I find sitting much more comfortable, which is why my pants are always dirty on the backside. I'm constantly sitting on curbs and car hoods to avoid standing around. It's actually true that after I've been standing for two minutes, my body feels like a honey sculpture; everything is forced into a horizontal position. On top of that, I get excruciating back pain, and sometimes my circulation fails me. As a little boy, I regularly collapsed during Sunday services. Luckily, Germans are so godless these days that I always get a seat, even on Easter night.
I've long dreamed of a bar where you can lie down, a bit like at a Roman banquet, with dining sofas arranged in a horseshoe shape. I would lean on my elbows, occasionally take a sip, chat a bit, and in between there would be acrobatic performances where you could doze off for a moment. What slaves once did could be done by AI-controlled robots: refilling drinks, waving palm fronds, and keeping quiet. If such a bar existed, I would be a regular, because I do almost everything at home lying down, too: not just watching TV and reading, but also writing, making phone calls, thinking, listening to music, and sometimes even eating and drinking. Occasionally, I walk into my study and am surprised to find it's a study.
And of course, you might find that decadent, but I'd like to remind you that perhaps the most important novel in human history was written while lying down: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, who – plagued by asthma attacks – spent most of the last 18 years of his life lying down, in a six-room apartment on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, in a bedroom lined with raw cork panels to protect himself from noise. As far as we know, Proust wrote exclusively at night; he never used a desk. "For fifteen years I have lived lying down," the French writer wrote in one of his countless letters in 1919; after that, he lived for another three years before dying at the age of 51. The novel has more than 4,000 pages. It takes three days, three hours, and 46 minutes to read – a gigantic work that can occupy you for a lifetime. And what I actually wanted to say: this whole thing with the bar – not for me.
süeddeutsche
