What is it about communal tables? We wanted to go to Richard, this is a place on Köpenickerstraße that Sam and I both like for the quality of the food but also for the melancholic splendor of the setting, think Los Angeles as imagined by a Swiss, think a Berlin of 2020 where you look back at a time and place, like the Odeon of the 1980s in New York, and this would be the place which had had a past, but now you are in the present and this past seems distant – it was this sense of futility the owner exudes. Let*s go there before it closes, this is what Sam said, and it would be all too sad and all too unfair if his prophecy would come true. Well, Richard was closed, for it was Monday, so we decided to go to Lokal as usual. People make jokes about Lokal, they say that only in Berlin and only in Mitte a lokal called Lokal could exist. But they serve good food. They are packed. They feel like Brooklyn. They have this communal table where we squeezed in between a couple that did not talk much and two women who seemed very nice but refused our Grauburgunder that we offered them. Sam said that there was some strange vibe in the air, and I knew what he meant. One of the waitresses had a lace top on, the other was heavily tattooed, we were feeling very much at ease and talked about the things that men talk about. There was a sense of closure when first the couple left and then the two women. The communal table was empty safe of us. We sat there, relieved from the burden of conversation, for a moment in total quiet. Then we went back to trying to figure out how life works.