That was my experience while reading „Guten Morgen, schönes Wetter heute“ (Translated: Good Morning, Lovely Weather Today) by Tanja Kokoska. It is a novel full of people and their stories. A street called “Am Kastanienbaum”, a bomb disposal operation, neighbours who meet, lose one another, change, and find each other again. Characters you cannot help but grow fond of.
But one sentence on page 282 fascinated me in particular:
“Comfort goods, that’s what he calls them: börek, yeast pastries and baklava. In the gymnasium there will probably be nothing but filled bread rolls, he assumes, as is always the case with Germans. They fill your stomach, but they do not comfort you.”
What a wonderful expression: comfort goods.
At first glance, the sentence seems to be about food. In reality, it is about home, belonging, and the emotional function of culture. Börek and baklava are memories you can eat. A piece of family, a childhood scent, a feeling of familiarity in an unfamiliar place.
To me, this expression touches the very heart of the novel. After all, it is not the major events that set people’s lives in motion. It is the small gestures.
One such gesture runs throughout the entire book and draws on a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. At the end of her highly worthwhile acknowledgements, the author recommends, just as Mrs Arslan does in the story, cutting out the poem, folding it, and hiding it inside an item in a supermarket. Someone will eventually discover it, be surprised, and perhaps smile.
That, too, is a comfort good.
Just as börek and baklava carry memories, poems carry hope through everyday life. Both transform ordinary things into small messages of humanity.
And in my view, that is what makes a neighbourhood worth living in. It is the people who bring comfort goods. People who hide poems. People who give something to others without knowing who will eventually find it.
Or, as Rilke put it:
“You do not have to understand life. Then it will become like a celebration.”
Novels tell stories, and this one also reminds us what a celebration of life is really made of.
And now I’m curious: What are the small things that give you a sense of home, belonging, or humanity?
I am Bernd Scharbert, author of Prepare for Landing: Leitlinien für interkulturelle Führung (Barbara Budrich Publishers), and I am happy to support leaders in questions of inclusive and integrative leadership. I also teach Business Ethics and Sustainability at Albstadt-Sigmaringen University.
