When the Coronicles of this unsettling period are written, what will you be able to say you contributed? Paul in Berlin found that a little joy and diversion, spread window to window, might be enough...
A few days ago some old friends from school shared a funny picture in our group chat. They dressed up a human skeleton model they had lying around and placed it near the window facing the street. A few hours later one of the neighbours across the street replied with a skeleton sitting behind a window while holding a sheet of paper saying „Hi“.
Yes, that is indeed very creepy, but also a hilarious idea to pass the time and make some new friends while in quarantine.
Living on the 4th floor of a big apartment complex with a view on A LOT of windows, I had to take the opportunity.
Lacking a skeleton model, I thought for a while until I noticed the convenient shape of the windows installed throughout the complex. A nice 3x4 playing field, perfect for everyone‘s favorite classroom game: Tic Tac Toe.
Photo by Paul
My fellow quarantine inmates were thrilled by the idea and it came to life in a breeze using black paint and some paper. (I also had to clean my windows because they were embarrassingly dirty.)
After taping our proudest work to the windows the challenge we set for our neighbours was unmistakable, after all the words „Tic Tac Toe“ and an „X“ in the middle of a 3x3 grid are the universal sign of: It’s time to duel!
And boy did they accept the challenge.
Photo by Paul
After leaving the room for what felt like 2 minutes we noticed that three different neighbours had accepted the challenge by taping their „O’s“ to their windows. We felt like little kids and played until it got too dark to make out the turns of our neighbours.
We are now in day four of the 2020 Berlin Tic Tac Toe Open Tournament and it’s still going; although admittedly, in terms of „thrillingness“, the game has its limits. We definitely made new friends along the way and had a whole lot of fun.
So for what it’s worth, why not try it out yourself and brighten up your and maybe a neighbour's day in these otherwise unsettling times.
This story was shared by Paul, who studies film restoration in Berlin.
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