Nothing Happens

The title tells you all you need to know: nothing happens. You could walk on by and continue with your day, and the world would keep on turning, indifferent. It doesn't matter whether you read this or not; in the grand scheme of things, nothing happens. We agreed to meet at that café in Hamburg, a place suspended in time, where minutes stretch and contract as if obeying a different logic. I sit down and check my watch.

6:23. The hands, like faithful messengers of time, announce the hour with a solemnity that seems to mock my waiting.

6:24. I watch a droplet of condensation travel down the window glass, its slow and surreptitious journey, a lazy river flowing with determination. Outside, the city throbs, indifferent to the droplet, to me, to you, to us.

6:25. The weary waiter passes by, leaving behind a trail of freshly brewed coffee scent mixed with a perfume of wood and citrus. His steps are sure, and measured, each movement a choreography learned over countless days under the same roof. He places a coffee on my table. "For the wait," he says, with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. In a corner, a table hosts a now-cold cup of coffee. In front of it, an endangered newspaper opened on a story no one will read again. Crumbs of a croissant scatter like silent witnesses of a solitary moment. The café's clock, whose hands move with stubborn slowness, marks the passage of time that seems to matter little here. Through the window, the street offers a spectacle of walkers briskly passing by on the sidewalks, wrapped up in their own thoughts, and their own lives. A man in a hat, seemingly from another era, stops for a moment, looks towards the café, and then continues on his way. A couple of young people laugh, their voices briefly rising above the urban murmur before fading into the distance.

6:26. The café door opens with a melodious creak. An older man enters, his heavy coat carrying the chill from outside. He sits down alone at a nearby table and pulls out his phone with the care of someone unwrapping a gift.

6:27. A child plays on the sidewalk opposite with his football ball and a Leverkusen shirt, his crystalline laughter slicing through the cold air like a knife. His mother watches him, a forgotten book in her lap. In this small theater of the everyday, life makes its way, insistent.

6:28. The clock hands move on, indifferent. Each minute that passes adds to the small pile of cadavers of moments already lived, a tower of instants building the wait. The clock seems to whisper that each tick-tock is a goodbye to what could have been and wasn't. But I’m not one to care much about what could have been or what already was; at the end of the day, a memory and a fantasy both live in the head.

6:29. Someone at a nearby table, amidst laughter, spills a bit of what seems to be coffee. The commotion is brief, a small wave in our calm sea. The mess is cleaned up, but the stain on the clear tablecloth remains, a silent witness to a moment of carelessness.

6:30. The light changes, becoming warmer, more golden. The sun begins its descent, casting long shadows across the café floor. Lots of people in the square; the sun doesn't come out much here in Hamburg. It's a silent spectacle for anyone who cares to watch, a transformation that never ceases to amaze.

6:31. A couple at the back table stands up. Their chairs scraping against the floor sound like a sigh, a shiver that travels through the space. They leave hand in hand, their future still to be written.

6:32. The bell over the door rings again, announcing a new presence. It's a lady, with a brightly colored scarf that defies the gray of the neighboring buildings. She orders a tea, her voice soft but firm, and in German says, "to go, please."

6:33. A group of students takes the table of the couple who just left, books open in front of them, but their eyes are more often on their phones than on the study pages. At another table, a woman draws some sketches in a notebook, her strokes are decisive, but her gaze gets lost, every now and then, in the void.

6:34. A pair of old friends share a quiet conversation, their words weaved with comfortable silences. In the space between their words, the bond of years is palpable. Sometimes, it's the absence of words that speaks the loudest.

6:35. I catch my reflection in the window, the glass distorting my features into a Picasso-esque abstraction. An impressionist painting comes to life—blurred edges and misplaced colors.

6:36. The tram glides by, its windows offering fleeting glimpses of lives in motion, like frames of a film reel. A man engrossed in his newspaper, a child pressing her nose to the glass, eyes wide with wonder. The patient tram carries the city's quiet hopes.

6:37. The clock hands whisper to me that it's now 6:37. On the table, the cup of coffee the waiter left me remains untouched, the dark liquid staring at me like a mirror of expectations. Time, relentless and eternal, marches on. The café, a factory of memories with its scents of freshly ground beans and old wood, is a refuge. Here, everyone plunges into their own world, even though they share the same air, and the same dim light.

6:38. The café door opens with a louder bang than usual. For a moment, all eyes turn there. You enter, with the breath of the street still clinging to your coat. Our eyes meet, and in that instant, the outside world fades away. You approach, and an apology starts forming on your lips. But before you can speak, I'm already shaking my head. "What happened?", you ask, taking off your coat, looking around as if searching for traces of all you've missed. "Nothing, nothing happens," I replied.