The city, her stage

It’s fun to listen to Anne Simon talk. And to see how engaged she is in her storytelling: shining eyes, her hands dance. Her clothing style is a typical theatre combination of striped trouser suit coupled with a modish purple-pink three-striped  jogging jacket. 50s style sunglasses rest on her blonde hair. Fashion consciousness paired with understatement. A pink notebook lies on the table in front of her. It’s probably always with her. Ideas must be caught and pinned down.

“Stickers!” She almost shouts with pleasure, “Stickers, stuck on lampposts and on distribution boxes. Awesome. I could track them down for hours. Who put that one there? And why? What kind of person was it? I think of the kind of person who places stickers on lampposts. What’s the story? Then I go on a search. The next sticker with the same design is often not far away. And so a stranger leads me on a mysterious path through the city.”

On her scavenger hunts through the city, Anne keeps her eyes open. What strikes her is that public space offers so much yet is used so little, especially in the city. People live in boxes, sit in one box to get to another box to work. Then they go back into the small box to return to the first box. They then sit – admittedly – in the garden, free of strangers. That’s not Anne’s thing. She has to get out into the city, into the parks and playgrounds where those who don’t have gardens meet and where you hear many languages being spoken. What a Babylonian babble of voices. People live, laugh and love here. They barbecue, argue, reconcile. Anne Simon, the story collector, is among them. She likes to come here with her young son. And, from time to time, when he comes, he likes to dress in a tutu. People are happy about that. He can just be here, dancing among the trees, before going back to being a digger operator again.

Urban outdoors: being outside in the city. Wandering through cities. But always seeking out islands to find peace and quiet. A hill in the Kirchberg business district. The sculpture by Bert Theis in the Edith Klein inner-city park, a kind of hunter’s hide which invites you to climb up. The castle at her favourite playground near her home in Belair. As we wander, we are treated to an unexpected view of the Old Fortress. All islands in the city.

The balmy summer night air carries voices from the distance, scattered laughter and murmurs. Something is happening that we know nothing about. The murmuring grows louder and, as we turn a corner, we are greeted with Charlie Chaplin’s face on the open-air cinema screen directly in front of the Grand Ducal Palace. A summer night in the capital. We set off without a destination or a plan, and yet we have arrived.