Individual duvet (ist)

I went to Germany for a few days with my husband.
After a plane, a bus and a train, we finally arrived at the hotel.

On top of the double bed were two single duvets folded in half. Anyone who travels to northern European countries knows that this is common in hotels. “How well thought out,” said my husband, “so you don’t steal my side at night.” I didn’t answer, I knew that one night would be enough to make him change his mind. And so it was. He awoke furious with the cold and cursed what the day before had seemed to him the best invention of all time.

For those who have never spent the night with a piece of bed linen like this, I will explain: they are individual duvets with the approximate width of a bath towel (imagine the standing towel). The only way we have to be fully covered by it is if we sleep with our arms close to our body and don’t move all night. It would be a great option for the coffins if needed.

I spent three nights wrestling with that thing. As soon as I covered one arm, the other was left out. When he pulled the duvet to cover his neck, a foot would come out. How the Nordics and their meters and nineties fit under something like that is a question I ask myself every time I come to one of these countries and that remains unanswered, perhaps because it is asked to myself and not to one of them.

This may seem like a small thing, but I think it says a lot about a people. We Portuguese are of the touch, a people adept at shelling and there is no spooning possible with these duvets. When we try to reach the other, we are blocked by fabric and feathers which, if the fatigue is great, makes us end up giving up. It is the equivalent of a moderate level climb.

At bedtime, Germans are from the “every man for himself” club which, for me, can translate into an individualistic way of being awake.

I know that almost all couples discuss the subject of joint sleep.

One still wants to sleep with a feather duvet in August and the other spends the night sweating; one occupies the entire bed as if playing angels in the snow and the other ends up with his head on the bedside table; There is always one who wakes up all wrapped up in the duvet as if it were a sleeping bag and the other in the fetal position trying to warm himself. But isn’t this human puzzle part of being a couple, of adapting to the other person even when unconscious?

I officially declare myself against these Nordic feather bags, not only because I feel that I spend the night trying to cover myself with a cloth napkin, but because from an individual blanket to the individual bed is a short jump. And, as much as I’m the one who wakes up with my head on the bedside table, I want to continue to stretch my leg and feel the warm foot of the person I’ve chosen to share the duvet with me every night.