22. Perfume

Here, where I live, in Augsburg, I can smell traffic pollution (I feel like I live on the Autobahn), burnt wood pellets, tobacco, intensive agriculture (mostly manure, although I live in the city), bad food, and... and cheap perfume in an incredibly huge quantity, you know, like cheap detergent synthetic perfume, mixed up with cheap awful toilet deodorant and cheap body deodorant like the person had imitated the stupid guy of the TV ad by spraying themselves half the bottle. Subtlety is not in the vocabulary of many many persons.

I can smell my neighbour even 30 minutes after they left the building and follow their tracks, really. And I wrote that without exageration. It happens almost everyday. I know if they went to the garage, to the garbage or which direction they took on the street. I can tell if they are still on the balcony after the cigarette break or if they left.

I avoid restaurant in Europe mainly because of the excess of perfume (well, in Germany the main reason is that the food is so bad and expensive that it should not even be called "food", maybe "stomach filler").
"Thanks" to Covid, I can now wear a mask almost without standing out from the crowd.

I wonder, did everyone in Germany (and in Europe) lost their sense of smell?