Berlin has been emerging from its coronavirus lockdown in full force, and the cost of freedom, the price of having a snippet of our pre-corona lives — date night with your husband, a hair cut (a hair cut!) — is handing over contact details.

Call them corona logs: A registry of who was where when and for how long has become mandatory so the detectives of the German health authority can trace the contacts of a newly infected person…

At the Refinery, a trendy coffee shop near the river Spree in central Berlin, Sabine Baum, a graphic designer, was adding her details to the dog-eared handwritten list on the counter as she waited for her porridge one recent morning.

“Somehow it feels OK because it’s just on paper and not online,” she said.