The legend of the see-through blue two-piece bathing suit

The air had not been moving for days. The fireball in the baby blue sky has turned this most vivid tourist attraction mile into a dusty urban desert. Those who can have migrated to the mint tasting freshness of the Brandenburg lakes, those who can’t are attending the Miss Roasted Chicken 2008 awards in the empty brown fields that used to be healthy green parks a fortnight ago. 

Only Patrick, Andy and Julia are excluded from the worship of the sun. The university is merciless. However, Julia’s goal for that afternoon is not to finish the university work but to get Patrick to migrate to a hidden lonely lake with her. She likes his long, brown hair, his three day’s beard, his Hawaiian shirt and the imagination of what might be underneath it. Yes, she has a crush on him. Only problem is, Andy wants to join the trip to the lake. Andy is the type of guy who is always well prepared – wearing a suit to university that you would imagine a 60 old history professor to wear, even when it’s 40 degrees outside because he might run into his 60 years old history professor. But he isn’t prepared for spontaneous natural refreshment. “The only problem is I don’t have swimming shorts.”

“No problem, I can borrow you some of mine,” Patrick’s only problem is that he is too nice to everybody. Comparing the body sizes of the two, Andy would look like a 1970’s coast guard in shorts that were very loose around Patrick’s hips. Julia realised that she needs to put an impediment to that: “Or I can borrow you one of mine. I have a beautiful see-through blue two-piece bathing suit. You’d look sexy in that.”

See-through! Blue! Two-piece! Bathing suit! The guys would have not been guys, if they weren’t getting curious. “Why do you have a see-through bathing suit?” “I wore it so often that it became see-through.” “Why do you keep it?” “I keep it to wear it under t-shirts that you tie around your neck.”

That night Julia calls up Patrick with the obvious intention to make a date even though her explanation is that she needs to borrow some papers. The conversation drifts off and of course the bathing suit is mentioned. “You could send me a picture of you wearing it,” Patrick suggests. The next thing Julia does, is to call up her best male friend Robert to ask, if that means that Patrick is interested in her. Of course, Robert wants to know about the bathing suit. He just became member number three of the secret blue bathing suit society.

The next day, Julia and Patrick actually have a date. “By chance” Julia wears a T-shirt to tie around her neck and that bikini underneath it. But Patrick is too shy to comment on it or attempt to take it off.

The morning after that, Julia is late, her flat is in a mess. Where is a bra? There’s the bikini from last night. One can see its strings under the T-shirt, never mind, I gotta go.
Robert is the first to ask her about it: “Hey, are you wearing that see-though blue bathing suit. Turn around, can I see it.” For the rest of the day, he sends her notes that she should take off her t-shirt and sit in from of Patrick in the library, if she is into him for real. 

Then, Andy comes along. “Are you wearing that see-through blue bathing suit? Can I touch is and feel the fabric.” He almost takes of her T-shirt in front of everybody. Julia is annoyed, she’s had enough. She decides to demystify that ordinary boring blue two-piece bathing suit. At home, she takes a picture of it lying empty on her bed. She sends the picture to the three members of her secret society. She gets two answers. Robert says: “What a pity, I would have liked to see you in that.” Andy says: “I’m too much of a gentleman to open the file.” Only the person, whose attention she wanted to attract remains silent. 

Another day later, she sits in the cafeteria complaining to her female best friend about the male capacity of legend building. What she doesn’t realize is that Max, another good friend of hers is sitting at the next table listening to everything. “I’d love to get those pictures, too.” That’s secret society member number four.

Meanwhile, Robert and Patrick try to convince Andy that there is nothing un-gentleman-like about opening those files. Fabian is with them, he is the one of the clique who is known to have the wildest connections of synapses in his head. It takes about ten minutes until he comes up to Julia suggesting: “You should take pictures of all your underwear and put them on the cafeteria walls.” Yes, Julia has learned her lesson now, sometimes silence is golden and talking is nothing but a blue see-though bathing suit.

Indiana Jones and the Roman Flower Bed Drainage

The cool thing about being 14 and spending all your days at a horse riding school is that you can try all kinds of vocations there. You can practise being a vet, a teacher, a bar tender, even an archaeologist:

Our horse riding instructor had told us to put some pansies in the flower bed at the entrance of the horse riding school. We were bored because the older girls had their lesson and did not want us to watch, and our instructor gave us lessons for free if we helped in the stable. So we said yes and started digging.

We dug several holes to put the flowers in there. Soon, we started to hit a rock. Let’s dig out that rock, it’s not supposed to be in a flower bed. When the rock hit daylight, we saw that it looked big and ancient.

We had grown up in Aachen, always conscious of the fact that we were walking on Ancient Roman foundations. We had learned in school that the Romans had founded Aquae Grani because of the healthy water and had left their traces all over the place. Just a couple of weeks ago, people had found the residues of a Roman villa when they started building a new shopping centre.

Maybe that rock was Roman, too? The hot sources were only a stone’s throw away from where we were digging. Maybe the horse riding school was built on the ground a Roman villa, or even an arena? We continued digging. And indeed, we found more rocks, same size, same ancient look. They were buried next to each other. 

Were those the top rocks of a Roman wall? We became excited. But, what if the wall continued underneath the barn? Would they have to tear down the barn if the archaeologists dug up the Roman wall? When we asked ourselves that question we were a hundred percent sure that we had found something ancient and that we were doing the right thing in digging it out.

Then, our horse riding instructor came along, seeing 5 teenage girls all dirty with mud and a flower bed that doesn’t look like one anymore. “What’s your business digging up those rocks? You were supposed to simply plant those flowers,” he told us and we explained him our newest excavations. 
“Those rocks are definitely not ancient,” he explained us then, “I buried them myself”
“But why?”
“Because I tried to build a drainage for the flower bed, so that the rain water wouldn’t stay there. So, please put those rocks back where you found them.”

The red lipstick glitter disco river bank summer night

Last Thursday I got a phone call from my childhood friend Hanna. She is in Berlin now on a business trip, hitting Hamburg next and then going all the way to Switzerland. “Shall we meet tonight” “Of course” In our youth, Hanna and me have been best friends. When we met in a Pizzaria in one of the most vivid streets of this town, we realize that we haven’t seen each other for almost three years.

Hanna’s look has become much more ordinary than what I remember, a pink cardigan instead of second-hand T-shirts, jeans instead of self-made skirts. I look much more alternative stylish than three years ago with my XL-print T-Shirt, my stylish bangs, ballarina shoes and kitsch red lipstick. Hanna complains about all those London fashion victims here in Berlin, I love their pop iconicity. 

We talk about her trips to Taiwan, Laos, Thailand, my trips to Poland, Spain and the Balkans. “Your trips were probably much more exciting because South East Asia is so westernized,” she tells me. Then, about common childhood friends “Elke got married, Lena now works as a secretary,” faded boyfriends, the usual. Hanna gets a phone call from some people from her group going to a pub. She asks me if I want to join. The only obligation I have is to be at work tomorrow morning at 10 – of course I do. 

We meet in a bar on a raft on the river Spree. It is a beautiful summer evening – the best way the city can present itself. People enjoy an after-work beer, there is chill techno music in the background. The Berlin mosquitos are the greatest in the world because they don’t eat us alive. Hanna and her friends from work tell me how much they love the city, the openness of the people, the art that is in the air, or rather sprayed on run down buildings. I have to agree, in moments like this, I love this city. 

After one beer, most of the group leaves because they are tired. I’m shocked, it’s only 11 o’clock. “You must think we’re those hillbillies who don’t know how to party,” one of the girls tells me. The truth is, yes, I guess I’ve become a metropolitan party queen. How can you go to bed on such a beautiful night? Some of the guys want to go to a place that some street musician recommended to them – the Cassiopeia. I’ve heard about it before but have never been there. I don’t want to embarrass myself by admitting that as a Berliner I don’t know this place, so I suggest something else, but they want to go there.

In the end, that choice was perfect. The Cassiopeia is all that 21st century Berlin is about: the mixture of old and new, poor but sexy. It is a run down factory on the river bank, two floors, the walls painted red, a star spangled mirror ball, a city beach in the patio, antique deckchairs and sofas, a place to play ping pong and climb, cheap drinks. The music is hip hop and techno, just what Hanna and me danced to in our youth because the two discos would play nothing else. The public is a mixture of London glitter style tourist from Spanish provincial towns and Berliners in T-shirt, Jeans and Sneakers. My alternative chique lipstick beauty is right in between all that and even Hanna doesn’t feel underdressed.

Hanna is completely transfixed by this place. “I love it, I love it” she keeps shouting. It’s a mixture between the Sage and Kulturbrauerei, the places I go out normally, I think I have to keep this one in mind. Just like 7 years ago, Hanna and me are the first on the dance floor, the guys from our group follow. They are from the same town as Hanna and me, I find out and they went to the same crappy disco there- the B9. On the floor, we perform the worst B9 dancing moves and the glitter people join us when the place starts filling up at 2 o’clock. 

The next day, I’m completely tired when I get to work but after two cups of coffee my red lip stick smile comes back. I love the city of Berlin – thanks to my old school friend I remembered again why I did. 

The blessings and curses of being the youngest

My youngest cousin is three years younger than me. The two of us have pretty much the same life story: we both went to a good school, graduated, went to university, had several relationships, several part time jobs. In all those things, I was always the first. I was the first in the family to have bring home a Turkish boyfriend, the first in the family to enter University, the first to learn Latin.

In that sense, my cousin always had it easier than me. He never had to listen to my grandfather going on about him forgetting another piece of his background with every foreign word he learned. And that, even though his dread locks were meant to be much more provocative than my Oasis T-shirt. When he did those things, my grandparents had already gotten used to the idea of their grandchildren doing things only their class enemy knew about. 

When I decided to spend some time in the USA, I got to hear all those worries, concerns and complaints by my family. Why are you leaving, don’t you like it here? What if you get robbed? What if you get lost? Do you hate your family so much that you want to get away from us? Yes, family reunions were getting annoying in those days. The same thing happened when I was about to go Spain.

Why do you have to go to Spain? Can’t you study here? But in Spain, there is the ETA? Do you know how much it will cost to get there, in case something happens to you? 

Now, my little cousin has decided to go to Costa Rica and work as a farm hand there. A much more daring and adventurous plan than me staying in a host family or getting an Erasmus scholarship, I think. I really admire his courage for doing that – going to a foreign country without a double bottom consisting of an organisation, scholarship money and a list of cheap student housings. 

When he announced his plan to my grandparents, they reacted much different from what I had expected. Instead of giving him thousands warnings, my grandmother just said: “Well, you young people need to have some international experience in your CV now, don’t you?” There was no “but you really have to go?” kind of talk. Instead my cousin could lean back while I had to endure my grandmother’s worries about me not being married at the age of 24.

On the one hand, I felt envious of him for not going though all the trouble I had. On the other hand, I felt sorry for him because my grandparents didn’t seem to care so much anymore. Before I had gone off to Spain, my grandmother had made me show her on a map exactly where I was going. After that, she spend every day watching the international weather forecast on TV to see if I was about to get hit by a thunderstorm or a drought. Now, her grandchildren going abroad and coming back after a year, seems to have become a normal thing for her. And my poor cousin doesn’t have anybody who worries about the weather for him.

The most successful punk band ever

It was a historical moment.  A grey Saturday afternoon in a Western German suburbia. That day,  Hannah, Julia, and I decided to form a band. I had been playing piano for about a year, Julia owned an e-piano but didn’t know how to play and Hannah was a passionate singer. What more could you ask for? A guitar player, he was found, when Tommy from across the street agreed to join our band.

The tasks were divided quickly, Hannah would sing and write the melodies, I would write the lyrics and play the bass keys on one e-piano because bass players were always the coolest. Julia would play the keyboard chords, sing the backing vocals and play the synthesizer drums on her e-piano until we found a drummer. Tommy was to play the guitar and look cute but shut up otherwise. 

But then, Hannah’s little sister Judith wanted to join the band, too. The problem was, the only instrument she knew how to play was the flute. Who had ever heard of a punk band with a flute? – we said no. She started to cry and ran to her mother. Mum told Hannah that she was grounded if she didn’t let her sister come in our band. What could we do? 

During the first band practice we figured out that little Judith knew only how to play “Old McDonald had a farm”. Never mind, we said, so a punk version of “Old McDonald” would be our first hit. I changed the lyrics to sound like a protest song against McDonalds and pro animal-rights. After we decided that, we spend the rest of the band practice to make up our outfits.

When we met for the second time  in our "garage" (that is the attic of my parents' house) things became more difficult. Each time Hannah started to sing, Judith blew her flute as loud as she could. In the end, Hannah had no choice but to lock her sister into a closet. Then Tommy decided that as he had nothing to say about the band's artistic development, he might as well listen to  football on the radio instead of practising. 

The original band members continued with vocals, bass, drums and keyboards until my father came up complaining about the noise. Of course, Judith used that chance to protest against her imprisonment. Discovering that we had locked her in that closet, my father told all of us to leave and as a punishment we were not allowed to use the attic anymore. After being stripped of our garage and one e-piano, which wasn't to be taken out of the house, the band split up even before our first performance.

In the end, I have to be thankful to my father. Since he caused us to split up right in the beginning, we never had the chance to be tempted by commercial success. We never sold out our art. In this way, true to the punk anti-philosophy, we were so unsuccessful that we were the most successful punk band ever.

Horses with inferiority complexes

I liked Chocolate from the very beginning. She was attentive and had vivid eyes. She was not like those horses that are used for schooling, who seemed sullen and didn’t care about who is riding them. Chocolate always seemed curious about her rider and she always had her ears turned up in a friendly way. 

I liked Chocolate from the very beginning, but I seemed to be the only one. When I was riding her for the first time, the horse riding instructor told me: “Be careful that she doesn’t throw you off. If she kicks and rears, don’t use the riding crop or she will  throw you off.” I was surprised to hear that because it didn’t seem to fit to Chocolate’s personality.

The first lesson with her was fine. She was sensitive to the reins, she had a lovely trot and even though we didn’t do much galloping, she was responsive to my leg aids then. There was nothing that gave me the impression that she was one of those evil-minded horses, who would do anything to throw off their riders. 

Two weeks later, we switched horses and the girl who was riding Chocolate at that time was having a hard time. The horse seemed completely changed, as if it was going crazy. When we came to galloping, she stood in the middle of the paddock kicking the other horses and rearing on her hinder legs. She girl seemed very desperate on top of the horse.

The week after that it was my turn with Chocolate again and she was doing the same things. She was  great during the lesson, but as soon as one horse in the paddock started to gallop, she went crazy. But I managed not to fall off. I took it as a challenge to make her gallop correctly and since I was the only one who would take up the challenge, I could ride her every lesson. 

For the next few weeks, I found out a couple of things: Chocolate only did the mounting when galloping on the left hand, on the right hand, she was fine. When using too much leg aid, she felt confused and wouldn’t comply. Therefore, the leg aid when starting to gallop had to be very light. If she was about to rear, I had to use the crop lightly and then she would start running like crazy. After half a lap she would slow down and react to my aids again. Thus, I always needed a lot of empty space ahead of me. If there were other horses, she would try to bite them.

Soon, I found out why Chocolate was rearing. Bully, one of those evil-minded horses, who deserved his name because of his size and shape, started kicking. Chocolate and I happened to be behind that horse and the hooves were flying in our direction. We were lucky not be hit. For the rest of the lesson, Chocolate was panicking. Whenever Bully passed us by, she jumped aside and mounted. She was clearly afraid of him.

Chocolate was one of the smallest horses in the stable and as I had just found out, she was afraid of taller horses, especially when they galloped by her. Therefore, she reared to make herself seem taller and intimidate them. A solution to her behaviour was found easily: stay ahead of the taller horses and start galloping before they do.

As soon as I stuck to those things, Chocolate was the best horse in the stable. There was only one problem. As soon as the other riders saw, how well she doing when I rode her, they wanted to ride her as well.

Multicoloured Advertisement Dilemma

It’s a Thursday afternoon. Valery is sitting in the bus coming home from work and she is very hungry. She is thinking about dinner. What could she have? She has a fridge full of food at home but things don’t seem appropriate there. She bought a kilo of potatoes last week that is rotting away on her kitchen sink. She has to eat those potatoes soon, or she will have to throw them away.

But she doesn’t feel like eating potatoes with curd cheese. She wants something fancy, something colourful. She could stop by at the supermarket on her way home and buy deep-fried camenbert with cranberry sauce. It’s colourful and it tastes sweet. She could also bring along some chocolate pudding and some soda for desert while being at the supermarket. That sounds like a plan.

The bus continues and she is looking out of the window. It passes an advertisement poster of a fast food restaurant praising their new low fat full taste tuna sandwich.

Actually, she doesn’t feel like having camenbert anymore, Valerie decides all the sudden, she’d rather feel like having a tuna sandwich. She remembers that she has can of tuna at home, as well as a glass of prickles and some lettuce that is about to rod away in her fridge. But she doesn’t have the right bread to make a tuna sandwich. She could stop by at the bakery and get some bread, but at 5 in the afternoon they probably won’t have any left. But two bus stations from her home there is this fast food place – she could just take the bus there before even going home, get a sandwich and next door there is this coffee place, she could get some caramel flavoured iced cappuccino there. That sounds great. She has coffee and milk at home, but at home it never has this sweet, artificial taste that’s so addictive.

Or maybe, she could eat something with ketchup – it occurs to her all the sudden. But actually she doesn’t like ketchup. How did she come up with that idea anyway? Then, she notices the advertisement for a ketchup bottle hanging on the inside of the bus, right in front of her eyes. Is that the only reason why she feels like eating ketchup now? Is it so easy to manipulate her? 

She decides that she doesn’t let herself be manipulated that easily. She decides to say no to consumerism – at least for today. She is not going to spend any money that day. Instead she will go straight home and make herself the potatoes sitting in her kitchen and be happy. She won’t let herself be terrorized by advertisement anymore. After all, she likes potatoes much more than fried cheese or tuna sandwiches. 

How to handle praise

Charlie was used to the fact that his life was a failure. He had never done good in school. He had been playing the guitar for years but was never confident enough to perform in public. He had been in a soccer team for a while but when he realized that he was the worst player in the team he quit. After school, he passed through several jobs and stuck with one that didn’t fulfil him but paid the bills. Even though, he had had several girlfriends he had never been the world greatest loverman either. But somehow he was hanging on. 

He didn’t realize that his whole life was about to change when he picked up his guitar at a friend’s birthday party and played a song he had written. He had never been able to move the masses until that day. All the sudden, everybody came up to him telling him: “Wow, that’s so awesome, that’s so great” Never before had he heard people tell that to him.

A friend of his had videotaped his performance and put it on Youtube. It received 30 000 hits from all over the world and the comments were most encouraging: “Vaya canción una maravilla.” “This is awesome, publish it on CD.” “Dieser Song rockt!” “Tres cool”. At first, it seemed very scary to him, how fast the video was spreading around the world. But then, it sunk in: He was actually great at something! 

The dreams, which he had thrown in the garbage as a kid, came back to him. He started imagining himself on stage as the greatest guitar god, playing at the same festivals as his childhood heroes (at least those who hadn’t killed themselves at 27). Mentally he even prepared the thank-you-speech he would give when receiving the Grammy awards.

For the next two weeks, he felt like flying. He was very creative in those days, writing a new song every day. He couldn’t wait to get home from work to pick up his guitar and work on another song. For the first time, life seemed easy to him. 

Then, one night he played his new songs to the girl he had secretly been in love with for ages, but she considered him only a friend. She had been the inspiration for most of his songs. She listened to his songs and then told him: “It’s quite nice. A bit like Coldplay meets U2. Maybe not the greatest song ever, but it’s nice.”

For the first time, Charlie got really angry at her. How could she say: “Not the greatest song ever!” Could she not see that he was the greatest guitar god! What did she know about music anyway! Then, he started to think. Maybe she was right, maybe that was crap. He got angry at himself for believing that he was the greatest guitar god. Why had he ever thought so? A month ago, he would have been the happiest man in the world after hearing her comment. Now he was devastated, he wanted to throw his guitar out of the window. It occurred to him that he had been used to failure all his life but not to praise. That was why a simple comment like “great song” had made him believe he was the greatest guitar player in the world. A simple comment on Youtube had changed his whole perception. He had learned how to live with failure, he realized, now he had to learn how to live with success.

Where has the world revolution gone?

I live in a quarter of Berlin which is known for the Revolutionary 1st of May. In the 1980’s that was a demonstration where political activists would throw Molotov Cocktails at police men. In the 1990’s that was a party where bored high school kids from small town Germany threw rocks at police men. In the new millennium, it has become an event where kids with migration background throw empty beer cans at police men and grab that with their mobiles.

Nevertheless, the revolutionary forces keep trying: The first year that I lived in Berlin there was a huge poster in my street which read in German and Turkish: “1st of May, 4 pm. The world revolution starts here.”
I laughed about it. But in a way, I felt proud that the world revolution would start here in my street. I would be a witness to history, maybe I would be even part of it. But then I realized, what that meant: because people feared riots, the bank and the supermarket in my neighbourhood were closed and boarded up, even a week before the 1st of May. They even shut down the two metro lines which run through my quarter, trying to isolate the revolutionary forces.

When I had to walk 20 minutes to the next bank that wasn’t boarded up, to get cash in order to buy food in a supermarket 15 minutes walking distance, I decided that it was not so great after all to have a revolution starting in your own neighbourhood. Why can’t they start on a field somewhere in rural Brandenburg? All supermarkets and banks have been shut down over there anyway.

The day of the revolution I had a hang-over. And all that happened in my street was that a death metal band was playing right in front of my house. Thank you very much! That was not the revolution that I had imagined. There was no excitement or electricity in the air. Only drunk kids with long hair banging their heads to bad cover versions of Metallica that were making my head explode. If that was the World Revolution, it might as well happen without me.

A week later a saw a poster, which read: “8th of May, 2 pm, great demonstration at Görlitzer Bahnhof, the World Revolution starts here.” So, the grand revolution had advanced one metro station in a week. Amazing speed. Maybe by now it has advanced up to the fields of rural Brandenburg, but most likely it got stuck at the final metro station still waiting for a bus.

When your little empire collapses

Anita had grabbed the opportunity of her life and clung to it. Even though she had never cared for cars or sports, connections got her a job in the public relation department of a motorsport team. And she found out that she actually enjoyed that job.

Kimberly was the complete opposite. At the age of 19,  she had started to live in a leftist commune, study Marx and wait for the world revolution. How the two of them collided is a story too long to tell.

“So, you are making your money with automobile racing?” Kimberly asked her and Anita answered: “Yes, one can say so, even though I don’t race myself.”
Kimberly critically questioned that profession: “And are you aware of the fact that automobile racing is the most fascist sport on earth?”

If there was one thing that Anita had learned about university politics, it was that leftist people often mixed up fascism with capitalism and that was why they didn’t know their enemy. So, she answered critically: “I agree, if you say that automobile racing is the most capitalist sport of the world, but what is fascistic about it?”
“Then, why for example, are there no black or Jewish racers?”
Anita said: “First of all, I know a black driver and secondly, I think it's more of a social thing than a racial problem. Most people from minorities don’t have the money to buy their sons a go-kart and if they have some, they worked harder for it and don’t want their children to waste their money on those things.”

Kimberly ignored that answer kept shooting holes in Anita’s conscience: “I assume you talked about National Socialism in school.”
“Yes, that was always a topic, “Anita answered her
“But you only learned about the crimes of the Nazis, not about the structures which still continue.”
“What kind of structures do you mean?” Anita wasn’t sure if Kimberly was offending her, implying that all Germans are still Nazis.
“Well, for example, automobile racing. Are you aware that the Nazis supported that sport because it displays the New Man. Male, powerful, fearless and controlling technology? The New Arian. The automobile racers were the first to ban Jews. What do you think about that?”
“But you can say that about every sport,” Anita’s defence was a bit weak. But then Kimberly just got started: “Have you heard of those?” She asked and named race tracks, cars and drivers. Anita had to admit that she knew the race track and one of the drivers was the father of one pilot in her team. 

For Anita, it was a strange feeling to know somebody, at least by sight, who had collaborated with the Nazis. (Her grandparents had told her that they had hidden Jews in their basement.) For the first time in her life she started to doubt whether she had taken the right choices in her life. The Nazi accusations had really caused a stir in her mind. Because of her 1990s German socialization she knew that there was nothing worse than being fascist. And now her working environment had been declared as such. But it was not only that. She also had the feeling that she had missed something essential, something meaningful in her life. When she was young she had always imagined that she would join a group like Greenpeace or Attac to save the world at least a little bit. And what had happened to that dream? Today, she was organising press conferences for people who objectively were not even unimportant but harmful for the environment.

That conversation gave her many sleepless night and desperate hours of self-doubt. Should she quit her job and work as an anti-globalization activists in the rain forest? But, on the other hand, what was Kimberly doing to change the world? Reading Marx over and over again, would that alone be enough? In the end, Anita concluded that she would continue to recycle her garbage and donate money to a feminist education centre in her street and thus help change the world at least a little bit.

What's vital?

A computer with an internet connection and two hours to kill can take you anywhere. On that particular day, we came to a page that would calculate how much unemployment payment we would receive if we weren’t students. I would get exactly € 2 less a months than what my student job and scholarship add up to. 

One friend of mine was convinced that one couldn’t live off the money received from the state. She was politically active and demanded a raise in that payment. I told her that I agreed with her that the reform of the employment market wasn’t the best possible solution. But I disagreed with her that one would starve to death because of it. After all, I wasn’t starving. I ate healthy food, was going out regularly and was able for my horse riding classes. The € 2 didn’t really make the difference. 

“But you couldn’t afford to go to the theatre and that’s vital,” she told me
“Theatre? No, food is vital and housing,” I told her, “and the state pays your rent and you can buy enough food for that money.”

Her answer was, “but you have to take your children to the theatre regularly, so that they can receive a classical education. And that’s vital for their future.” She wouldn't change her point of view that theatre and music lessons were as important for a child's education as food and a warm place to sleep, no matter how long we argued.

This conversation again made me realize that I was different. As a child, I had been to the theatre three times; once because a friend of by parents’ played in an amateur drama group, once with school and once because there was an opera performed in a football stadium. Nevertheless, I made it to the age of 24 and what’s even more a miracle is that I was able to enter into spheres where theatre visits are as important as food. And that, even though I only knew Romeo and Juliet from the movies.

Actually I like Germany because...

I’ve always been one of the least patriotic people one can imagine. Not because of the great history and politics, I just could never really identify with the country I happened to be born in. I always felt like an underdog. So, in sports, I could always identify of the underdogs but since German TV only shows those sports where Germans are winning, I never cheered for the Germans. Germany just seemed a country too big for a small person like me, Belgium seemed more fitting, or Estonia, or Slovenia.

I didn’t find myself in German literature either: Goethe was boring, Fontane was too uptight and Grass too perverted.

I didn’t feel so much ashamed of German history. That is because I can identify more with the victims than with the perpetrators. A German-Jewish academic from Berlin seems much closer to me than a painter from Vienna. But the German virtues never seemed to apply to me either: I’m not a very punctual person, I grew up in an anti-authoritarian way, so discipline is a foreign word to me, my flat is always in a mess.

I had always felt lost in the German society in a way, so I moved to abroad. And I had been to Spain for about four month when I found myself uttering the following “I actually like Germany because....”

That day, I had just tried to book a flight from Spain to Finland, bad idea – I had a connection via Germany and Estonia, taking first a bus, then an airplane, another airplane, a ferry, and then a train. 

That night I was out with my international friends and I told them: “I actually like Germany because it’s so easy to get everywhere from there.” There was no sarcasm on my voice. My international friends told me: “Come on, don’t be so cynical, it’s nothing wrong with loving your country.”

But I meant it. That is why I like Germany – because it’s so central in Europe and it’s so well connected with flights and international train. I love travelling and therefore, I like Germany, because it’s so easy to travel from Germany. Maybe, that is my sense of postmodern patriotism in a way.

...and in the end, it turned out that the Spanish ALSA was more reliable that the Deutsche Bahn.

The future chancellors and Nobel Prize winners - 5 years later

It was the 4th of July 2003, our personal independence day – graduation day at a high school in Aachen, not just any high school, the elitarian high school of Aachen, one member of the German cabinet had graduated from that school, one famous violinist and a poet as well. There we were – 80 graduates, 19 years old kids dressed in suits and evening dresses, playing punk songs while receiving our diplomas.

We were the elite of tomorrow, we were told in the festive speeches, we could be anything we wanted, if we just tried. And we felt greatness. We were smart, we thought we knew everything, we would never be more mature than that. The world had only been waiting for us to be freed from school.

In the year book it was written about each of us: “the most likely to become the German chancellor” “will win the Nobel prize in biology” “I want to change the world with my writings,” and we were on our way to do that.

Three months later, I found myself in the university cafeteria of the Humboldt University drinking coffee with people from the elitarian high school in Kaiserslautern, Bremen and Sprock-Hövel. They were as great as I was, 300 first year students all with the same goal of achieving fame and greatness.

On Christmas that year, I talked with my best friend from the high school days. She had always been the best in class and she studied medicine now. “It was hard to get used to the fact that you are just average,” she told me – exactly.

Today, exactly 5 years have passed since we were told that we were the stars of tomorrow. None of us has achieved that greatness so far. None of us has failed completely either, as far as I know. Some have finished their job training, have their first real job, car and two-room-flat. But most of us are still caught up in university, studying beyond the four and half years of regular time.

Maybe five years is not enough time to build up fame and greatness. But each of us had to learn a lesson – we were not the only ones out there, thousands as high school graduates in this were the same as we were, the world had not been waiting for us. Yes, we are average and the thing we would have never imagined is: we enjoy it!

Marilyn Manson and Axl Rose in the library catalogue

The public library in Aachen is one of the ugliest buildings imaginable. The 1970’s proliferation of concrete definitely left its traces. No matter of the weather, inside there was always the light of a rainy November day. To get there, one had to step across the the bus station which was known for its notorious smell of urine and for syringes on the floor. Not exactly where you would want your teenage daughter to hang out every Saturday, to be honest.

Nevertheless, my mother happily gave me the signature for the library card. She was relieved that I asked for a library card and not for a belly button piercing, I think. So, I got inside with my shiny and new library card and I started to browse the shelves. At the age of 12 I had no clue about Literature. So, I started with books which had been turned into those movies that I wasn’t allowed to watch. Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery, The Silence of the Lambs you name it.

My parents didn’t really care what I read as long as I brought home books instead of boys. They completely lost track when I discovered the English Book sections and tried to read John Irving’s Hotel New Hampshire in the original version.

On the forth floor, there was the music section. One could borrow CDs, and honestly, I often copied them to tapes, I hope I’m not getting sued for this confession. I still have those tapes in my basement but I have no tape recorder to play them anymore. There was also sheet music and my piano teacher's disappointment was big as my excitement when I found the notation sheets for November Rain by Guns’n’Roses. It was not what my she had wanted me to play, but at least it made me practise every day.

In 1999, the public library became innovative and introduced the highlight of the latest technology – the internet. An hour costed 5 Marks, I think I spent all my pocket money and all of my Thursday afternoons there. The Internet brought world to a girl in the backstreets of this country's western periphery: I could find out the newest gossip about my favourite rock stars, print out the lyrics of their songs, write emails to people in the USA or to my friends from across the street.

My father always said that I was crazy. He thought it was all about printing things out and he could go online at his workplace and get me the things I wanted. But he neglected the excitement of having the world at my fingertips. Besides, could I really make my father print out the lyrics of Marilyn Manson’s The Dope Show?

So, what did the public library in Aachen do to me? Horror novels and rock music with submissive lyrics, hanging out in a poor quarter of town regularly, becoming a music pirate? Well, when I first came to university, I had long been used to travelling to the world of libraries.

Emotional Baggage

Everybody in their twenties carries around a lot of emotional baggage. Jessica did so even more than other people. Six weeks had passed since she had broken up with her ex when things started to get serious with Paul.

To Paul Jessica seemed like the woman he wanted to marry. She was good-looking and not bitchy at all. This time, he was for real and  he wanted things to work out. When they first started dating Jessica told him about her ex, how he had made her feel like a sexual object. Paul decided that he would never let her feel like that.

Now Paul found himself in a paradox. He asked himself: how to have sex with a woman without making her feel like a sexual object? Of course, he wanted to have sex with her – that belonged to a relationship, but he did not want her to know that he did. He even researched in the Cosmopolitan and found out: Women easily think that men only want sex.

Jessica, on the other hand, wanted to be desired in a sexual way. She just did not know how to ask for it. She was wondering what was wrong with him, so she took the first sexual step. Afterwards he kept telling her: “Oh I didn’t know you were such a passionate woman.” He made sure she knew that she had started it. Soon, Jessica got tired of arguing with him after each act of compassion, who was to blame. He always said it was her even though he knew it was him. Paul always repeated that she was so passionate and she began to think that he considered that to be something wrong. Did he not like a woman who took the initiative? Did he prefer a rubber doll?

In fact, Jessica wasn’t enjoying sex with Paul. He was always asking her ver y tensely: “Do you really like it that way? You know some women think that this position is disrespectful to them.” All her excitement was gone after being asked for the fifth time if she was comfortable and she had to fake it. Of course, Paul’s concerns didn’t help his physical performance and Jessica thought that he was nervous about his best friend’s performance. She began to think that he was blaming her activity for that.

After a while, Jessica just didn’t want to sleep with Paul anymore. The mere thought of kissing him led to the image of another stressful night. That night the reversal of roles took place: Paul became the sexual monster he had been trying to repress. He continued trying, waking her up six times a night and telling her that she unconsciously tempted him. After she wrote him off the seventh time, he got up and held a piece of chocolate in front of her face. “If you’re not feeling well, eat that.” Jessica had never felt so disrespected in her life. She locked herself in the bathroom unable to face that now it had come true what she had wanted. She was desired but she lost the control over the situation. That made her freak out and reveal the monster in her.

Four days later, they had their break-up talk. Jessica believed that they had talked too much, Paul believed that they hadn't talked enough. Both weren't able to face the monstrous reflection of themselves in the eyes of the other. They ran away from the image in the mirror and accumulated even more baggage for the future.