1.1 What I Will Do On Mein Sommerferien
Guten Morgen, I am Johan and this is my big sister Gertrudis and we are aboard the City Night Line express, soon to be arriving in our hometown, Berlin! Since our schooling in Zurich has ended for the summer months, we are invited to room with our mother and her new boyfriend, Markus Vebbling of the definitive Kraut-metal band, Anschluss!! I have yet to greet him, as I was away skiing the Großglockner the weekend he and Mother visited last year, but Gertrudis gave the coupling two enthusiastic thumbs up and despite her own unreliable romantic impulses, I want to believe her.
He’s known for being in-your-face and unpredictable onstage, sometimes violent, Gertrudis tells me with a denigrating smirk, as if I’m not already aware. I admit, I don’t listen to much contemporary music as I’m happily stuck in a Chicago blues and jazz phase. But anyone with a heartbeat and an Internet connection will know of Anschluss!! They aren’t popular enough to play the stadium circuit yet, but their live shows are known to be over-the-top and gruesome, filled with weapons-grade pyrotechnics, sado-masochistic rape scenarios, and the slaughter of farm animals. Fans have been stomped to death, animal-rights groups have protested, but to no avail: Anschluss!! continues to up the Kraut-metal ante.
But he’s really a sweetheart in person, and shorter than you’d expect, Gertrudis says of Vebbling.
Father, to put it mildly, isn’t pleased with the recent developments in Mother’s romantic life, but he since he resides in Dubai and since he engaged in extramarital relations with a cycle of women and a schoolgirl I attended Hauptschule with, he has little authority in the matter of our upbringing and so both Gertrudis and I are looking forward to spending the summer in Berlin. Prior to the divorce, our parents traveled frequently for Father’s business. Seventeen years ago next month, I was born while they lodged in a Super 8 Motel in Hackensack, New Jersey, but both Gertrudis and I were raised in Berlin. Any time we get the opportunity to return to the city we have called home all these years, we happily take it—most of all Gertrudis, since one of her boyfriends resides in Friedrichshain. In fact, right down the Straße from Mother and Markus Vebbling!
We’re talking about going Russendiskoing, and we’ll definitely check out the Kit Kat and maybe even Vivaldi, Gertrudis is saying as our train approaches the outskirts of the capital—but because American hip hop and Joan Jett is blasting in her headphones, she is shouting and since we are not in a cabin, I am embarrassed our fellow travelers are eavesdropping. I know by we she means she and her Freund, Anselm, not she and her kid brother. Nevertheless, I can’t help but recall our times together when Mother and Father were united, back when Berlin was vast and frightening, but fun. Father was athletic at the time and used to take us on long bicycle rides around the city, along the Spree and through the Tiergarten, where we’d wolf down wursts and amble among the deciduous trees and visit the orangutans at the Zoologischer. Mother was busy studying at the Institut and then the Wall collapsed and Father engaged in his extramarital relations and our parents’ marriage had ended and ever since Berlin has not been the same and Gertrudis hasn’t been the same and neither have I, so although I haven’t formulated this to anyone yet, I’m hoping spending this Sommerferien with Mother and Markus Vebbling in Berlin will, if not salvage, then at least resuscitate the enjoyable times we used to have together as a family.
Imagine my shock and unrest, then, when Mother collects us at the Hauptbahnhof and announces that we will not reside with her and her rock-star boyfriend in Friedrichshain. Instead, we will accompany her and Vebbling to America for a few weeks if not the entire summer!