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Today's quote:

Thursday, July 31, 2025

Too Much and Never Enough

 

This is an interview from five years ago. Things are a lot worse today!

 

In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.

 

Click on Watch on YouTube
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

 

Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.

A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.

Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.

 

To read a preview, click here

 

Why anyone would waste their time to write a book about this human landfill is beyond me, but then again, she's his niece, and why not make a bit of pin money while he rips off the country to the tune of billions.

You know I love books. I can never refuse a book. I buy loads of them, but I won't buy this one. Seeing him in the daily news is quite enough.

 


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The School of Life

 

Click here to listen to the man himself

 

Alain de Botton is one of my all-time favourite living authors. I should have read his books many, many years ago, among them "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work", "The Consolations of Philosophy", and "How to Think More About Sex" --- well, maybe not "How to Think More About Sex", but you know what I mean.

In between writing his books, he also runs the "School of Life", which sells more books and articles. One was recently published on the web free of charge and it's worth reading --- and not just because it's free:

 


 

We Are All Lonely – Now Can We Be Friends?

However appalling it may feel, loneliness is – in the end – always an illusion; an unfortunate consequence of not knowing other people well enough. In our isolated hutches, we develop a picture of what our fellow humans are like which – cruelly – bears little relation to reality. We destroy our self-confidence with repeated convictions that we are the only ones who can feel so many regrets, who are so foolish and so repulsive, who have said so many silly and naive things, who are so confused and so at sea, so despairing and so hopeful, so worried and so fragile. It’s even very difficult – despite every rational reassurance – not in the end to believe that we are the only ones without a partner or who will be alone (again) on Saturday night.

In other words, the root cause of loneliness is a lack of reliable information about the true context in which our feelings of isolation unfold; an erroneous fixation that we must be alone in feeling alone. 

But nature doesn’t create anomalies on the scale we posit. We cannot – on a planet of eight billion – be as peculiar as we suppose. We never have more in common with others than when we are convinced of our isolation. If only we could believe it, right now the famous person is lonely, the distinguished person is lonely, the beautiful person without any apparent problems is lonely. The person writing this – and the one reading it – are lonely. This one can’t find a way to tell the world who they are sexually; that one never asks for help because they think they will be rejected. This one – who weeps every night – wears a convincing smile every day; that one who appears strong suspects everyone is mocking them. If our collected sighs could be heard, they would be the loudest, most sorrowful sound in the universe.

Deep into the 21st century, we remain hopeless at choreographing events which could give us a chance at breaking down the walls. We continue to make do with institutions known as ‘parties’, in which we manoeuvre with unwieldy enquiries, like animals trying to break into a jar of honey: ‘Been doing anything interesting lately?’ we grimace, ‘Got any plans for the holidays?’ We haven’t made progress since the Sumerians. 

In fairness, at various points in history, a few ambitious people have had a go at rethinking sociability. There were monks and nuns who took themselves away to sublime buildings in the countryside and attempted to create tight communities in which their souls might mingle with those of others under the eyes of a benevolent god. There were aristocratic hosts and hostesses who put on lavish dinners and intellectual salons and strived to ensure that the ambassador would meet the scientist and the wit could charm the reverend. But none of this has necessarily helped. We may be living in a city of 10 million – and still have no one to eat with tonight. We have worlds to offer and yet most of us could consider ourselves lucky if we died with two good friends to our name. 

This is where art may – on a good day – play a role. We sometimes wonder what it might really be for; the claim here is that it accedes to one of its highest functions when it manages to introduce us to one another’s interior lives, when it can tell us something of what everyone is really thinking and what we might actually want to say – were we not so inhibited and so ashamed, when it functions as the perfect, abstracted friend, the sort we imagine so well and meet so seldom. 

Whenever art manages to do this – be it in a film, a novel, a poem, or a set of photographs – we tend to register a basic sense of amazement. How astonishing, we come away thinking, that we’re perhaps not wholly distinctive after all. Maybe, despite the surface guff, we’re all siblings in the most beautiful, releasing and touching of ways; we in Sydney and La Paz, Ennetmoos and Accra, all somewhat mad, intense, broken, idealistic, desperate and craving. For a moment, we may feel dizzy at the unity of our state; there has been no point to all our years of reserve and suspicion. The whole defensive structure has always built on an error. We are among friends, always, we live with brothers and sisters and never know it. The thought threatens to transform everything. 

This kind of happiness can be hard to bear. Which is perhaps why, like many essential ideas, it is in the habit of weakening over time. We need constant reminders of its force – and of its revolutionary potential. 

It’s in the very confession of our sense of isolation that we can find redemption. Once someone has said ‘I’m lonely’, there is never any further reason to believe in our singularity; it’s probably the most generous utterance of which anyone is capable. The cause of loneliness is a myth, a devilish myth about what it is to be a normal person. We are only ever lacking information, never humanity or a chance at a new friendship.

 


 

Which is why I don't fly anymore

 

I seem to have got off lightly, as he mentioned La Paz and Ennetmoos, but not Nelligen - nor Cooktown, Hubert! (as for Fairfield, Connecticut, that would need a whole new blog to explain). Anyway, that's it then! Please don't disturb me again as I'm quite disturbed enough already.

 


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The party is over

 

 

Judging by the accumulated number of plastic take-away containers, it was more of a Tupperware party, but who am I to quibble - in fact, who am I? At my age, anything even merely resembling a party is a party. It's all over bar the driving to the bus stop at the nearby Steampacket Hotel and picking her up.

I've straightened out the bed, put the toilet seat down again, and did one final sweep through the living room (more with my eyes than a broom), and after five wonderful weeks of total bliss and solitude, of staying up late and sleeping in, 'the time has come', as the walrus said.

 

Padma is practically here already: this is her last photo taken in Jakarta
just before check-in at Jakarta airport, with her sister Rina and Rina's son Tim

No change of plans, but planes, in Bali
Not another duty-free BALI t-shirt for me, Padma?

 

Perhaps five weeks were just right, and now is the time to remember what Roger Deakin so touchingly and tellingly described in his book "Notes from Walnut Tree Farm", "I need someone to fold the sheet; someone to take the other end of the sheet and walk towards me and fold once, then step back, fold and walk towards me again. We all need someone to fold the sheet. Someone to hitch on the coat at the neck. Someone to put on the kettle. Someone to dry up while I wash."

 

 

I've just checked the weather forecast and it doesn't look too "hot", so Padma may be in for a bit for a shock after five weeks in the tropics. Anyway, I've two cups set up on the kitchen table, and the kettle filled and ready to be switched on as soon as we get back from the bus stop.

 


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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

The longest I ever worked in one place was here!

 

No, not down here at street level ...

... but up there, behind those windows on the top floor.

Click here for GOOGLE Map

 

I had no choice but to stay because I was "indentured labour", committed to serve out my three articled years on the sort of paltry pay which even then barely qualified as pocket money. But those were the rules in those days: you worked for next-to-nothing and you never broke your articled years, because you'd never be given a second chance. But it paid off in the end!

It wasn't always easy! As I wrote elsewhere: "Hinter diesen Fenstern im Obergeschoss der Münzstraße 2 saßen in den 60er Jahren zwanzig Leute in drei Zimmern mit EINEM fensterlosen Klo!" [Translation]

Those were the hungry post-war years and feeling comfortable at work was the least of our worries. "Zwanzig Angestellte und Lehrlinge - ich war einer der Lehrlinge - teilten sich drei Zimmer so groß wie normale Wohnzimmer, mit Schreibtischen - und ich meine "Tische" mit nur zwei Schubladen - die ohne Zwischenraum Brust an Brust und Seite an Seite quer durchs Zimmer aufgestellt waren." [Translation]

We were not only hungry for work to better ourselves, but we were also hungry in a real sense, and the company, to its credit, catered for this. "Der Büroleiter und Abteilungsleiter der jeweiligen Abteilung hatten den Luxus eines 'richtigen' Schreibtisches direkt am Fenster, atmeten aber sonst auch die selbe dicke Luft und aßen den selben Mittagstisch der kurz vor Mittag von einer Großküche abgeliefert wurde. Zwei Lehrlinge mußten dann ihre Tische opfern, eine Plastiktischdecke wurde darüber gelegt, und die Dame von der Buchhalterung spielte "Mutti" und servierte die Königsberger Klöpse oder Kohlroladen oder Falschen Hasen oder Grünkohl mit Würstchen." [Translation]

After lunch, the real discomfort started, because ... "Natürlich mußte das alles auch einmal wieder weg und der Wettlauf der zwanzig Leute zum Klo began, ein Klo gerade groß genug für den Klositz und ein Handwaschbecken welches seinen Namen verdient hatte denn nur EINE Hand passte da rein. Und natürlich passte nur EIN Mensch ins Klo und wenn dieser Mensch dann auch noch seine BILD-Zeitung mit zum Klo genommen hatte - oder im Falle des Fußball-verrückten Abteilungsleiter der Kraftfahrzeugversicherungs-Abteilung das KICKER Sports-Magazin - da Zeitungslesen bei der Arbeit verboten war, dann mußte man seinen Atem halten und warten was vielleicht auch das Beste war denn diese kleine Kammer hatte weder ein Fenster noch sonst irgendeine andere Ablüftung. Der einzige Luxus war richtiges Klopapier auf einer Rolle und nicht wie zuhause geviertelte Seiten der Braunschweiger Zeitung, was zeitlich auch besser war denn sonst hätten die Leute auch noch diese Seiten gelesen." [Translation]

 

"Have 'Kaufmannsgehilfenbrief', will travel!"

 

No wonder I quickly served out my time, grabbed my newly-acquired "Kaufmannsgehilfenbrief" and, after a short detour as book-keeper on an autobahn-construction job to earn some extra money, I emigrated to Australia --- since when I ricochetted from job to job some fifty times across a dozen countries, never staying more than those three years.

 


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The first Smart Phone

 

 

Mention the word "smart phone", and I'm immediately taken back to Barton House in Canberra and its TV Lounge which filled up to capacity as soon as the "Get Smart" theme could be heard up and down the corridor.

Come on, press the play button to take you back to those happy days:

 

 

The year was 1965. I had just arrived in Australia, joined the ANZ Bank, and had moved into Barton House, which offered mixed company around the clock and Mixed Grill at least once a week. The Mixed Grill was eaten in the always busy and always jolly Dining Room, and the mixed company came into its own in the TV Lounge when the lights were dimmed and boys and girls squeezed into the few available armchairs.

Once a week the TV Lounge was packed to overflowing when Maxwell Smart uttered his most famous catchphrase "Good thinking, 99". It was the 1960s' equivalent of today's "Awesome", and used at every possible - and impossible - opportunity. "Can I get you another beer?" "Good thinking, 99." "Turn up the sound, will you?" "Good thinking, 99."

"Get Smart" premiered on 18 September 1965 and ran for an incredible 138 episodes, which meant I practically grew up with it during my first two years in Australia. And I still haven't grown out of it because I still sometimes say "Good thinking, 99" to take me back to a wonderful time in what is still a wonderful country. Want to hear it? "Good thinking, 99."

 


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Ein Kapitel für sich

 

Lese das Buch here

 

Im Frühjahr 1948 wurde Walter Kempowski wegen Spionage verurteilt, weil er Frachtbriefe aus der Reederei seines Vater an die Amerikaner weitergeleitet hatte, um zu demonstrieren, wie die Russen die von ihnen besetzte 'Zone' ausbeuteten.

Mit Walter wurden auch seine Mutter und sein Bruder Robert zeitweilig eingesperrt. Im vorliegenden Roman läßt der Autor jeden der Beteiligten aus seiner Sicht über die Haftzeit berichten - hinzu kommt als 'Gegenstimme' die der Schwester Ulla, die damals in Dänemark lebte.

Fern von allem sentimentalen Selbstmitleid, eher untertreibend, was das persönliche Betroffensein angeht, beschreibt Kempowski jene bitteren Jahre.

Mit seiner neunbändigen Deutschen Chronik, zu der Romane wie "Tadellöser & Wolff" (1971), "Ein Kapitel für sich (1975), "Aus großer Zeit" (1978), "Herzlich willkommen" (1984) gehören, wurde Kempowski zum Bestsellerautor und Chronisten des deutschen Bürgertums.

 

 

Ich habe mir das Buch und den Film hier "auf Vorrat" gelegt für die Tage wenn ich mehr Zeit haben werde es zu lesen und mir anzuschauen.

 


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So weit die Füße tragen

 

Click on Watch on YouTube

 

As prisoner of war, Clemens Forell, a German soldier during WW II, was sentenced to 25 years in a labour camp in far east Siberia. After four years working in the mines he escapes from the camp (in 1949) and tries to get home to his wife and children.

For three years he journeys through Siberia. An odyssey of 14,000 kilometers, set against a backdrop of desolate and inhospitable landscape, beset by danger (from both animals and humans). Constantly battling the worst nature can throw at him, Forell makes his way, step by step, towards Persia and the longed-for freedom. Sometimes riding on trains, sometimes by boat, mostly on foot, he never knows if his next step won't be his last. His prosecutor Kamenev is always right behind him, and more than once it seems that Forell is captured again ...

 

You can read the book online by clicking here
(SIGN UP - it's free! - LOG IN, then BORROW)

 

This film, first made as a TV-series in black-and-white in six parts of altogether 400 minutes in 1959, and remade in 2001 as a feature film in colour in both the German and Russian language, is based on the book by Josef Martin Bauer which has been translated into fifteen languages.

It is the true story of the German officer Cornelius Rost (1922-1983) who in 1949 escaped from the Siberian Gulag and for three years travelled 14,000 km, mainly on foot, to present-day Iran. After his return to Germany, Rost lived for the next 30 years in constant fear of being re-arrested by the KGB and died a broken man.

And yet, he was lucky to have come back at all! Of the 3.5 million German prisoners-of-war in the Soviet Union, the vast majority perished in the forced labour camps.

 


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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Meine Henkers Mahlzeit

 

 

There's this two- or three-minute segment on ABC Radio National called "Word Up" in which we are being taught one of the diverse languages of black Australia - one word at a time. I won't burden you with my opinion of this show, other than to offer you my own "three words at a time".

Today's "three words at a time" is "meine Henkers Mahlzeit", and you're looking at it: two grass-fed ANGUS beef sausages served on a mustard-covered slice of wholemeal bread. It is the last meal I prepared myself before the chief cook and bottle-washer returns from her five weeks in Indonesia, and so it qualifies for the customary ritual of serving a last sumptuous meal to the condemned prisoner prior to his execution.

 

 

And here is another "three words at a time": "perekat gigi palsu", which means "denture adhesive" (perekat = adhesive; gigi = tooth; palsu = false). It's the same stuff Woolies sell here for $12 to $14 (depending on the day of week!) for a 40-gram tube instead of the above 60 gram.

Padma is bringing back THREE tubes as they cost less than half in Indonesia, and because I need a lot because I promised to wear my new chompers more often to stop people from thinking that she's my carer.

Those savings should at least recover the cost of the in-flight drinks Padma is likely to consume on the way home. Which reminds me of that Australian couple I once met in my travels who were lugging a big bag of wine bottles around with them. Claiming their bragging rights, they told me that they owned a bottle shop back in Australia, and prior to their frequent overseas holidays, they would "sell" to themselves half a dozen of the most expensive wines - think of Penfolds Grange at $2,000 a bottle - and claim a refund for the GST "paid" at the airport's Customs counter. If in fact there were real Penfolds Granges behind those Penfolds Grange labels, they'd bring them home and put them back on the shelf. As they said, they always recovered the cost of their airfares!

Being just a couple of THOUSAND dollars, their scam wouldn't even get a mentioned in the recently discovered TWO BILLION dollar GST scam:

 

 

Maybe it has something to do with the "big lie" concept which relies on the falsehood being so grand that no-one would dare to question it, because I know that if I ever claimed too much in deductions on my tax return, they'd come down on me like a ton (or is that 'tonne'?) of bricks.

 


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Left-handers would have given their right arm to be right-handers

 

Brunsviga Adding Machine, Model 94T, Dimensions: 185W x 270D x 80H (excluding handle) Weight: 3.66 kg Manufactured: Brunswick, Germany

 

When I began work as an articled clerk in an insurance company in 1960, everything was done by hand and in the head. Only sometime later did the first hand-operated adding machine arrive which relieved the head but not the hand (or arm). Left-handers would have given their right arm to be right-handers because they were the only people those machines were designed for.

 

Brunsviga Model 13Z, Dimensions: Body 150W x 220D x 165H, maximum width 290mm Weight: 7.5 kg Manufactured: Germany

 

Later, much later, in fact, as late as 1970 when I had already emigrated to Australia and started work in a chartered accountant's office in New Guinea, did those hurdy-gurdy calculators arrive. What progress! No more page-long hand-written divisions or multiplications; those machines would do it all at the speed of a limp wrist! There were Odhners and Facits and Brunsvigas and they stayed around for decades.

While not-so-pocket-sized silent and electricity- and later battery-operated calculators gradually replaced the clanky hurdy-gurdies - even though hand-operated adding-machines still kept us going through the not infrequent New Guinea power black-outs - those muscle- although not mind-building hand-operated machines left their unintended mark on a whole generation of accountants of that time - see photo below.

 

 

It's only now in old age, after everything has begun to shrivel anyway, that we are regaining a slightly balanced look. Too late to claim compo!

 


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"By the time one has money to burn, the fire will have died out"

 

And there are so many more inspiring videos at reflectionsof.life.
Please watch them as they are very inspiring.

 

Do you feel like life is a constant game of catch-up? No matter how much you strive to get and do, you feel like you need to do more or have more?

We’re encouraged to seek out success, wealth, and material possessions, against which we measure our status, self-worth and happiness. We continually strive to achieve these things, but when we get them, we feel only a fleeting sense of happiness before setting our sights on the next thing. And this pursuit of 'stuff' often comes at the sacrifice of our physical, mental, and emotional health.

There’s no denying that money is an important part of our society and having a degree of financial stability increases our ability to enjoy life. But the reality is that most of us live in a world of overabundance. We need to realise that we have enough. We need to stop linking our self-worth and happiness to doing and having more. That’s a journey worth taking."

"Reflections of Life", a tiny collective of passionate filmmakers who live off-grid on the tip of Africa just outside Cape Town, dedicate their time to making films to share their ideas which they hope will inspire us all.

I love the South African scenery and their South African/Afrikaans accents - back in the late 60s, after my sojourn in South-West Africa, I had been offered a job with the then VOLKSKAAS and was sorely tempted to stay on in Cape Town - and I have been inspired by their stories. I think you will be inspired, too. View them on Youtube here.

And while you're there, click on the   Support Us   button to let them know that one of their stories touched another person's heart and mind.

 


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Erinnerungen an die alte Heimatstadt

 

Foto: H. Heidenbluth
Ursprünglich veröffentlicht auf der facebook-Seite "Braunschweig - Im Wander der Zeit"

 

Hier ging ich zweimal am Tag sechs Tage die Woche (damals arbeiteten wir noch eine 6-Tage Woche) für drei Jahre zu meiner Lehrstelle in der Münzstraße hin und zurück. Das war von 1960 bis 1963 als ich am Altewiekring 23 wohnte.

 

 

Jeden Morgen um 7 Uhr verließ ich das Haus, ging die Jasperallee runter bis zum Staatstheater, dann geradeaus den Steinweg entlang, links auf den Bohlweg und rechts durch die Schloßpassage auf die Münzstraße.

 

Ursprünglich veröffentlicht auf der facebook-Seite "Braunschweig - Im Wander der Zeit"

 

Das obige Foto ist von dieser alten Zeit denn daß sieht man schon an den vielen Volkswagen die damals jeder noch fuhr, selbst mein Chef, Herr Bezirksdirektor Manfred Weber, der in dem Haus mit der "Spare bei uns - Deutsche Bank" Reklame wohnte. Das war der Bohlweg 69/70 und er und seine Frau luden mich dort einmal zum Kaffee und Kuchen ein.

 

Auszug vom 1962 Braunschweiger Adressbuch

 

Ich habe ihm meinen kaufmännischen Lebenslauf zu verdanken denn als Volksschüler mit nur acht Jahren Schulunterricht hatte ich keine großen Berufschancen, schon gar nicht in der Versicherungsbranche in der alle anderen Lehrlinge Hochschulbildung und manche sogar Abitur hatten.

 

Hinter diesen Fenstern im Obergeschoss der Münzstraße 2 saßen in den 60er Jahren zwanzig Angestellte und Lehrlinge in drei Zimmern und nur einem fensterlosen Klo!
Lese mehr davon hier

 

Etwas muß ihm an meiner Bewerbung gefallen haben, die ich abschickte ohne jemand davon zu erzählen. Plötzlich kam dann die Einladung zu einem Vorstellungsgespräch und kurz danach wurde meine Mutter zum Büro eingeladen um meinen dreijährigen Lehrvertrag zu unterschreiben.

 

 

Ich hatte wenig verdient (ungefähr DM85,-- pro Monat im ersten Jahr), aber sehr viel gelernt, und daß war mir in meinem ganzen Leben auch später immer viel wichtiger gewesen. "Vielen Dank für die Chance die Sie mir gaben, Herr Weber. Ich werde Ihnen immer dankbar bleiben!"

Und auch ein "Danke schön" an den sehr netter Menschen von der facebook-Seite "Braunschweig - Im Wander der Zeit", der mir diesen alten Auszug von dem Braunschweiger Adressbuch von 1962 schickte.

 

 


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P.S. Und wer so eine Lehre macht, der kann auch was erzählen:
      The (articled) year my voice did not break
      "Buchhalternase" - Memories are made of this!
      You had to have a nose for it!

 

Mein erster Besuch in Deutschland in 1968

 

Auszug vom Braunschweiger Adressbuch 1969/70

 

Ein sehr netter Mensch mit dem ich Kontakt aufnahm durch die facebook-Seite "Braunschweig - Im Wander der Zeit", schickte mir nach meiner Anfrage diese Kopie vom Braunschweiger Adressbuch der Jahre 1969/70, denn ich hatte ganz vergessen wo mein Vater damals wohnte. Ich wusste nur daß es so ein Studentenhaus gewesen war.

Und so war es auch: es gehörte damals - und gehört immer noch - der Burschenschaft Arminia-Gothia, eine der pflichtschlagenden Studenten-Verbindungen, für die mein Vater so eine Art Hausvater war und meine Stiefmutter auch noch so eine Art Hausmutter und Reinemachefrau.

(Ich erinnere mich an den Keller in dem es ein tiefes einzementiertes Quadrat gab mit zwei Paar Fußabdrücken auf dem Boden auf denen sich zwei Studenten mit gezogenen Säbeln gegenüberstellen mußten um sich gegenseitig eine 'Mensur' ins Gesicht zu schlagen.)

 

Geysostraße 1
Die Webseite der Burschenschaft Arminia-Gothia

 

Nach meinen zwei Pflichtjahren in Australien wo ich mir eine neue Karriere als Bankkaufmann erarbeitet hatte, kam ich nachhause zurück mit dem Gedanken vielleicht wieder ein guter deutscher Bürger zu werden. Eine neue Anstellung bei der Braunschweigischen Staatsbank fiel mir fast in den Schoß, aber dennoch wurde mir die Entscheidung wieder abzuhauen leicht gemacht denn bei meiner Mutter und meinem Stiefvater auf dem Altewiekring 23 hatte man mir schon abgesagt und mein Vater und meine Stiefmutter in dem Burschenschafthaus hatten wenig Platz für mich - und außerdem war da auch noch der kalte deutsche Winter - und somit fuhr ich schon am 1. Mai wieder weg.

 

 

Ich mußte mich beeilen, denn "am 30. Mai ist der Weltuntergang, wir leben nicht mehr lang, wir leben nicht mehr lang". Wer erinnert sich noch an das Lied? Der Anlass dafür war die erste Flächenbombardierung der Stadt Köln im 2. Weltkrieg. Sie richtete sich nicht gegen militärische Ziele, sondern gegen die Zivilbevölkerung. In der Nacht vom 30. Mai auf den 31. Mai 1942 wurde von der britischen Luftwaffe der "1.000-Bomber-Angriff" auf Köln geflogen - als Vergeltung für die Angriffe der Hitlerarmee auf London und Coventry.

 

 

Und so ging es - auf einigen Umwegen - nach Süd-West Afrika wo ich als Buchhalter in Lüderitz arbeitete, und dann wieder zurück zu meiner alten Anstellung als Bankkaufmann in Australien, bis ich Ende 1969 nach Neu-Guinea flog um dort einen völlig neuen Beruf anzufangen als bald werdender aber zu der Zeit noch studierender Wirtschaftsprüfer.

 

 

Was ich aber jetzt wissen möchte ist wieso ich noch im Braunschweiger Adressbuch von 1969/70 stehe? Ich kann mich nicht daran erinnern zum Einwohnermeldeamt gegangen zu sein denn mein Aufenthalt war nur drei Monate. Ein Fall von übergründlicher deutscher Gründlichkeit?

 


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