Part 3 What a difference between what I was in Genova And what I had been before I can remember I was, like all youngsters in the small town, a member of a traditional association We wore traditional clothe, which looked like uniforms And marched on holy days with marching music All this looked like a kind of amateur army with wooden rifles and wooden horses and we took ourselves very seriously we all dreamt about one day defending our country and become heroes x the first change came when I was 17 years old there was a small party with my classmates we were all very drunk and one had the idea to cut my hair that way, I got a haircut like a punk the next day when I went home to the small town the people there didn’t want to talk to me anymore I asked myself “Had I changed? Am I someone different?” I couldn’t understand them today, I know: “in these societies it’s forbidden to be different, to have other thoughts or opinions. Be like all the others and don’t ask questions!” x my grandmother had around 13 sisters and brothers my mother had 4 sisters and one brother her brother died when he was still a baby I wouldn’t say my mother’s relation to her sisters was good one of her sisters was a nun and lived in a monastery and I met her only sometimes in summer or at Christmas when I was around 7 or 8, I asked her why she had become a nun she answered that she couldn’t cope with the death of her father on the way home in our car, I said aloud “Poor dear! She became a nun because of the death of her father!” My mother sitting in front with my stepfather turned around “That’s a lie! Her lover left her!” x my stepfather’s family and relatives were rich, my mother’s poor therefore, my stepfather’s family could never really accept my mother and me however, my mother was a woman who could well defend herself and was always ready to provoke them it was family event, one of the elders had her / his birthday my mother had convinced my stepfather to buy a new suit one of the relatives commented on the new suit and my mother: “Yes, before he (my stepfather) was a grey mouse. In contrast, at least, one can look at him now!” I think my mother wanted to belong to these people because they were rich and therefore, she even accepted to suffer x I bought a second class ticket to Cannes in France This city or settlement was one of the symbols for the film industry, a kind of European Hollywood in the small city in the country where I grew up, there wasn’t a cinema or bookshop but one could find a TV-set in every room of the house my childhood as well consisted of TV, coca cola, chocolate and pepper chips (fried spicy slices of potatoes) when I moved out of my mother’s house, I left these at home however, one can’t drop so fast what one has been living in for the whole of one’s life, which in my case meant my childhood, as I was only 17 years old was I closing up my childhood altogether? x people on the train told that the film festival had not begun or was already over, I don’t remember but they suggested me to get off the train in Nice “It’s nice in Nice!” they told me this city has 1.5 million habitants in summer and 0.5 million in winter in the 1980’s in summer, the beach was full of rucksack tourists like me young people from all over Europe, north Africa and there, I got my first cultural shock in Europe people move their hand upwards in north Africa downwards when they want you to come up to them and then, they say “Viens!” at that time, I did neither understand French nor their body language, I just stood there and didn’t know what to do x at that time, I still had my haircut of a punk therefore, the north Africans on the beach of Nice called me “Serdouk”, which means something like “cockerel” a year later, when I wasn’t a tourist anymore, the Spanish pronounced it “cerdo”, which means “pig” so they changed into “Sergio”, which is a normal name for a man back in France, it became “Serge” however, the French couldn’t imagine a German to be called “Serge” so they gave me what they thought to be a real German name, which was “Hans” of course, nobody in Germany would call their child “Hans” anymore, but in their heads and from the French films of the after second world war period, every German was a “Hans” Part 4! Back to list!