Part 4 these were my first experiences in the big world and I was fascinated however, I was still just 17 years old and a tourist a year later, I was going to leave my home country for good I didn’t know that at that time but something had happened in me a feeling, which has not left me ever since for my classmates, their way of life was clear: school, university, military service, work, marriage, children, retire and die I knew I would choose another way and not be bored X right at the beginning of me arriving in Nice, my whole money was stolen of course, I rejected the idea of going home or calling home to send me some money I was much too proud for it some elder rucksack tourists, who, I suppose, have had such kind of experience before, showed me how to survive I had no money in my pockets but I was never hungry from this point of view, Europe is a wonderful place you can be very poor, but you can’t starve of hunger and during summertime on the beach, I needed nothing else than sunshine later on, I should experience how different Africa or Ukraine was x after forty-five days, one and a half month I had to go home again to leave my paradise, my dreams to go back into my golden, German cage all Germans do that when they are on holiday somewhere, one could really have the impression that Germans are a free people but when they cross the border to their home country, they let their heads hang and take their places as henchmen again does everybody have to live in certain lies? x people in Europe live in abundance, they always want just the best and despise everything what they don’t have to pay for all those rucksack tourists on the beach, of course, they didn’t sleep on the beach because of romantics they were students or shortly before finishing school and didn’t have much money they spend most of their money on alcohol for the parties they had every evening on the beach but what to eat? and that was my task. there was a fruit and vegetable market in Nice and it was cheaper for the market people to throw away what they couldn’t sell than to take it home again so, every day at twelve o’clock, I went to the market and collected the fruit and vegetables for the rucksack tourists during the day, they had fruit and in the evening we cooked the vegetables we were having big parties every evening with guitar playing, congas and bongos and singing and a lot of alcohol x going back to my home country was a sad event I had managed to survive without money that took every fear of the future or of life from me I only had to wait three quarters of a year to be 18 and then, nobody could ever again tell me what to do but I couldn’t wait I wanted to be free of any kind of thing or person sitting  on my neck some month later, I was still not 18, I moved out and rent a room for myself x I think it was at that moment when I had the dreams which I would made come true only some decades later I wanted to have a room, only a small one, surrounded by books, music, music instruments I wanted to have a surrounding which would inspire me after having spent all my childhood in stupidity I felt that on this summer holiday voyage, I maybe had found who I wanted to be x I still had to stay in my home city because I had still not reached my eighteens birthday a McDonald’s restaurant was my workplace so, I went to school from Monday to Friday and on Saturday and Sunday I worked at the McDonald’s restaurant I told everybody who wanted to hear it that I prepared to leave for good many of these people had the opinion that I was afraid of life and that I wanted to run away they asked me how I wanted to live, to survive or where I wanted to get money from and I think it was exactly that what I wanted to leave my hometown for I didn’t want to live always just with the thought in my mind that life was about survival x Part 5 Back to list!