Warning! Do not read on. This is a spoiler for the third book in the trilogy “The Bright Side of the Doom”. It is called “Deep in the West” and is the sequel to “The 18-Year-Old Who Wrote a Note and Disappeared”, which ends on Wednesday, August 15, 1984. Today I would have been released from the "Frohe Zukunft" (Happy Future, the name of the district in Halle where the youth prison is located) back to the East. Fortunately, my escape plan worked. I was spared 52 precious days. These are seven weeks and three days in which my metamorphosis from “Zoni” to “Bundi” began. “Bundis” is what we teenagers in the East called the people in the West. Teenagers in the West referred to us as “Zonis” when they talked about us behind closed doors. On August 15, 1984, two buses full of prisoners landed at the emergency reception center in Gießen in Hesse. There we received plenty of food, good pocket money, aphrodisiac toiletries and cozy accommodation. The older ones, who had been in the army or had suspicious occupations, had to answer questions by the BND. We young people were quickly waved through after a few formalities. A few days later, Harald and I took the Intercity train to another refugee camp in Unna-Massen in North Rhine-Westphalia. From a phone booth, I called Aunt Erika in Wuppertal for the first time. She was pleasantly surprised and unusually affectionate. “Yes, come over – then we'll see.” I'm curious to see what comes of it. In Wuppertal-Elberfeld, I got off a slow train and onto the suspension railway to Wuppertal-Barmen. Everything looks exactly like the postcards that are stuck in Grandma Frieda's kitchen cupboard (see Tuesday, January 17). I registered with the authorities, got a provisional ID and a comfortable place to stay in a well-kept residential home on Bramdelle. Then I went to the employment office. Uncle Werner and my cousin Karin came to visit in an Audio 100. It looked exactly like the spaceship I hitchhiked in from Michendorf to Potsdam in the spring of 1983 (see Thursday, January 12). We got to know each other and liked each other. At the nearest supermarket, Uncle Werner filled the trunk with food. Over the weekend, I was invited to lunch at Kirbergweg, where they live in a small attic apartment. Less than two weeks later, we organized a job on a farm just outside of Wuppertal through a personal contact at the fire station. For 600 marks a month, free board and lodging, I could help with the harvest, which of course I did immediately. However, this luck did not last long. The primitive accommodation in a converted shed under the roof was borderline. Before breakfast, lunch and dinner, the old farmer prayed earnestly with his aged parents. Because I didn't, they would look at me grimly. After the harvest, it was all about the cattle. Shoveling manure all day, milking cows and occasionally disposing of a dead calf. From five in the morning until late at night. As soon as the farmer drove his tractor onto the fields and I was left to do all the dirty work alone, his old man would follow me around, threatening his crutch stick whenever something didn't suit him. When the farmer caught me red-handed during one of my very rare breaks, he promptly said, “You think the roast pigeons would fly into your mouth?” And so began the first end of the story of the 18-year-Lld set out to force his luck. That's it? For this s**t I paid with jail! In my desperation, I called Uncle Werner. He understood immediately. Without even a hint of reproach, he and his best buddy came to my aid that very same night. We threw my belongings out of the attic window directly into the trunk of his spaceship and made off without saying a word. The farmer looked after us in disbelief. He may have made the calculation without the servant. My uncle waved at him friendly. At the same time, he gave me an unmistakable wink, making it clear whose side he was on. Man, that feels good. In the Zone, I would have been arrested for that and imprisoned again as a repeat offender under Article 249 (see Sunday, June 10). Ifs, buts, and maybes – that zone is now way out there, across the border in the far east. To be continued. Get full access to How To Diaries at tjannot.substack.com/subscribe
