

The Wandering Jewess

A German Millennial's Memoir

ZERLINA ALTER
Copyright © 2018 Zerlina Alter

ISBN: 9781730842931

Cover photo by mdGrafie.

www.zerlinaalter.com

Note to readers: Certain names have been changed throughout the work, regardless of whether such changes are specifically identified.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

For my grandmother Chana Alter,

who gave life to my mother and thereby to me.

CONTENTS

CONTENTS v

About the Author i

If there is a fire inside us, the match sits ready. ii

INTRODUCTION 3

THE TEST 7

AMERIKA 11

CONNECTICUT 17

NEW ENGLAND 35

MUNICH 45

EUROPA 52

TEL AVIV 63

STUTTGART 76

BOYS 86

BRAZIL 94

BERLIN 106

WIEN 130

INDIA 138

GERMANY 153

Die Füße im Feuer by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer 172
About the Author

Zerlina Alter studied European Studies and Public Policy in Maastricht, Hong Kong and Berlin. She worked for international organizations and a foundation that upcycles ocean plastic in Brussels. Follow @zerlinafanny on Instagram or learn more about her at www.zerlinaalter.com.

If there is a fire inside us, the match sits ready.

Let's create the spectacle!

INTRODUCTION

THIS BOOK IS an attempt to own my past. Am I a famous person or have I achieved to a degree worthy an honorable mention, a place in the Hall of Fame or a trophy for humble placement on the dining table? In terms of wealth, no. In terms of contribution to society, maybe. In terms of resilience, yes.

Born into the right family, I grew up in a pleasant city, Munich, in a remarkable country—Germany, studied abroad in the Netherlands and China, interned at international organizations in Vienna, Geneva, Paris...and then, by some joke of fate, found myself stuck in my parents' home for more than a year, sharing space with my ambitious Jewish mum and my routine-loving German father. Sound like fun?

I waited tables at trade fairs, shopped groceries for online buyers, applied for jobs without much luck. After having graduated with a Master from Germany's leading university for public policy, I didn't even own a functioning laptop. As waves of refugees had recently poured into Southern Germany, I filed documents according to the alphabet at Munich's youth refugee department. The five languages I spoke and National Merit Scholarship I'd earned did not seem to matter a thing. After six months of catering, food delivery, and paper dust, I secured a full-time job in communications that lasted for a sole three. Next, my mother no longer agreed to pay my board: "didn't the German government offer to cover basic expenses through Hartz IV benefits?"—Only people who have less than €5000 in assets can sign up for it. A-huh.

Was becoming a proper German jinxed? A good thing, maybe, as a year earlier, I'd told my friend David over Thai curry in a bar in Munich's Schwabing area I first intended to "conquer the world" before I'd be ready to settle in the land of Goethe and Schiller. I had made it to the UN and OECD alright, but at this stage, conquering any more than my financial independence seemed rather improbable. No, I didn't want to try my luck in Brussels as my Bachelor in European Studies would suggest, the city seemed dark and dirty to the Bavarian princess I was. At least the post I'd lost at the Public Relations firm afforded me a functioning laptop again. I swore to myself that this time, I would find a job I was actually excited about.

Then, the sky opened and I found myself at the World Economic Forum in Davos, employed at a major pharmaceutical firm and engaging with the offices of the world's top CEOs and leaders (Justin Trudeau's assistant sounded like he was the only important person on the planet and Gary Cohn's protégé at Goldman Sachs in New York office always answered emails at 9 am Basel time). From social security to working at Switzerland's second wealthiest pharmaceutical within a few months. Life is a joke is what I am trying to get at: paste your imagination over reality and smile at the tragedy.

From Basel onto Brussels, where I was offered a job in the EU bubble surrounding the Berlaymont building. _Mais, bien sur, monsieur!_. Using an Israeli software service, I tinkered with the website of the NGO "Waste Free Oceans" I was now responsible for handling. Promoting the upcycling of ocean plastic into commercial products, we sealed partnerships with Henkel and Baume et Mercier a year later. Precious confirmation that energy to make a difference was there. Yet, I missed familiarity, both literal and cultural. As Finnegan Fogg, I had embarked on a journey around the globe to finally realize that my _Heimat_ 1 was a privilege that shouldn't go wasted. Only did my circumnavigation not last 80 days, but led me to live in eight different countries.

Why had I lived in eleven cities across Europe, the United States and Asia? An adventurous and idealistic spirit inherited from my father, sure. But wandering is also a trend in my maternal line: from my great-grandmother to my mother, the women before me all left behind comforts to build lives in a country different from their first, settling in the land I was born in would be the statistical oddity. Germany's crimes against my Jewish grandparents and great-grandparents definitely added fire to the fuel of wanting to explore our rich planet.

For my graduate studies, I moved to the German capital, seeking to understand Europe's politics from its center and my country's changing reputation as a resident of hip and unconventional Berlin. In dramatic romantic entanglements, my Brazilian and Indian boyfriends showed me that though we may all know who Mozart and Monet were, we look at their opus for different reasons. While us mobile and educated Millennials share a city, we rarely share a past. Yes, the intellectual and cultural diversity is enormously enriching; it can also be heart-breaking.

Germans once ridiculed the image of the wandering Jew, a person passing from city to city, escaping perils and often remaining an outside observer to his local community. We all remember the defacing images posted on walls and signposts across the Third Reich. Today, many of us have become wanderers. Did Jews practice globalization a bit earlier than the rest of us? Is wandering not a fitting metaphor for our journey that is life? I am a proud wanderer, privileged to know that I will always have a safe home to return to. My beloved Germany.

My real first name is Jewish, and my real last name is German. For this book, I have switched it around, using my middle name, Zerlina taken from the farmer's girl Don Giovanni fancies in Mozart's opera of the same name, and then my mother's maiden name, an old Ashkenazi name. Innumerable Jewish surnames have perished in concentration camps, never to be carried on by their potential heirs, allow me hence to honor a name that has survived.

New York is my first big love, and it is because of a New Yorker that this book was written. By some grace, writer and entrepreneur James Altucher showed me we that we have to choose ourselves instead of waiting to be chosen. This book is a tribute to that.

THE TEST

IT WAS A BRIGHT July morning. I had just spent ten beautiful days in England, a few strolling around Cambridge with my friend Eva, some more with our former Slovenian Au pair Stefania in London. Eva and I had eaten scones with cream under the blossoming English orchards; in London, I had roamed bookstores and watched Kevin Spacey shine as Richard III at the Old Vic Theatre. Not sure which of the four different carrot cakes I'd tried was my favorite. My Master in Berlin left to its own devices. After the summer, Vikram and I would move to New York where his father, a well-linked Indian diplomat, would help us find work at the United Nations.

Eva at the time completed her master degree at Cambridge University, and my friend Sophie from formal dance class was on a year-long exchange at the formidable institution. I vividly remember one conversation Eva, Sophie and I had at brunch one morning, sprawled around Eva's dormitory living room table. Over toasted English muffins and jam, I stated that having children early would be a good thing. Why procrastinate it to your thirties? Why not grow with your kids, be their good friend and be able to relate to them easily? There was no sense in being thirty-five when you had your first child. The generational gap would be too wide, the emotional distance too large. Creating a young and vibrant family seemed like a better option, fostering responsibility, propelling forward and rooting with a stable sense of belonging.

Yes, Vikram and I currently focused on enjoying our time together. Matching like Yin and Yang, our love would produce a child at the exact right moment. Not now, as Vikram had a little physical issue that made getting pregnant unlikely, anyway. While my friends agreed with me that having cool and fit parents would be of advantage, they must have also seen the insanity of the proposition: Zerlina talking as if having kids was a decision one took as effortlessly as choosing to go to the movie theater. Little did I know that while I was speaking, an embryo formed inside me.

In front of Stefania's bathroom mirror in East London, I noticed that my breasts had changed shape. A little fuller, a little rounder. Ok, so the fact that I had recently relented the pill may have affected my body. No further mental preoccupation. I flew back to Berlin's Tegel Airport. Vikram, dashing as usual in his light-textured cotton shirt, welcomed me with a bundle of flowers and we boarded the bus to the Jugendstil apartment in Kreuzberg he shared with a philosophy student from Hamburg. I rented an apartment on nearby Bergmannstraße which our Polish handyman had recently renovated, but had moved most of my belongings to Vikram's room so we could spend all our days together. Now that I didn't study anymore and Vikram put the finishing touches to his thesis, living together made even more sense.

The next morning, I woke up at 5 am with the need to let water, the intensity surprised me. When I laid back in bed, Vikram opened his eyes. Both of us wide awake: one of those summer mornings on which going back to sleep makes no sense. The blue sky appeared through the room's long _Altbau_ windows so typical of Berlin's buildings built before the Second World War. What fun thing could we do in these early hours of the day? Always up for sports, Vikram proposed we go for a run together. Though not the greatest runner, I loved the idea, start the day with the right attitude and burn calories while at it. Shortly after the trail swooshed under the soles of our shoes. As we ran along the shore of Paul Lincke Ufer, the warm morning light shone through the surrounding oak trees..

Upon returning to his apartment, we napped and rose again at our usual time of 11.30 am. Then Vikram, who had also observed that my breasts looked different, urged we go to the pharmacy immediately to buy a pregnancy test. I did not like the thought, might have insisted we have breakfast first.

So we took the little stroll from Manteufffelstraße to Oranienstraße. How many times had we walked that same path to eat red lentil soup at Knofi for 2,50€ ? One of our first dates had even taken place in Lucia bar further down the street. Vikram waited outside while I entered the pharmacy near Görlitzer Bahnhof station and purchased the little rectangular package.

Let's do this, I thought to myself, better to know what is going on, anyway. When we arrived at the apartment, I went straight into the bathroom. Vikram stood beside the door while I peed on the strip. One second, two seconds, three seconds... and the red cross appeared. The moment I saw it glow, I was both shocked. And not surprised at all. I had sensed the differences in my body. I had not associated them with pregnancy.

A bliss poured through my body: I would be a mother! We would be parents! My face glowed of joy. And laughter. Vikram opened the door, saw the red cross (not the Swiss one), and joined in my exhilaration. His laughter though was less stable than mine: oscillating between ecstatic and desperate. Never had I imagined I would be pregnant a month after we had stopped contraception. Endorphins rushed in, and I felt that this was amazing and we were grown up for being able to conceive a child together.

AMERIKA

THE FIRST TIME I laid eyes on my favorite city I was five. We were on a family trip to the city of cities, "concrete jungle where dreams are made of" - New York. "There's nothing you can't do..."!

On that maiden trip to the city that Frank Sinatra and Alicia Keys sing of, my family stayed in a hotel in Manhattan, impressive to my eyes yet untrained in the world's wonders. I shared a room with my younger sister Milena. Our queen sized bed was covered in white sheets that smelled of laundry detergent. The following days, we climbed the stairs of the Statue of Liberty and gazed at Manhattan's skyline through the Lady's grand crown (still possible before September 11, 2001). We ran the fields of Central Park where the first leaves fell under the soft October sun. At the GAP store, we shopped matching beige Khaki pants. We also patiently waited for our parents until they emerged from a camera shop in Chinatown. After arguing with the sales guy who'd sold them a broken camera, they left the vendor with their new Canon camera and my dad took the above picture for testing, thumb included.

Milena and I roamed the MoMa's hallways and ate hot dogs the first time, excited to notice they sold a kosher version, too. Not that we kept kosher, but the sign "Shalom Hotdogs" marked that being Jewish in New York was nothing that needed explaining. People understood the concept, and the kosher hot dog was tastier anyhow. Shalom, Guten Tag Amerika, how ya doin`?

A few days later, I got sick. Though a healthy child, when I caught a fever, it rose high: my body glowed at 40 degree Celsius and required me to take a break from New York's bustle. As my favorite doll Kamelia was on the bedside right next to me, I luckily had company. One morning when I played with her, wheeling her around, I accidentally plucked her arm out. As much as I tried, reattaching did not work. Now neither Kamelia nor I were in our best shapes: two little incapacitated beings. Then, my dad examined the loose arm and came up with an idea: how about we search for a qualified and trustworthy "doll doctor"? If a doll doctor existed anywhere, he would exist in New York City.

Today, a family album contains the image of an elderly man resembling Gepetto, who carefully holds Kamelia in his rough hand. The "doctor" wears thick-rimmed glasses, clutches a screw and stands in a dimly lit room that looks classic 1980s. In the background, different doll heads line up on a shelf. When my dad returned with Kamelia, her arm was where it belonged. The city had me then and there.

Our family vacation continued with a drive to Washington D.C to visit my father's friends from his time as a Ph.D. researcher at the International Monetary Fund. As we were in town around Halloween, my parents decided that their kids would be part of the festivities. In our hotel room, we collected scarves and skirts and tied them around our bodies in an improvisational manner. I was dressed in my mother's fancy Hermes scarf, Milena wore one of her pretty skirts. While we were meant to look like colorful ghosts, we mostly resembled two elegant little girls in hijabs. Still, whichever house we passed, one could hear two voices screaming "Trick or Treat!" with a funny German accent. Chocolates? Yes, please! And with that unique American generosity: "You're so welcome, scaaary ghosts!". The bounty was rich and our bag of collected sweets swelling.

The next day, we carefully laid out all candies for counting: the colorful heap would last us for weeks. To me, the entire country felt like one long walk in Charley's chocolate factory. Of course my love for the United States reflected a unique point in time. It was 1992, the year the United States was maybe the most confident in its entire history. The Iron Wall had just tumbled down, and other than America's all-embracing market democracy, there was no competing ideology which had convincingly stood the test of time. America's power was alluring and New York's skyscrapers were mind-boggling. I could tell my parents were enamored by the land of plenty fun, too. Who can entirely resist the myth inscribed into the Statue of the Liberty:

"...Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"?

Even children recognize freedom when they breathe it.

Visits to Caput Mundi continued throughout my childhood. Ages nine and eleven, we vacationed six summer weeks at my mum's friends' place in Brooklyn Heights and in a rented summer house on the Hamptons. Milena and I attended a children's summer camp where we crafted art during days and acted in role plays at nights. As the stars rose on the evening sky, tutors showed us how to roast "s'mores" by putting marshmallows on a stick and holding it over a bonfire, placing the inflated white puff between butter cookies and adding a piece of chocolate in the middle. The epitome of combining convenience food - the marshmallows, with adventure - the fire, and fun - the melted chocolate. Yum.

A sense of abundance and "don't care" reigned in America. Acquaintances of my parents lived on Park Avenue, as well as owned a mansion with a swimming pool and tennis court on the Hamptons. When we visited them on Long Island for a day, their two daughters, Milena and I asked the nanny for fresh eggs from the fridge. We then sneaked over to the tennis court behind the house and threw those eggs onto its fence. As the Yellow smear dripped to the floor, we ran away chuckling, spoiled kid's prank accomplished. In this country, there'll always be enough eggs to throw around.

On a Saturday, my mother and I attended an at-home Shabbat service creatively set up in the living room of one of Long Island's large villas. A giant buffet welcomed all guests after prayers, the mountains of fresh lox, cream cheese, fresh bagels and other delicacies resembling the painting of a medieval still life. Life in the US seemed safe and welcoming, the lox tasted better and the people seemed happier—where else would one want to live? I could think of nowhere.

In the fall of 2002, I sassily booked flights to the Big Apple for us now five Alters as Lily had since been born. As usual, we stayed with our friends Tami and Peter in their apartment a few blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge. Tami, the daughter of a Polish Jew and a Bavarian mother who later converted to her father's religion, was—still is—one of my mother's closest friends. Her husband Peter had been born in Argentina, so moving from Germany to New York might have felt like landing on familiar territory - the Americas, a bit further north. New York, apart from embracing all things Jewish, was simply the place to be (and always will be).

During that winter trip to a white New York City, I reached a mark of maturity. The whole family was shopping at Century 21, the iconic luxury outlet store next to the then gaping hole of where the Twin Towers had stood until a year earlier, when suddenly, my stomach cramped forcefully. I had to lie down on one of those benches where people try shoes on, so overwhelming was the pain.

Yes, there was the quiet accumulation of womanly vibes that finally wanted to express themselves full throttle. But what was it with New York's energy and my receptivity to it? As if the metropolis was a mother wailing about her children she had recently lost in an attack. Or acting like a father (after all, New York has a very masculine energy) who watched over my various life stages and transitions. What's certain is that my body waited fifteen years to make a grand entrée to womanhood in a place that has always felt like my spiritual home. That guidance hasn't stopped. I would return to New York to celebrate Vikram's graduation from Columbia University's, attend the Bar Mitzvah of Tami's and Peter's son, visit after handing in my Master's thesis in 2013. Four years later when my "Waste Free Oceans" era ended, once more, this time falling in love with a man I hope to marry.

New York's magical skill to comfort me usually cracks my heart open the instant I encounter border inspection at the airport, the city's wit and courage to speak tachles touching my soul as soon as the officer cracks his first joke. On the Alter family winter trip to New York, we had celebrated New Year's Eve on my favorite bridge, in 2017, freshly escaped from freezing temperatures, I welcomed the new year while heating up with a kiss in a Brooklyn bar.

CONNECTICUT

AGED SIXTEEN, I MOVED to the US to live with an American host family for one year. My father started this tradition of going on exchange in Iowa the same age as one of the first youngsters of his generation, followed by my uncle, me, my sisters and cousins. "Youth for Understanding" is a non-profit set up in the 1960s to strengthen cultural ties between the US and post-war Germany, sending teenagers to attend local schools and immerse themselves in local cultures. Germany back then had a reputation to restore, the United States a nation to forgive.

As the early 2000s progressed, I grew eager to leave behind the anonymity of my Gymnasium (high school) encouraging mediocrity and lacking in spirit. Show me some American soul, baby, and let me have loads of chewing gum! After a round of interviews, YFU accepted me to join their program. Initially, the exchange organization paired me with a Mormon family of five kids in Utah who had taken a liking in me. That did not happen: as I had indicated a preference for living with a Jewish family on my application, YFU placed me with a family in Connecticut last minute, mother Jewish, father not, same setup as in my birth family.

As this was before the age of smartphones, I looked my prospective little town Tolland in our large family atlas, patiently searching the book's index pages. Soon, the host family and I emailed each other back and forth. Sharon, my "American mom" sent pictures of her kids Kalie and Rob and told me how excited she and Richard were to have me, adding that she was so popular amongst Kalie's friends, they often called her "mom", that seemed a bit over the edge, but hey.

My plane departed August 15th, 2003. The night before, my parents and I had dinner at an Italian restaurant in Munich. All a daughter could wish for, I knew as they beamingly gleaned at me. In the early hours the next day, they drove me to Munich's airport. When I hugged them goodbye, it surprised me to see my mother cry, she rarely did. My father only looked at me proudly. The depth of our bond and the solid emotional base my parents had created for their three daughters was palpable as our steps moved apart.

We exchange students shared the flight route to Cincinnati, chosen because it was a cheap connection airport, while I was on my own during the connecting flight to Hartford. A middle-aged woman conversed with me, a welcome distraction in my excited state. A tad arrogantly I shared how much I knew about the US already and how well-traveled I was. I was sure I had loads to offer emotionally, intellectually and experientially to my new family.

Once landed in Hartford, my new host parents Sharon and Dick (short for Richard) welcomed me in the airport's arrival hall. Sharon, lean, sported long wine red colored fingernails matching the color of her hair. She greeted me with an overly shrieking voice: "Hiiiiiiiiii Zerlina, weee are so ex-ciiiiiii-ted to have you!!". Then they hugged me. My entire face smiled.

We sat down in their luxurious Audi and took off to my new home. It seemed surreal. As we drove, we casually chatted. Worldly and eloquent, the Filler parents appeared very unlike the Midwestern host parents every future exchange student fears he will have to share living quarters with. By sole virtue of being Jewish, I had ended up in a family that enjoyed musicals on Broadway and had visited France before (well, Disneyland Paris). Tolland was a pleasant town of 30.000 inhabitants right in the middle between Boston and New York, a 30-min drive away from Connecticut's capital Hartford.

When we arrived at their house at the end of a quiet residential street—think "Pleasantville"—Sharon took on the task of walking me around their home, which more resembled a mansion. They had a room with a massive TV and a separate living room which they called the salon. The large kitchen led to a garden with an outdoor pool, the basement exhibited a party cellar with a billiard table, fake graffiti on walls and a little corner bar where drinks could be served, posters of Kalie's favorite musicals hung beside it.

My room, the guest room, was next to the salon on the ground floor. It featured a large bed with six pillows and three different layers of blankets and its own little bathroom attached to it. The house's remaining bedrooms were on the first floor, every room tidy, like stepping into a home on Wisteria Lane long before the TV show "Desperate Housewives" even existed.

That night, after using too much toilet paper, the flush did not work. I tried to fix the state of affairs for what felt like hours, but the channel stuck, with water coming up all the way to the toilet rim. On my first morning in the United States, I had to call in my new host father to help take care of "the situation". With a gentleman's attitude, Richard got to work. A bad omen? Then I handed the family the contents of my giant bag of Thank-you-presents. Exchange students were supposed to bring one to two presents, but my mother would not have it. Afterward, all floated in their garden pool.

The family had agreed to host an exchange student—I was to be their first—because their daughter Kalie had liked the idea. Brown hair and tanned skin, perceptive yet slightly brusque, Kalie exuded authority. Her best friend Crystal visited the day after I arrived, so the two gave me a performance of the Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand duet "Tell him" on the family home's sprawling staircase. These two girls had what it took: the posture, the attitude, the perfect pitch. Hmm-hmm. When they bowed, Sharon cheered as loudly as Harry' Potter's aunt Petunia would have for Dudley. Kalie wanted to be an opera star one day.

The first weeks played out calm and peaceful except for a visit to the Big E! Fair, where after eating fried onions, an overdose of fat led to my complete inertia. Even my solid German stomach could not bear the fat levels of American fast food! The summer weather was gorgeous, and my stay felt like an extended vacation even after school began in late August. Now I got up at 06.15 every day to be on time for homeroom at 07.15 and "pledge allegiance to the United States...". Kalie, who had turned sixteen in April, had received an Audi (the family's second) along with the right to drive. Every morning, she escorted her younger brother and me to Tolland High School.

We were Juniors, Rob was a Freshman. There were a few black and Asian kids, the rest was mostly white. I observed a typical segmentation into different social groups: the drama club, the football hulks, weirdos, and blonde cheerleaders. The drama kids appealed most to me, amongst them two sweet gay guys, a boisterous blondie who particularly enjoyed boob-bumping and Joe, who ingeniously mocked life during our daily lunch breaks. Had he not been so awkward about himself I might have well had a crush on him.

I learned that "eventually" does not mean "maybe" like the German "eventuell" implies, but "in the end". I was corrected for the way I pronounced the English "v", which initially sounded much like "w" the way my German ear had me say it. I started saying "hilarious" and "it's not even funny!", ate Twizzlers candy and shampooed my hair with two-liter cartons whose contents smelled like strawberry pie.

Different from my German school, we could pick our classes according to preference. My days were filled with Drama, American History, Trigonometry, Psychology and Marketing, each 50 minutes long, as well as the obligatory Sophomore English. Though we were 11th graders, school administration put the exchange students in English level grade 10, assuming Junior English would be too challenging for us. Paah! We took "word tests" in English class – as if fifteen-year-olds still had to learn what "to bicker" meant! Come on, give me a little Shakespeare! At least we read Romeo and Juliet in class, music to my ears:

Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day

It was the nightingale, and not the lark

That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.

Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree.

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

And then "Death by a Salesman" by Arthur Miller, once husband of Marilyn Monroe - not bad (the book and romantic choice). Classes usually ended around 13.15. Initially, I stayed on campus to spend the early afternoon running laps as part of the Cross-Country team, quickly earning the original nickname "The German". The coach handed me a sweater with "Alter" written on the back which I kept it for years until one day I let it go with the aim to own as few objects as possible reminding me of my past. New England's gorgeous Indian Summer is famous for a reason.

After classes, I took the yellow school bus home, where I often stumbled upon Rob preparing something in the kitchen. Rob was a great cook, and at age thirteen, already tried his hands at elaborate meals such as chicken soup or Italian dishes, but mostly chicken soup, to support him in his efforts of losing weight. He was a good-looking guy amid the passage from childhood to teenage existence, and from the chubby, funny kid, a handsome and sporty young man was emerging.

I bonded quickest with Julia, a pretty, blonde fellow German exchange student and fine violin player coming from Trier, the type who always had a boyfriend, and usually an older one. It's funny, at age sixteen you already seem to know who of your friends is likely to marry young, would be probable to divorce at some point, or may not even get married at all. The friends I made at age fifteen in Munich's elite formal dance class were the types I was sure would marry late. Likely since my own parents took such a long time to get married and have kids I felt a connection to them or because they, too, were deeply immersed in their nuclear families. Before my parents tied the knot, they dated for nine years. For nine endless years! Talk about weighing the decision to marry someone. They sure examined the institution's benefits and shortcomings. Not to determine whether they were compatible, I bet they were a strong couple from day one—but because I believe my mother was unsure about marrying a non-Jew.

Growing up in a family where everyone was Jewish, marrying out of creed was not something that one took casually. Especially not in postwar Germany. It was a decision that had to be considered carefully, knowing full well that something precious would be lost and not be simple to retrace.

The worst which could happen was that when my parents would get married and have children, it would be a son. How would he be able to have a Bar Mitzvah? Who would be the one guiding him, standing next to him on the pulpit, embracing and showing him the Jewish ways? Without a Jewish father, the ceremony would surely be an embarrassing moment, not quite fitting the imagination. In that sense, my parents did just right: three daughters, no problem. All of them turning out cute. The kids of the daughters would be Jewish, too, no matter who they would marry. Pheww...!

Julia and I rolled our eyes at silly English class where kids had a hard time understanding the meaning of "ambivalent". Aude from Paris and fellow exchange student who was kind, if bland, sometimes tagged along, that she had three or four sisters was most memorable, oh and excellent grades.

On the culinary level, a mix between muesli bar and a flat cookie called "Pop Tarts" intrigued me most. What a concept: you take two layers of crumbly sweet dough, add a sugary, sweet paste, stick the two layers onto each other and put colorful sprinkles on top to round it off. Soon, this was my favorite unhealthy in-between snack. Not that I was eating unhealthily at my host family or at the school cafeteria - there was salad available every day. It was that the temptations were so many: you could buy warm cookies at school which melted in your mouth the moment you bit into them. Haegen Dasz ice cream was available on a stick. To learn by doing, our Marketing teacher regularly assigned us to sell goods in the school's candy store. That also did not exactly help in limiting the calories.

Funnily enough, when checking my weight after around two months in the United States, I found that I was thinner than when I had arrived. How was that even possible? The answer was clear: running 5ks each day in the Cross-Country team had made the difference. I had built muscle and lost weight quickly. And yet, shortly after, the first significant setback of my exchange year occurred. After competing at one of these North-Eastern interstate school races, my lower legs ached without a halt. I had developed "shin-splints", as weird as the term sounds, essentially a cramp in the lower shins that lasted for days and came from over-exertion.

My glorious running career, which had just begun, ended after five short weeks. And I had assumed that this would be my sport! My body was just rightly built for running. Tall and robust, with endurance and an iron will, I had moved to the varsity camp during first practice. Sure, I wasn't as fit or fast as the two Joannas, who ran on the level of state champions, but I was effortlessly in the crowd's fastest 30 percent. Running was just the ideal sport, in line with my conviction that it should be accessible and take place outside. No hassle, put on your shoes and go! But no, mid-season, my practice was done. All I could do from that point onwards was cheer on the Joannas.

Soon enough, the kilos (or shall I say pounds) piled up, food now became the focus instead of fuel. And that was the end of it: 10 kilos later, instead of resembling a straight banana, I equaled the shape of a pear. Such a cliché, gaining weight while in the US, and my body perfectly fulfilled it. My host family would get these whole cartons of sugary snacks filled with Reese's and KitKat, Bounty and Mars. When nobody was at home, I would quickly find my way to the pantry located left to the kitchen and move my fingers over the large box of industrial candy to pick up the next chocolate bar. By my snobby European standards, this was in no way good chocolate, but also thanks to these European roots, chocolate it had to contain, KitKat, Mars, you name it; I had it!

A trip to Niagara Falls with other regional exchange students in fall marked the first highlight. The first night I shared the hotel room with a stoic, thin Finnish girl with large eyes who taught me the beautifully sounding "Minna rakkastan sua" ("I love you" in Finnish), apart from that, she spoke little. A Colombian guy developed a crush on me. At our group sleeping quarters at the Buffalo home of a local host family, he moved his sleeping bag next to mine and started gently caressing my hand, which infinitely thrilled me.

Eventually, he kissed me. My god, how much better Latin guys were at kissing than what I'd seen in Europe. Not that I had that much experience: fourteen when I kissed a very handsome guy during a summer party, the night after at another party, kissed two more and after drinking a half jug of beer during Oktoberfest, the fourth in the group. But the Latino introduced me to a whole new standard. The next day though I had already moved on to yet another Colombian I fancied. On the trip's second night, David and I sweetly stroked each other's backs. As he was much shier than the first guy, our lips never came to touch. For me, just letting my fingers walk over his arms slowly was intense and satisfying, moving me entirely. At my core, I am a deep romantic (aren't we all?), the next day, we marveled at stunning waterfalls.

On Halloween, Julia, Aude and I were invited to become temporary staff of the local haunted house. Two German and a French exchange student got to entertain Americans on one of America's most iconic holidays! A female resident of Tolland had reached out to us, guessing that this could be a memorable experience for those young European girls in town. It confirmed the great value Americans place on local community engagement. In Germany, thinking appeared way more insular: other exchange students were other people's problems. Tolland was small, and I grew up in a city with over one million inhabitants, but I like to believe making that extra effort to allow newcomers to get involved is quintessentially American.

We formed part of a mysterious labyrinth installed at the Tolland's town museum for the night. Like Amelie's crush in "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain", every time a visitor came, we sneaked out from behind to growl something spooky at him. It was very comical. I wish things overall had stayed as entertaining. By late October, my stay at the Filler family had taken a sharp downward turn.

I had tried to get along with Kalie, which probably was the wrong approach from the start. She did not need another friend; the planet circled around her already. Kalie was the star, the child all hope and attention put into—smart, confident, kind. The daughter with the most amazing friends and an extraordinary voice. With my thirteen-year-old host brother, my rapport was still excellent, Rob as funny and charming as ever.

Why did an impregnable wall arise between Kalie and me? A fear that my presence would denigrate her own role or relationships within the family? Yet, we were too different to be competitors. I ran, she played softball; I liked acting; she enjoyed singing. Perhaps it was the space I took up in the house, in her brother's or father's life. Still, one strange thing did occur: Kalie became excellent friends with my German exchange friend Julia. There were about a hundred other girls to choose from in our grade. Possibly Kalie wanted to show to herself that she was welcoming to newbies ("The model student"), when at home with me, she mainly ignored me. It also speaks volumes of Julia that she abandoned our bond in favor of being close to my host sister. I comprehended then that the loyalty and character strength I knew in my own family was not the norm in society.

We didn't overtly fight, I would just remain quiet, as Kalie seemed much more mature than I. She and her dad would watch TV series together most evenings, and I would join them but not really get their jokes. Sitting quietly on the sofa next to them while they engaged in lively conversation, I tried to focus on whatever was happening on the screen. It didn't work. Soon, a cloak of loneliness enveloped me during school days, too.

Kalie held an incontestable position, and everyone accepted it that way. It seemed self-explanatory that she would get much more Christmas presents than Rob as she was the "girl". When I pointed this out to Rob, he stayed quiet. One thing I do give Kalie credit for is that she never let the skewed family dynamic affect the relationship with her younger brother, the two stuck together, using laughter and irony. Today, I am surprised I did not speak up for myself but believe the fact was their guest intimidated me. There never had been a guarantee I would belong, I had to adapt and surrender as I was the recipient of their generous hospitality.

Sharon was a tall and once pretty woman who now, in her mid-forties, had too strong a wrinkle line in her face and too rough a skin from her smoking, which she tried to cover with a layer of make-up. Every night, she would light the long and white cigarettes often associated with hookers, holding the lighter with her extended fingernails the color of Bordeaux. At times, her niceness surprised given her ghastly outer appearance. She then played online checkers with a random person in Istanbul for hours into the night.

I still found it partly impressive that Sharon knew how to entertain herself online. Mind you, this was in 2003 when most people only used the internet to research penguins for class presentations, chat on MSN or download music on Napster. At least she sat in the family kitchen – a communal space – and didn't passively watch TV for hours every night like her husband. She used her brain to entertain herself and might have even been decently good at playing the game. Next to her during those long checker nights, a glass of red wine could usually be found, but never was it drunk excessively. Together with the long cigarettes, it formed a fitting image.

Concerning their personalities, father and son could not have been more different. While Richard was the embodiment of emotionally controlled, keeping it light and casual, Rob was as a bubbling fountain of jokes. Constantly drawing faces or ridiculing himself, Rob, like many American teenage boys, just had a natural way of speaking with girls, gender relations seemed more relaxed in the US than in Germany. Yet, though we had a lot of fun together and I finally experienced what it was like to have a brother, our connection could not survive my relationship to Kalie growing cold. Blood is thicker than water.

Richard was the sporty type. An insurance broker by day, he mostly hung out at home, except on Wednesdays, when he went to "shoot hoops with his buddies". Apart from that, his social life outside the family was practically non-existent. I don't think he questioned his solitary lifestyle – sucking it up and focusing on the family is probably the norm for many American men. I wish they'd rebel more.

Sharon and Dick shared the same house yet occupied two different worlds, unable to cross the bridge towards each other. Though they were polite and reasonable in front of the kids, they mostly acted out dissonance instead of speaking about it. I did not understand this strategy as in my family it worked so differently. We express disagreements even if this leads to a little (or large) fight. This is the natural way: our human ancestors also did not match some fabricated American TV image of what a happy family should look and behave like. I have the feeling that Sharon and Dick's way of being married to each other is not that uncommon in the US. Insincere pretending for the sake of appearance, the daily life marked by mutual ignoring and lingering isolation within the family unit. Three or four years after I left the family, Sharon and Richard divorced (Facebook notified).

By late fall season, I sat on my little bathroom floor and sobbed, one the phone either with my local guidance counselor or my mother, my body shaking. Kalie and I barely spoke, the tension in the air piercing when we took the car to school together in the morning. There was zero interest in what offered as a person. I remember Kalie asking me questions to be polite, but we could not warm up to each other. And I did not have it in me to act as if I was super happy or remain casual. For that, I am way too demanding.

As December approached, the idea to move me to a new family appeared on the horizon. A DEVASTATING prospect! I had grown up in a tightly knit family where issues were faced and resolved together. Giving up felt cowardly. But you don't want someone to live with you and feel alone most of the time, especially when a joyful cultural exchange was the original intention.

To release the energy built up inside me, I often went to the driveway to play basketball and repeatedly threw the ball into the net. In school, I withdrew inside myself. My guidance counselor, a sulky and chubby single lady in her forties who wore large spectacles admonished me "to not think so much about myself". But this was not some self-centered occupation with my inner life, this was a young girl in a tough situation, entirely on her own..

The only thing that gave me strength was the knowledge that my American life was borrowed and that I would eventually return to my "real life" in Germany. Still, I had wanted my year in the US to be fun and enjoyable, what use was there in longing back to something I had looked forward to leaving behind so much? Maybe the guidance counselor had projected her own youth trauma onto me, perhaps she had overly focused on herself instead of approaching others during her own teenage days. Or one was not supposed to suffer so much but suck it up in America. Trigonometry class became my daily highlight, the predictability of equations providing comfort.

A year later, the counselor sent me a postcard to Germany in which she apologized for her harsh words towards me. The whole "suck it up" advice had been misplaced and made me question myself when this was damaging rather than helpful. Thankfully, I had my diary, which became my patient listener as I was looking for solutions to the issue. How could I garner a strength that would keep my head clear?

Lunch breaks with Marius, my gay exchange student friend from Barcelona, occasionally offered a diversion from my troubles. At nineteen years, he was older than most students and considered most aspects of American culture "fucking rrridiculous", rolling both his eyes and the letter "r". I found Marius sweet in his rebellious ways. To him, the rules of no drinking before age twenty-one felt "stupiddd". When I visited, he showed me pictures of his life back in Spain sunbathing naked on beach rocks with his friends, joints burning in their hands. The Catalan free spirit also got high in the US a lot and had already found an American boyfriend outside of school with whom he spent most of his free time. His independence impressed me. With hair the color of hazelnut, olive skin, and a lanky body, Marius was very attractive.

When I visited him after school once, we went out for a little stride. At a nearby field, Marius sat down behind a tree and rolled himself a joint. I wanted to try; I was curious. But first I had to learn how to inhale for it to work. After three puffs, I felt the swirl. This was strong! Suddenly, I was extremely motivated to kiss Marius. I think I even asked him for a kiss. He politely declined, being as queer as they come, though that didn't stop me from being infatuated with my European pal.

Later that day, his host mother, him and me went to the cinema to watch "Love Actually". The weed made me crack up at every single joke. Seriously, I cried from laughter. Never had I watched such a funny movie: Hugh Grant was freaking hilarious. A few times, Marius' American mom leaned forward in her seat and glanced at me wonderingly, but I felt that this was a super funny movie, not me being high. Remains the movie I laughed at most to this day. Weed, I came to understand, was much less harmful than made out to be. I felt clear-headed and light at heart (finally, for once". Strangely, smoking it never felt as good again after that first trial. Are firsts always the most miraculous?

When I returned home, I told Sharon about our great afternoon, opened the fridge and said I was "starving". She must have had an inkling I was marginally off because she asked me to come closer so she could examine my eyes. The red in my irises confirmed her suspicions. But Sharon took it lightly, laughing and telling me not to do it again.

Like home in Germany, the Filler family celebrated both Jewish and Christian holidays. Sharon's mother gave me a beautiful silver bracelet for Chanukah resembling those sold by Tiffany. On Christmas morning, the very day I moved out of the Filler family, they literally showered me in gifts. Each one carefully chosen: A bookmark inscribed with Henry David Thoreau's quote "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams" that spoke to my soul, The Billy Joel Greatest Hits Double CD, which I would listen to for months afterword ("I don't care what you say anymore this is my life/Go ahead with your own life leave me alone") The entire season of my favorite TV series Sex and the City on DVD, as if they packed all their appreciation into one giant Christmas sock to bid me farewell.

Thankfully, the elderly Berkowitz couple, my soulful Jewish friends, picked me up and took me out for Chinese lunch and the movies (classic Jewish Christmas!) that day. "Cold Mountain" with Nicole Kidman almost made me forget about my exchange tragedy. One time months earlier, Linda's husband had hypnotized me. I sat in a chair, relaxed and closed my eyes. At the count of ten, he guided me onto that beach where the waves gently unfolded. It worked: I saw my long-passed grandfather Erwin in that session, encouraging (and protecting?) me, communicating his being. As if him having died early, when my mother was only fourteen years old, changed nothing about the possibility of his love encapsulating me. Making me feel at home on a continent far away, stretching their arms out wide so I'd feel embraced, the Berkowitz's appeared the moment they were called for. Their daughter was a photographer at the United Nations in New York City and had recently photographed Kofi Annan, they told me.

NEW ENGLAND

BEFORE I MOVED to the second family, the Youth For Understanding staff temporarily placed me with an elderly woman who had recently lost her husband. It was me, her, and her smelly poodle for the days following Christmas. At night in the guest room I stayed in, nightmares about my recent experiences rolled in, Kalie took the lead role in them. It felt as if stranded in the middle of nowhere, far away from all familiarity, a stranger in the country I had spent the past four months in. My childhood felt like a distant echo. It must have been in those sad days – gone from one family, not familiar with the new one yet – that I transitioned from childhood into adulthood.

On the chair her husband had sat on until a few months earlier I sent emails to friends and relatives trying to find the right tone about recent developments.

The first things I noticed in my new home were the oven-baked chocolate chip cookies on the kitchen table. And everybody seated around it, chatting, enjoying the post-Christmas bliss. No questions asked or quizzes to respond to for qualification, "Would you like a cookie?".

Gary and Helen's attitude was not about conveying the image of a perfectly functioning household. For starters, they were a patchwork family, met at work around 18 years before after Gary separated from the mother of his two kids and Helen single following a short liaison with her daughter's alcoholic father. Part of the hippy generation, their free and open-minded spirit immediately plain, I had an inkling that with this family, things could work out. I entertained the possibility of the move coming as a cleanse, enabling a novel perspective as the calendar approached the year 2004.

Gary was a high school social worker with long white hair tied up in a ponytail, a round stomach, and a warm and wide smile. Even though he was clearly the man in the house, he left much room for Helen, a sweet and slender woman everybody could feel at ease with. Helen worked for the City of Hartford checking of the living conditions of disabled people. Both enjoyed the occasional outing to a local coffee shop, where instead of having muffins, they would sit together to smoke a joint. Not that they told me, but I somehow caught wind of it. Both embodied the best of America's democratic values: loyal, warm, an idealism rooted in practicality.

On my second day at their place, their daughter Amanda took me with her to Boston to attend a party for New Year's Eve. Mind you, I was sixteen years old at that point. Way below drinking age. But Amanda _knew_ people. She got me to sneak in behind the bouncer (which is how I learned the meaning of that word) so I could party into the new year together with her and her friends. I don't think any of the other exchange students in the US got to be at a real club for that night. This was cool. The move already looked brighter than it had at the outset.

Not that getting drunk appeared grown-up to me. In Germany, where kids have access to alcohol at age twelve or thirteen, almost everyone has been drunk to the point of vomiting well before the age of sixteen, myself included. At fourteen, I had joined friends on a week-long tennis camp trip to Croatia, where I had carelessly mixed orange juice and cheap vodka to feel brave with one of the cute guys. Though I managed to end up on his lap that night, I equally ended up on the bathroom floor of our condo, holding on to the toilet bowl for dear life as the night turned into morning.

A few weeks later, Dan escorted me to attend a college party at his alma mater North Eastern University, where the guys played Beer Pong and I hung out with college kids. Now I understood why college is so significant to Americans: it's a profoundly communal experience. Before the party, we ate pizza in a casual restaurant together where I curiously observed Dan and his Junior College friends interact with each other, particularly attentive when the conversation moved to the topic of dating. Having an older brother has its definite advantages.

After the first attempt at family integration had ended in disaster, Gary and Helen appreciated me without ambiguity. What a relief. The Miller-Elliott kids were all in college already, so I took on the role of the only child. As Amanda had been an exchange student in South America herself and the year before I lived with Helen and Gary, they had hosted a girl from Sweden and a guy from Uruguay. The family hence knew of the challenges exchange students face and loving their new "German daughter" came naturally to them.

School began again with new courses such as Chorus and Junior English. Teachers were so friendly with their students, you could walk up to them and openly share your struggles. In the middle of class, they would tell funny stories about their kids. Everywhere, people became personal, be it at the gas station, where the cashier lady would call me "honey", in joking encounters with the chubby cafeteria ladies at school, or in conversation with the pimply server at the Tolland's Baskin Robbins. Everyone your potential friend or ally. That emphasis on equality impressed me.

Out of my classes, chorus class was the most pleasurable. Guided by an incredibly devoted teacher resembling Homer Simpson, we sang for an hour every day. I enjoyed every second. Most importantly, there was an actual improvement in my singing skills after a while. I really was hitting the right notes, a surprise and a relief, given that my father had always teased me that we were similar in our low talent for singing. It's funny how we internalize the opinions of those close to us although we instinctively know we are just as capable of hitting the right chord as anyone else. That great American culture of practice, perfection and focus had fostered a stable confidence in me.

After school, I auditioned for the school's musical performance of "Annie Get Your Gun". I'd always loved acting, so was thrilled when I got cast. The preparation phase was fun, yet uneventful. Then, during our opening night in March, I discerned a very tall guy standing all the way in the room's back. Though he had announced his visit earlier, seeing this familiar yet strange body shape seemed surreal My beloved father had just arrived from Germany for a visit.

I beamed so brightly on the stage, people might have well confused me for the lead character. When we bowed at the end of the performance, I felt like the actual star of the evening. The curtains fell, and I rushed towards him for the first hug in eight months. This odd combination of knowing him so well, yet feeling like he was a person from a forgotten time: as my new American reality had absorbed all my attention, Germany had inevitably faded away. And suddenly, my jungle book Baloo father was in the same room as me! I cried. And cried. I had bottled all these months of being resilient and independent, and now that he was present I could be weak and young again. I would not let go of my father for the first twenty minutes. And he would just laugh and be sweet. What a darling of a father. I was the luckiest girl in the world.

For me, it was the support that uplifted when I had gotten used to feeling alone and a living reminder of soothing love I had locked away for a felt eternity. I excitedly introduced him to "Homer," the choir teacher, and later, to Gary and Helen, who instantly took a liking in him. My dad embraces everyone without demanding them to change. I believe he developed that skill because he has a brother and a sister who both carry down syndrome.

The next day, father and daughter took a road trip to family friends at the Rhode Island coast, listening to Bill Clinton's biography on CD and stopping at gas stations to load up on Strawberry milkshakes, my dad's favorite American drink back from when he was an exchange student. How satisfied I was about his visit.

In spring, I went on a trip to California together with my Finnish friend Justiina and her American host mother. When we flew into Los Angeles, the sheer breadth of the city amazed me: never ending, the town sprawled beyond even the plane's horizon. For the first time, I had the distinct sense of being far, far away from home. Literally on the other side of the world from where I had grown up. We checked into the Beverly Hills Hilton, an iconic hotel right off Beverly Hills Boulevard, affordable as Justiina's host dad was an army veteran (they get cheaper rates at hotels).

The same night, the "LA Gay and Lesbian Center" hosted a party at the hotel, so we were presented with the classic LA experience: spotlights, photographers, and Jessica Alba, star of "The L World" standing a meter away from me, there even was a red carpet. Touchdown! You gotta be at the right place at the right time, baby. The day after, we casually visited the movie theatre after getting a ride in the hotel's black limousine. We drove those couple of blocks to West Hollywood just. Because. That is. What you do when you are in freaking Los Angeles! Service complimentary for all house guests.

The Walk of Fame, the Getty Museum, the vintage shops on Wilshire Boulevard – I could live here. The food in LA was outlandishly good (nothing beats Mexican food made in California), Rodeo Drive left an indelible impression. We then switched abode to sleep on board of the epochal Queen Mary Hotel stationed in Long Beach, followed by boarding a boat that actually moved. Cruising down to Mexico "I'm on a boat" style, we stopped over on tiny Santa Catalina Island on the way. California was New England on LSD: everything a little more colorful and a touch more enticing.

Another trip: In April, me and two hundred exchange students explored NYC, Philadelphia, and DC on a group tour together. In New York, we watched the Musical "Rent", waited in line for two hours to ride the elevator up the Empire State building, in Philadelphia, we visited the Liberty Bell and emulated Rocky by running up the steps of the Museum of Arts. In Washington DC, we shed tears at the Holocaust Museum. I adored the Smithsonian, on whose front lawn our bundle of international teenagers played Ultimate Frisbee. The greatest joy though was getting to know my fellow exchange students from around the world. I learned how to say, "my name is Zerlina" in Japanese from Akiko, laughed at the hilarity of the handsome Uruguayan and befriended Andrea, artsy Argentinian. Every second of the trip nurtured, it felt as if here was my real tribe, friends I would suddenly find myself in the middle of. On the fringes at Tolland when it came to popularity, everyone swirled around me in this crowd.

Julia and Aude had disappeared from my reality around the time I switched family: Julia would return to Germany four months earlier than planned after developing anorexia and Aude, ever the chameleon, merged with the crowd. Marius, my friend from Barcelona, left school in March to spend time with his uncle in Bolivia—high school too "rrridiculous" to bear for him any day longer.

The American friend I trusted most was Brianna. I'd met her in chorus class, and even though she was two years younger, she felt equally mature; she had a brother a few years older. From a religious Christian family, she already was in a serious relationship with a guy she would marry three years later. On a Sunday in spring, I joined the religious group gathering her family attended each week. Though interesting, the atmosphere was slightly bizarre: full of overblown emotional pathos, crying and hardness in faces and "I'm having a rough time" spoken with raspy voice by an unkempt woman. America's old-fashioned religious ways. I also could not grasp how Brianna could support George Bush, an obvious imbecile to me.

And then there was my excursion into homosexuality. Katie Walsh was a shy friend a head shorter than me, we both adored acting and met very early into my time in Tolland. One day in spring, she invited me over to her place. We didn't really know what to do with ourselves, so we jumped into her pool without clothes on. This was all fine, except that her father was home that afternoon. He kept a safe distance, yet glimpsed over more than once. In Europe, my friend's parents would have given us more privacy. In America, one sometimes got the feeling there was a constant moral control á la "Uhhhhhh, they're naaaaa-ked!" Come on, take a break. A negligible fact would become front news in the American brain, in other words, the creepiness factor was higher. We soon returned to her room and got dressed. Then the downright unexpected happened. We made out. For like half an hour. In my mind, I was thinking "I am not even attracted to her!". She wasn't that pretty, and her skin could have been better, too, but French kiss we did. The movements came unnatural and the passion was played, which is why I stopped after a while. Things afterward were slightly awkward between us.

In my free time, I read a lot. Maya Angelou's "I know why the Caged Bird Sings", "The secret life of bees" by Sue Monk Kidd and "Ellen Foster" by Kay Gibbons. I could identify with the African American struggle, for which my reading on the Holocaust as a young girl had set the stage. As if discovering an enchanted castle, I explored the intricacies of the English language, its corners and its angles, its verbs and nouns, its Latin and French words. This tongue was my new expressive home, so much more fitting a vehicle to convey myself than my native German, ringing square and unwieldy in my ears by winter.

Vladimir Nabokov, who grew up in Russia and Western Europe, wrote Lolita to make English his own, render its beauty tangible and palpable. This was it: English represented so much more than shorter sentences and an amalgam of origins. English stood for the promise of America: to become what you wanted to become, to belong where you wanted to belong. To be part of a nation defined by the fact that many of its members had not belonged at first, felt alienated or different.

Most spring afternoons when I didn't play tennis after school, I sat on my bed and filled my scrapbook with collages and writing. The book my sister had crafted for me had grown into a fat bundle, magazine images and my entire range of sentiments spread out across its pages. Free therapy and my own best encouragement.

Visiting the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts together with Helen and Gary on my 17th birthday in May marked one of the last highlights of my year abroad. Their support had truly sustained me over the previous few months. Yet after ten and a half month on the other side of the Atlantic, I counted down each day until my return home.

When I flew back to Munich, the scrapbook came with me. A year later, it had become too harsh a reminder of American adversity. Every time I looked at it sitting on my bookshelf, I felt burdened. One day, I carried it to the paper bin so it could be torn to pieces and recycled into fresh paper. Hurtful to admit, I had not made America the better home I had hoped it to be. My American dream had not played out as I had yearned. Still, the love for the American language and people would last for a lifetime. Perhaps one day I would find back to my culture of choice.

MUNICH

ON SUNDAY, 9TH SEPTEMBER 2001, I was in our garden happily jumping up and down on our trampoline. When I had celebrated my Bat Mitzvah at age twelve, lots of people contributed in cash. Time to fulfill a dream of mine! I quickly knew what to purchase with the bundle of notes: a large and inviting trampoline, learning moves on it and inviting friends for a jump fascinating me.

Back then, the internet was still wild and unexplored territory, but being very cutting-edge at twelve years old, I ordered the fabulous object online. Soon, the trampoline became my favorite dwelling spot: I practiced forward flips on it, ate on it, read on it, slept on it, just the coziest circular space in the world. That day, casually enjoying the weekend, I wanted to spice up my jumping routine. First some forward flips, now I intended to find out what would happen if I were to jump off with two legs and land on one. I swayed myself up reaaaally high and landed on my right leg, thinking this would be a cool move, sort of 2-1-2-1...well, it would be 2-1 in the truest sense: the one leg I landed on could not support my body's weight, dramatically increased due to the fall's force. My knee went the opposite direction it was supposed to. I cringed in pain. This went way beyond regular hurt. My younger sister and father heard my screams and hurried over to see what was going on. Clearly, this needed to be checked by a doctor.

September 11, 2001, was a Tuesday, and, the day before was a holiday in Bavaria, it was also the first day of my ninth grade after the long summer break. I found myself surrounded by a new fixed group of thirty people who were to be my classmates for the next two years. The room consisted mostly of faces I didn't know well, a few familiar from passing each other in the hallway or on the school's yard during the mid-day break. While English had been foreign language number one for the entire grade, we had followed the trajectory of 7th grade Latin instead of French, then Italian, but my friends from 5th grade had chosen French in 7th grade so now listened to a different teacher in a different classroom.

That Tuesday morning, I came to school filled with hope and energy from the long summer to feel disenchanted after ten minutes. As I visually scanned the room, I realized we were only four girls, and none of them my type. While my former classmates remained united, I found myself exiled to second-class citizen in Klasse E. Due to the injury I walked on a borrowed pair of crutches, still, during the day's second period, the class elected me to their spokesperson. A slight mood upgrade. After the first two hours, my mother outside the school gate to get me to the doctor and see what consequences my freestyle jumping had had. I hobbled over to her car, and we drove downtown. After running a series of MRI scans, the diagnosis was a half-broken kneecap and a partly cracked meniscus; verdict five weeks of walking on crutches accompanied by ongoing physiotherapy. Oh well.

Next, we stopped over at my mum's best friend's place for lunch. And received a call from a TV producer friend telling us to turn on the television immediately. And there they were, the two towers and a plane crashing into them. I sat on the bedroom bed stunned. New York City and I on the same page again: shaken and hurt. The day continued with an additional grinding hour at a second doctor, and my finger getting stuck in the car door after the drive home. At night, I collapsed on the living room couch, the attack on the Twin Towers literally adding insult to my injury. After six weeks during of lack of movement and exercise, my physical ordeal ended.

Although September 11th was over, the diagnosis on that day would affect me for a lifetime. It was the first time I got stopped in my tracks and felt a door close: as I would find out soon enough, the door to excelling at running. Has that shaped my life in other areas as well? I dare not examine this question too closely.

The next two years went by in a fog: I was sociable and outgoing but not entirely involved in any set group of friends. In tenth grade, focused on my weekly tennis and painting classes and spent a lot of time with my younger sister Lilly. I also attended dancing class with Munich's elite – princes and counts, children of business monarchs and lawyers. Never was the peculiarity of my participation was mentioned, but dancing amid that inherited, if converted German elite felt strange. It wasn't Berlin, not Hamburg, but the conservative and cozy Bavarian city with its broad avenue and regal public squares that fell hardest for Nazism and its deathly ideology. Munich was where the NSDAP's had its headquarters, where Hitler putsched in 1923, was the movement's capital, the _Hauptstadt der Bewegung_. In this city, an exhibition (the most popular of all!) ridiculed Jewish, Communist and other "leftist" artists. Yes, it's different today. Let's trust the city's soul has changed for good. My final dance date was a guy whom I knew from years of riding the bus on the way to our separate schools together, he attended the _Gymnasium_ where Latin and Ancient Greek were obligatory. I certainly mingled with the nice girls.

AFTER I RETURNED from my American exchange at the end of 11th grade, I visited my "Gymnasium", the German equivalent of high school for a day and instantly recalled why I had been looking forward to leaving Munich so much the year before. Students sat quietly in their chairs and showed little to no emotion. Only a few had even registered that I was back in the classroom. When I tentatively raised my hand during English class to answer a question by the teacher, a bulky girl yelled at me: "Maaan (failing to recognize that I was female), some people still need to get grades for vocal participation, STOP contributing to class!". I could not believe what I'd just heard. I visited my class for one day, and this girl was afraid that me giving the answer would decrease her chances at a good grade? Nobody lifted their eyebrows, the teacher didn't say a thing. Belying her pretty name Marlene was a bully of a girl, representing a certain cultural callousness that appalls me.

Simultaneously, a new appreciation of living in Munich took hold: its friendliness, can-do attitude, desire to charm and deliver quality. After living in the United States, I understood what my grandfather Erwin must have felt when thinking about his _Heimat_ in Israel. The trees, the seasons, the longing for home is a physical one. After a prolonged absence, there is always that sense that my body, my skin, my hair would be grateful when I laid feet on my country's ground again.

Eleven months away taught me not to take Munich's bike paths or Bavaria's river beds for granted. On warm nights I rode my bicycle, sang out loud, smiled to myself, at peace with my place in this world. There also was a renewed appreciation of the European continent, its linguistic diversity, cultural vibrancy, the possibility of late-night car trips to the Garda Lake.

Before 12th grade started, I had to select my two focus subjects. Given my full-on love for the language, unquestionably one of them would be "English", the second choice still unclear between 'Jewish Studies" and other subjects. Math or biology most definitely not, verbal domains came much more natural. At the same time, I hesitated about focusing on religious studies: no doubt would I learn little that would genuinely interest me. I don't believe in scripture, especially not the one intended for school curriculums. Yet, earning good grades would be easy (too easy), and I would study along some of my kindergarten friends, which would likely lead to a precious sense of community.

Our high school was the only one which offered Jewish religion class, so friends from other schools flocked in to join our select program and we soon formed a small group of eleven students that followed an improvised and unconventional curriculum, school life indeed improved the ensuing two years as we grew into a tightly knit group of friends.

Usually, the Bavarian government prepares final exams statewide so that study results can be compared across schools and regions. Not in our case: we were the only eleven students in a state of 16 million inhabitants to write a decentralized and personalized final exam. Number of hours I prepared for it: three. Approximate number of hours I practiced math, my third written exam: 3000 (still excruciatingly hard, especially infinitesimal calculus). I just could not take this class seriously, too mythical its contents, too loose its regimen, too weak the authority of our soft-spoken teacher. A real walk in the park and valid study time spent daydreaming.

Truly independent the year before, I also felt too mature to be in high school at age nineteen - "yo también, Marius!". While the rest of the world graduated their youngers at age eighteen, German school took thirteen long years to graduate from. Why were we not considered "ready" yet? My younger sister could luckily benefit from a later change in legislation, today it's twelve years of schooling for all _Gymnasium_ students.

Oh, and 12th grade was also when I met my first boyfriend. Marius (this time not gay), a shy and smart student at the Rudolf Steiner School and I met each other at his school party through my friends from that conservative dance class. We innocently dated, connected by our shared explorative spirit until I broke up with him after three months.

One of my Jewish friends at school shared the conviction with me that Germany was not the right place to live as a Jew in the long run. She had visited New York for six weeks in the summer of ninth grade and similarly valued the United States. Not only across the world, in Germany, too a distrust towards wider German society lingers on, too fresh are the wounds in our families. It may not be rational, but it is understandable. Healing the vast trauma the planned extermination of a people causes can last for generations and needs to be transformed into a skill, drive or power (call it survival power).

The ambition of moving abroad was the subtext to both Miriam's and my time at school, sensing we would both leave Germany after graduation. America remained a dream destination, but Israel was high on the list as well: we would wish this grey country where thirteen-year-olds take stealthy smoking breaks outside the school gate _Auf Wiedersehen_. For both of us, this became true: Miriam moved to Israel, I moved everywhere.

EUROPA

WORLD CUP SUMMER 2006 was one of my happiest: recently graduated from Gymnasium, I hung out with my friend a lot, spent a month living with a crepe-caking French family in Biarritz and thought about my professional future: Should I study medicine? Too politically minded. Become a lawyer? That would restrict my studies and work to Germany. Something related to society and history, philosophy and economics. Training as a psychologist like many in my family was ruled out as I ached to understand the macro rather than the micro-picture.

Then, a few months after graduation, while helping with one of my father's business events in Frankfurt, I bumped into Meike, also former US exchange student, telling me about her plan to study "European Studies" in Passau. The instant I heard her utter those words, I was captured. Upon a Wikipedia search I saw that one could study the program at King's College London (too expensive), Amsterdam University (I did not speak Dutch) and at the new and innovative Maastricht University in Holland's south. Deal done, decision taken, I would move to the country of Spinoza, Gouda, and Anne Frank.

Before: a move to Italy. I worked as a private German teacher with a family comprising a polite count, his primadonna wife, and their daughter and son who attended the Deutsche Schule Rom. During mornings, I conjugated Italian verbs, on afternoons, I took turns between marveling at Caravaggio paintings in Roman churches and taking the daughter to Volleyball practice. I won't mention the endless hours spent in front of Italian TV watching "Striscia la Notizia" to improve my language skills; otherwise, you'll question my intellectual standards and social priorities. On weekends in the Toscana, I observed the "papà" shop the right ultra-fresh ingredients and cook pasta properly for the family.

I learned that the best pasta sauces were simple: generously add olive oil, then sprinkle with roasted pine nuts and finally, mix with fresh (and I mean fresh) ricotta. After extensive field research, I concluded that the "pizza al taglio" at Campo di Fiori was the crunchiest and the best gelato on sale around the corner from St. Peters Dome. I think I gained around five kilos in my five months there, not too bad considering the countless heaps of pasta I had each day. I biscotti! – I ate everything that included grains, butter, and sweetness. Mamma mia.

Like writer Elizabeth Gilbert during her "Eat Pray Love" year, I attended the "Scuola Leonardo da Vinci" language school in the centro storico. My Italian professore looked like the identical twin of Roberto Benigni and held a new soliloquy on politics, history, and culture every day, students rapturously hanging onto his every word. I swear the guy looked like the actor from "La Vita é Bella". After a week, one could notice a repetition of his musical ruminations.

On the first day of class, I met Barbara, a lovely Dutch girl. We hit it off right away. Apart from improving our language skills, our primary mission was to drink as many cappuccios in the shortest amount of time as possible. Talkative and abroad for an extended period for the first time, she was intrigued by Italy, loved its slang, its actors and its movies. On weekends, we would find ourselves in the movie theatre watching "The Devil Wears Prada", graduating onto Italian originals such as "Tre metri Sopra il Cielo" soon after. She once tried to set me up with her language tandem date, but that didn't work out too well.

Barbara had found her equivalent to my "Amerika"; Italy charmed, but didn't sweep me off my feet. My motivation had been to study its language to attend university there, even though when I arrived in Rome, the plan to study in the Netherlands had already formed. The primary aim hence was to speak Italian fluently and catch up on the year of language learning I had missed during my US exchange. Be at least as articulate as Julius, a former classmate and summer flirt after high school graduation (I'm slightly competitive about language skills). The strategy of reading Italian books and strolling the streets of Rome paid off: by the end of my five months stay, I was semi-fluent.

My heart at the time belonged to a friend I knew since Jewish kindergarten, a poetic mathematician. We had been close friends for many years. My Roman evenings were spent on the phone with him, joking, talking, laughing, no emotional space for an Italian man available, they're too Catholic for me anyhow. Yet, after a short holiday in Munich, I recognized that friendship worked best for us.

Returning to Munich, the friendship with this fine young man on hold as he had intermittently stopped speaking with me, I realized I wanted to finally go ahead with the nose job he'd been trying to talk me out of. Ever since a bike accident as a child, my nose had an odd shape: not only did it protrude to the sides, but it had a significant bump, too. I liked the bump, which I thought gave me an intellectual edge, but in combination with width, my nose took up way too much facial space.

And the source of its misshape had not been my own childish impishness, but the inexperience of our foreign Au pair at cycling. At age five, my dad took my sister and me out on a little ride to a local beer garden. I was placed on the seat behind the young Hungarian girl, Milena behind my father.

Katalyn mounted the bike, paddled...and fell over within fifteen meters of rolling the wheel. Strapped to the seat, I could not escape the fall, hit the floor with my face and landed on my nose. My dad tried to play it down, but the doctor confirmed it as broken, telling us to wait until I'd reach age eighteen to undertake corrective surgery. Now nineteen and able to make the rectification, I was ready. For the next weeks, all I could think about was how much happier I would be with an attractive nose. Somehow every nose had started to look much better than my clunk. I obsessively observed people's noses and concluded that mine was the worst of them all. Operation day became a day to count toward urgently.

On a warm day in early May, I entered the hospital; the procedure scheduled for the next morning. My surgeon was the same who had seen it freshly broken. Against my expectations, the operation felt like a walk in the park: I woke up with no pain, the only limitation the two absorbent cotton pieces stuck into my nostrils, obliging me to breathe through my mouth during sleep. I removed the bandage after four days and was back in class after five. The doctor had turned my schnozzle into a regal smelling device that perfectly split my face into two equal halves, even inserted a tiny artificial bump on the back of my nose "to make the nose look more interesting", my face took on an aristocratic quality. And I had gotten this entire deal for free, including improved breathing. Hint taken, God was good.

The next few months resembled a second youth: I was Botticelli's Venus, object of desire to every holder of two X chromosomes, flirting with a vigor I'd almost forgotten I was capable of. Not that I had not been attractive before, but the prettiness had been subtler. Now, it shone, loudly.

Studies confirm that while people swing back to their usual levels of happiness within two years of winning the lottery, cosmetic surgery leads to lasting happiness upgrades. I can fully subscribe to that. My new "model nose" as the doctor termed it, has altered my self-image to the better.

For weeks, I would trace the back of my nose, getting used to that new outline, and like people who've lost a limb, still know exactly where my former flesh would be. Now, there was nothing but air. On nights, I studiously examined my new face in the mirror: the eyes appeared larger and the lips fuller. I took around 150 selfies, way before the term entered our urban dictionaries. Of the same view, just different camera angles. When people would ask whether I'd gotten a new haircut, I'd smile. Just kidding, I'd blurt out: "No, I had a nose job. And it was amazing!".

In September 2007, I moved to Maastricht to begin my Bachelor in European Studies. I instantly clicked with Eva, loved the innovative teaching style and dove into academia. My studies fascinated me – learning about our beautiful continent, its rugged history, its desire to come together and its challenging path towards self-definition. We studied the origin of Christianity, the development of individualism, the struggle of power between worldly and spiritual leaders and the repeated effort of European leaders to create a continental hegemony, only to fail massively on each occasion. We wrote papers about the creation of nation-states and concept of scientific revolutions. History transfixed me: after all, this whole human experience is one large storytelling exercise. It matters who tells the story, what parts are left out and who the intended audience is.

Maastricht is a quaint little town, well-kept, dynamic and friendly. I either biked or walked to places, my life circulating around my home, a nearby park, the university, and the city's market square. First, I lived in a rough neighborhood where my laptop got stolen out of my window once. I occupied a room on the ground floor, which led to the burglars to pull the cable to push the laptop through the window secured only by a hook. It still gives me a pang to think about it. How horrific, that invasion of personal space; seeing my clothes turned upside down and my cherished iPod Shuffle Red (Bono's special edition), gifted by my beloved godmother forever gone. That experience did it. It was time to move out. Luckily, a much nicer room a couple of streets away soon was available, and I moved on to better times – but not before the thieves stole my (replacement) laptop a second time. Yes, my computer got stolen twice within two months. That hurt.

I had always wanted to visit India, so the idea was to spend the summer backpacking. I proposed it to a French fellow student who I knew a little, and she promptly jumped on board. Then we found out that June and July was Monsoon season. But Asia was large, and Southeast Asia also held its promises. I decided it would be just as fascinating to visit Thailand, maybe Laos, knowing an India trip would happen in due course. But before that, I had yet to overcome an academic challenge. In my last exam, silly me, misunderstanding the instructions, had accidentally taken the punch card instead of the notepad home. Perfect score but only half of the exam correctly handed in. While everyone was enjoying their summer, I took the train back to deserted Maastricht, "redo" date around three days after we originally planned to arrive in Asia. My travel mate Cécile accordingly spent a week in India before we met in Bangkok. Finally, a feast of colors, smells and flavors welcomed me as I stepped out of our backpacking hostel.

But we did not seem to warm up to each other. In Chiang Rai, after nine days of backpacking together, we went our separate ways. This break-up hurt me, inevitably bringing up memories from my year in the United States, but we had different traveling mentalities. While she wanted to visit Thailand's islands in the south, I tried to avoid that touristy region at all costs. That's why I took a boat to Luang Prabang in Laos while she traveled back south towards Koh Tao, open to where my path would lead me.

At first, it felt challenging to go on my own, but soon I found familiar souls: a Japanese woman going solo and a vivacious, sturdy Swiss girl with brown curls. The three of us shared hotel rooms during the overnight boat journey and stuck together once we arrived in the Laotian capital. Vietnam appeared on the horizon, a country that at once seemed exotic and fascinating. I applied for a visa, waited for three eternal days, then boarded a flight to Hanoi.

Vietnam filled me up, masterfully embodying all that Asia represents. During days, one could observe a nervous and fervent bustling: people carrying vegetables on poles balance by their shoulders, mopeds horning, and buildings seeming to rise magically from the concrete. One could literally see skyscrapers grow higher with each passing hour. Nights, the smell of pans frying food pervaded the air, families gathering around duck legs and hot soups on small plastic chairs placed on boardwalks. The occasional rat grabs its evening banquet from the leftovers. The palm trees move in a warm breeze.

Nowhere did food taste as exciting and fresh at once, each meal a study in delight, Vietnam's complex history gave the country an additional fascinating edge. I was much impressed by the south's struggle against the north, the clashing of beliefs and the involvement of outside powers. It seems unimaginable to us today that thousands of people would martyr themselves for as "silly" a cause as communism, as German, I can naturally relate.

On the night bus from Hanoi to the south, I overheard a friendly and talkative voice two rows behind me which quickly revealed itself to belong to a Czech three years my senior conversing with a Korean. I joined their conversation, and when we arrived in the early morning hours, Michal greeted me goodbye. We had briefly spoken, but all he knew was that my first name was "Zerlina" and that I came from Germany. Unfortunately, we had missed the opportunity to exchange numbers.

The next day, when I opened the guest computer, it stunned me to discover a Facebook message from him, asking me out for dinner. How in the world had he found me? The only thing he knew about me was my first name and my nationality. Facebook's algorithm isn't that intelligent! Overjoyed about the connection with a fellow traveler, I instantly confirmed. He was a computer major, so who knew? For many years, I imagined that he had cracked the computer system, hacking into the Vietnamese government records as in Vietnam, every hotel guest must hand in their passports for registration. Maybe he knew how to use Facebook's search options way better than me. I like to keep it a mystery in my imagination.

The next night, we enjoyed a fabulous dinner by the seaside in Hoi-An. Picture a bottle of wine, flickering candles and breaking waves in the background. We emptied two bottles of red, after which I returned to my hotel, contentedly on my own and filled up from the experience.

While we moved further south from city to city, he tried to woo me, but I kept my distance. Yes, a gradual approximation was inevitable: first I insisted on separate rooms, then on separate beds, and well, if there was only a double bed available, why make it too complicated? We went on motorcycle excursions and spontaneously joined a rural Vietnamese wedding, where all the men wanted to dance with me, and were each led to tables separated by gender (which surprised me, I did not expect such conservatism in East Asia). After exactly one week, we had reached Ho-Chi Minh City (once Saigon) the same morning, standing in the middle of a small city park surrounded by the beeping and horning of Vietnam's motorized bikes, I finally granted him a kiss. Michal was exhilarated: I was the first girl he'd sealed lips with, before, math had been his predominant passion. Michal had grown up in a former Member State of the Soviet Union where national math and science competitions were part of the routine, his only routine. We parted ways in Cambodia after sharing itinerary for two weeks.

Upon my return to Europe, I did not see him for eight months, when we met for a day in Amsterdam, which he visited for a research project. At the end of a magical day, during which Amsterdam presented itself in all its spring splendor, we rode the train home together to my place in Maastricht, crystal clear it would finally happen. We were both dying of anticipation, the train compartment was almost exploding, so much erotic energy was in the air. By now, the Czech had gained practice with a South American girl (global ambassadors of love-making!). Years later, we would meet in Munich again, where he was happily employed at an American software company. I still wasn't really into him, but you know how it goes.

TEL AVIV

I FIRST LEARNED of Hitler in Kindergarten. A voraciously reading child, attending a Jewish elementary school in Munich was the fateful combination: we even had a class solely dedicated to literature. By age ten, I had devoured what feels like every children's book in print about the Holocaust. Add to that my fascination with diary writing, Anne Frank and Schindler's List hitting movie theater, escaping the shadow of the past as a Jewish German growing up in the 1990s was practically impossible.

Germany has changed and transformed its sins into grounded policy, thoughtful public discourse and broad societal self-reflection, but mentioning the ongoing trauma still being weeded out in Jewish families around dinner tables feels like a no-go. The irony of history is that many Jews who had not much cared about religion before the Holocaust afterwards had no choice but to identify themselves by their faith: it had so fundamentally shaped their family's trajectory.

My grandmother Anna had escaped from Magdeburg along with her siblings and parents, that I knew, and my grandfather Erwin had fled to British Palestine from Stuttgart. Both my grandparents survived the war in Israel, the country my sisters and I had visited almost every Passover and then some since we were tiny little bugs. Then Erwin and Hanna returned to the land that had ousted them twenty years earlier, my mother and her sister both remained in the Land of Poets and Thinkers, got married, had children. A sense of wonder about my family's survival, yes, even about my mere existence, after realizing there had been an abyss of pain overcome. Moving and returning had led to scars, an altered my family's identity to the core.

In the third year of my Bachelor, I wanted to find out the details of what had happened. I typed my ancestors' names into Google and could not believe it when I saw the Stolpersteine Initiative had researched that their entire biography. Initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, the art project aims to commemorate individuals at exactly the last place of residency before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror. Over 67,000 Stolpersteine have been laid in 22 countries, making the Stolpersteine project the world's largest decentralized memorial. The casual flâneur is reminded of a house's deported former Jewish inhabitants when stumbling over a metal cobble stone. My great-grandparents Sandor and Mali finally became clear figures with birth dates and confirmed locations of death. A mourning not given space in family conversations overtook me as I followed their trajectory line after line.

When I imagine Sandor's childhood, I see inquisitive prayer students in their little prayer rooms, studying their holy scripture together with the Rabbi and preparing their Bar Mitzvah day. The rooster crows early in the morning and on a wooden table with flour, Mammele kneads the Challah dough: Fiddler on the Roof's opening scene. My mother's grandfather Sandor Alter was born 1876 in Lemberg, Galician Province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a small town in which both Polish and German was spoken, today known as Lviv and part of the Ukraine.

The political progress occurring at the time of my great-grandfather's birth enabled the move to Vienna: since the year 1867, and novel in the history of the Habsburg Empire, Jews' residence was unhindered and freedom of worship reigned throughout Austria-Hungary. Many Jews from Eastern Europe moved to the empire's west, particularly to its economic center, the city of music and dance. Vienna's Jewish rapidly grew from 6,200 Jewish inhabitants in 1860 to around 147,000 in 1900. Sandor worked a salesman and collector, and in his mid-twenties, meets Amalie "Mali" Ardel, two years his senior and native to Vienna, they marry when Sandor is twenty-eight. Four years later, my grandfather Erwin is born, sisters Trude and Margit follow.

Europe's most robust economy must have exerted a powerful attraction as in 1913, Sandor, Mali and their three children left the Danube metropolis and moved to Stuttgart, emerging center of the automobile industry, for which Gottlieb Daimler had laid the foundations in 1890. Besides, the new _Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches_ of 1871 had granted German Jews the same rights as other German citizens. This favored the influx of Jews from the eastern Prussian provinces into the German Empire's dynamic industrial centers, the rampant Antisemitism in Vienna at the turn of the century may have also contributed to Sandor and Mali's decision to leave the city. Hostile expressions against the approximately nine percent Jewish population of Vienna were directed mainly against Slavic Jews. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell with the end of World War One in 1918, the Alters lost their Austrian citizenship and became nationals of the newly established Second Polish Republic.

After World War One, Sandor took over the post of the mourner at the service of the Jewish community, working at the Synagogue at Hospitalstraße, his task to accompany the deceased with prayer until the corpse, as the Halachic law commands, gets buried the day after. The Alters and their children fulfilled the requirements for the acquisition of the German nationality by the year 1933 but did not make use of it at the advice of the Stuttgart police authority.

Daughter Margit tragically dies of appendicitis shortly after giving birth to an illegitimate son in her twenties, Heinz's grandparents then raise him like a son of their own.

On October 6, 1938, the Polish government issued a decree according to which all passports of Polish citizens living abroad were invalid from October 29, 1938. There was now a fear by Germany that all Polish Jews in Germany would have to be tolerated and with effect by the same day, the German Reich issued a territorial residence ban for all Jews of Polish nationality. Sixty-two-year-old Sandor is at the Synagogue when the Gestapo arrests him and, as Polish national, hurriedly expelled from Germany, forced to return to Lwów. Mali remains in Stuttgart. Heinz leaves on a Kindertransport train to England.

A few weeks later, during the Reichspogromnacht in November 1938, Nazis violently brake the gate of the Stuttgart synagogue my great-grandfather had served at two o'clock in the morning and SA people dressed in civilian clothes storm the prayer house. The National Socialists stack the synagogue's wooden benches, douse them with petrol and then ignite the building, at three o'clock in the morning, the synagogue's fire lits the sky. Firefighters are already present during the arson (possibly themselves involved in the incineration) but limit themselves to protecting the neighboring buildings.

After the synagogue burnt out, mobs left the scene empty around 5 am. Local government ordered fifteen Jews to be taken from concentration camps to complete the depressing business of removing the ruin's remnants a few days later. The synagogue's demolition stones were sold to winegrowers from the Remstal valley for the construction of vineyard walls, all proceeds paid to the Gestapo. My great-grandmother might have heard of the developments from the news, Sandor was far away in Poland. In February 1939, Sandor came to Stuttgart once more to collect his heartsick wife Mali and handle last remaining issues.

My grandfather Erwin, who had fled Germany for Palestine desperately tried to organize a visa to the British Protectorate for his parents. The Nazi regime did not grant it. In 1940, the Russian Red Army, who had invaded Lviv in September 1939, deported Sandor and Mali to Siberia.

Soviet occupation of Polish territories in 1940-1941, expelled about 108,000 people from eastern Poland to Gulag camps, Sandor and Mali were amongst 32,000 who were deported to the Russian Far East. Their last signs of life are the following letters, the copies of which in the Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg:

Dear children.

As you can see, after six weeks of travel day and night we landed here and have been here for three weeks. We live in the camp in the forest. As you know your mother with heart disease, the air is not good for me. We both cough and often have a fever. ... Papas work is easy sawing etc., I do not work. At lunchtime, light food is cooked here. ... Should we change the climate one day, maybe I'll see Heinz or you children.

Kisses you

Mother

Siberia 20/8.

My dear Erwin.

As you can see, our sad fate has brought us here in the old days, all refugees and migrants have been brought to this place, we are both without means, waiting either for your help or as fate will take us. We are both very desperate. If it will take a long time, we cannot stand it much longer. We are both weak and malnourished. If you see us, it would be a miracle of God (make it the fastest).

Greetings and kisses, also to Trude, Max, Ruth

Papa Sandor

I am too weak to write more. You would not recognize me anymore. Me and Mama are very thin, so malnourished.

Dad Sandor

Presumably, the two starved to death in the winter of 1940. I can only imagine how thirty-two-year-old Erwin felt about losing the parents he could not protect.

My grandfather Erwin, his sister Trude and her husband Max escaped the Holocaust in time by emigrating to British Palestine. In the thirties, Erwin had worked for "Salamander Shoes" and otherwise as an independent sales representative. Successful in doing so, he supported his parents and uncle, even afforded a convertible car. In the late 1930s, a member of the National Socialist Party warned him of the pending disaster. Erwin had already transferred all his assets to a Swiss bank account in 1936, his wealth safe due to the Swiss bank secret, he collected his holdings on the way out of Europe, the safe's key sewn into his underpants. His sister Trude and her husband soon followed.

In the British Protectorate, my grandfather settled in Tel Aviv, bought a tender truck and opened a moving company, occasionally helping in a car repair shop run by a friend.

Tel Aviv, 1940: my grandfather Erwin meets my grandmother when he walks into her parents' shop near Shuk Carmel on Sheinkin Street to buy a pair of trousers. Behind the counter stands fair-haired Anna. My future grandmother was a pretty young girl of just eighteen years, Erwin was thirty-two.

In 1942, Chana and Erwin marry and in 1946, their first daughter Margalit is born in British Palestine. Two years later, the State of Israel is founded on May 14, 1948, four years later, my mother Amalie arrives. The Alter family lives in an apartment at walking distance to the Mediterranean Sea. Intellectually, Erwin's work wasn't exactly what you could call a challenge, the glimmering Israeli heat on the other must have. No wonder Erwin longed for his _Heimat_ as the years after 1945 progressed.

_Du fährst, mein Junge, ins Land der Kultur_ – "You are heading, my boy, to the Land of Culture" is what the passed away German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki's teacher solemnly told him before he left for his uncle in Berlin. Perhaps my great-grandmother Fanny Egra, whose name I proudly carry, felt similarly when she departed the small Galician town Kolomyya a three-hour's drive south of Lviv to settle in the land of Goethe and Schiller. My great-grandfather Moritz Pressler, whom she met in Hannover, routed from the same region. Together, they had three children: Anna, Frieda, and Heinz. A family friend mentioned economic opportunities in textiles in Magdeburg, so my great-grandparents moved to the town forming a geographic triangle with Leipzig and Berlin to open a menswear shop nearby the Elbe river. The business went well, and my great-grandparents lived in a large house on Johannisbergstraße, their shop in the same building. Moritz Pressler was a member of the representative office of the synagogue Magdeburg until 1936 and regularly invested in Palestine. The Presslers were orthodox, the Magdeburg synagogue was liberal, so sometimes the men attended one of the four conservative prayer rooms called "Stiebl" in Magdeburg's old town.

A notable event took place in October 1938. Fanny, now a Polish citizen like Sandor and Mali, was to be deported from Germany to Poland. On one Saturday, the Gestapo knocked on the door and demanded that Fanny accompany them to the collection point. Fanny was religious, and as the Talmud prohibits the use of electricity on Shabbat, she insisted on walking the distance to the collection point. The Gestapo officials obeyed and walked the hour with her to the registration desk. Once they arrived, it was time for Fanny to sign the deportation order. But no, Fanny did not write: it was Shabbat. No signature, no complete departure notice: one was correct. The transportation was halted. My great-grandmother's devoutness saved her life.

A few months later in April 1938 the entire Pressler family, that is Fanny, Moritz, Anna, Frieda and Heinz left Magdeburg and emigrated to Tel Aviv. Menahem Pressler, Grammy-winning concert pianist and my grandmother's cousin similarly embarked on the journey, already entertaining fellow travelers on board with his emotive piano playing.

The Alter family and Pressler families built their lives in Israel. In the 1950s, Erwin returns to Europe. Many of his friends in Israel cannot comprehend why he would go back to a country that had attempted to exterminate him. And Erwin is the exception: of the approximately 500,000 people who emigrated from German-speaking Europe, only about five percent returned. But why continue to grant a lunatic power over his life he had never deserved in the first place? His German friends had warned him of the pending disaster, a German friend now had also found a job for him. Why must one unceasingly define one's life over one's religion?

I can only guess what motivated him, maybe he had not even identified himself as a Jew before the war that strongly, and refused that the politics of a madman were to dictate the rest of his life. He was a free man now. Hence, after almost twenty years in Israel, in the summer of 1957, Erwin moves back to Stuttgart, finds work and an apartment and sends for his wife and daughters. The _Schwabenländle_ was still his home territory, and Erwin longed for the mild climate he grew up in, perhaps also for his daughters to be raised in the economic engine of Germany's _Wirtschaftswunder_ years. The Alters lived in a large apartment with a spacious balcony that looked onto the city, Erwin worked as a freelance sales representative and quickly restored his reputation as a _Verkaufkanone:_ selling items as fast as a canon shoots; Anna is a saleswoman in a department store.

When my mother was twelve years old, doctors diagnose Erwin with blood cell cancer. As he grows weaker, his daughters take care of him, Anna now earns the family's sole living. When my grandfather dies on May 20, 1966, Anna is only forty-four years old, daughters Amalie and Margalit fourteen and twenty. Three years later, Anna returns to her family in Israel.

Sun spoiled from Tel Aviv, my mother applied her shining personality to Southern Germany, soaking up its varied offerings, building lifelong friendships, and finally, marrying a German, the entry ticket to a stable sense of belonging. My father, part of the '68 generation of student protests that challenged leaders on their respective roles during humanity's darkest chapter, simply loved my mother. Ultimately, their loyal and tumultuous love has empowered me and my sisters more than anything else.

The last time I saw my grandmother _Sabta_ was in Tel Aviv. After a brief visit to her sparsely decorated apartment, she took Milena and me to a toy store around the corner from her apartment and encouraged us to pick a present for ourselves, anything we desired. That felt special. I carefully examined the shelf items and soon spotted the Ken doll, only male member of the Barbie collection. I owned around three to four Barbies then, this handsome, masculine doll would complete my group: caramel colored hair, dressed in a white suit, sportive. For years, Ken played the critical role in the stories I made up for him and my favorite Barbie. He would pick her up, they would go to the movie theatre, Barbie would be excited, and all would end as hoped for. _Sabtale_ was a frail woman, slightly unkempt, yet I loved her as we self-evidently do our kin. In first grade, a teacher pulled me out of class one morning. _Sabtale_ had passed. We flew to Israel the same day to attend her funeral.

As a teenager, I often attended the "Zionistische Jugend Deutschland" on Saturdays, a scout organization aimed at educating youth on Israel with the official intention of preparing them for a later "Aliyah" – immigration to the Jewish State, where I met Jewish kids from other schools and in excursions, other German cities. Its mission to promote moving to the tiny piece of democratic land cramped in between the despotic Levant. Offering diaspora Jews a communal space for exchange and support. But why was wearing Ralph Lauren Polo Sport bags our central symbol of group identification (don't get me wrong, I adored my silver shining bag)? It seemed that emigrating to the land of milk and honey was not a real priority.

Was life in Germany more desirable for us Jews growing up in Europe today? I did not want to rule emigration to Israel out, worshipping my Israeli aunts and uncles, cousins and friends who called me "Linale" and embraced my sisters and me unconditionally. A unique "Jewish" acceptance and allegiance, existing as awareness for the need to protect and support each other, as history had shown us that such was crucial and the safest path towards survival?

_Tel Aviv, habibi Tel Aviv_ – Every time I touched Israeli ground, I felt like pulling the Pope move: kneel down and kiss that holy earth. Elevation, relief, clandestine connection to men and women in Orthodox apparel, the smell of dates and dry street powder, lemon tree in the garden, _nargillah_ (water pipe) and ping pong tables in the basement. I don't know how they do it, but as soon as an Israeli touches your food, it becomes heavenly. Is it love, is it the joy to be alive, a consciously rendered confidence in their own value along the lines of "they tried to kill us, we survived, let's celebrate"?

Family at the core of all activities, at least each Friday night, religious or not, Israel is a country alive to the brim. To life, le Chaim! It's the depth and clarity of people's minds, the wisdom passed down the ages, the realness and the love that permeates the air of this land that adds a spring both to my mother's steps and her curls. On Rothschild Boulevard, I'm no longer the minority, "be what you are", its trees whisper.

STUTTGART

BORN ON 7 FEBRUARY 1897 as a daughter of German parents my great-grandmother Käthe Schlager was born in Austria's capital Vienna. Her mother originated from the Rheinland, her father was the nineteenth child of a Swabian pastor. Käthe's first years of life were shaped by the bourgeois, almost feudal atmosphere in her grandparents' house. She grows up cheerful, carefree, and, according to my grandmother, "endlessly spoiled as the only child of her parents".

Quickly her exceptional talent in piano playing becomes clear. Aged seven, she moves to Germany with her parents, where they live in several cities, until about 1910 her father founds the "Trikotagenfabrik Eugen Schlager", a knitwear factory in Kannstatt, district of Stuttgart. Only sixteen years old, Käthe leaves school and studies piano at the Stuttgart Music Academy, aged twenty, she completes her studies and three years later, marries architect Hans Volkart. Although she gives birth to two daughters in 1923 and 1925 (my grandmother Silvia), she continues to study piano in the 1920s, now with the director of the Stuttgart Music Academy. Housekeepers and early help from her daughters give Käthe enough time for her various activities.

The beginning of National Socialism brings profound changes. Her husband, a distinguished architect from Basel, is a staunch regime opponent and loses his teaching job at the Staatsbauschule Stuttgart in 1933 due to his Swiss citizenship, despite his abilities, he does not get a new professorship in the Third Reich. National Socialists are not invited to the Volkart household, and Hans accepts no project contract orders from them, focusing his efforts on a country cabin he acquires in Austria's Bregenzerwald and other construction projects. As the circle of friends diminishes and the financial situation deteriorates, Käthe's piano lessons gain more significance.

In 1937, the first of her compositions are published: educational literature intended for her pupils and daughters, two- and four-handed pieces for piano, violin, and cello. Although she becomes well known, she is not recognized as a composer. When in 1942, the Schott-Verlag accepts her composition, the editor comments: "musically at a modest level... Of composing women is just barely more to hope for", over 300 songs in which she writes of foreign cultures from Asia and Africa or poems set to music such as by Herman Hesse, Christian Morgenstern or Theodor Storm, do not come to publication. Even though her husband is politically un-adjusted, twelve booklets are printed. She is tolerated as a composer as she confines herself to instructive scores. Reviews rate her work as "complacent, appealing music". The intently childlike design of the notebooks play down the music and give Käthe's work precisely the character that the image of women at the time allows.

On the advice of friends, although otherwise politically reticent, Käthe publishes an essay on house music in the "Nazi Kurier" and unsuccessfully takes part in a contest of the National Socialist "Kraft durch Freude". Käthe Volkart-Schlager is too emotional an artist and engrossed in music to be politically active, though behind her husband, yet keeps back with utterances. From 1947 to 1969, she received a lectureship at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, gives improvisation courses abroad and travels extensively. In 1967, she got awarded the Federal Cross of Merit first class, nine years later, she passes.

As the youngest of four sons to the prominent lawyer Heinrich Görres, my grandfather Albert Görres was born 1918 in Berlin. As a boy, Albert attends boarding school in Maria Laach in a newly established Catholic institution nearby Maria Laach's Benedictine Abbey built in the 11th-12th centuries.

When the Nazis gained power, all his peers in school joined the Hitler Youth. My grandfather joined, only to leave it voluntarily soon after: this was not for him. A few months later, the HJ became obligatory; he was now the only non-member. Sent to the school director, he logically argued that the "Führer" would not want to force someone who had already left voluntarily to reenter. And the director followed that line of thinking. My grandfather had discovered a loophole: to be considered HJ-unworthy. In a conversation with my aunt recorded several decades later, he recounts:

"I was thankful that this unworthiness existed, only the director was anxious. For I was the only student in his school, who was not an HJ member and did not want to or could not. And then I suggested to him a brilliant idea, I said: Yes, damn it, there are other National Socialist organizations, such as for example the Reiter HJ or German War Graves Commission (VdK). Yet, the VdK had nothing to do with National Socialism, it was an association for Germans living abroad. Of course, its officials were Nazis, but the character of the whole club was harmless.

And then I could rest well with my non-National Socialist mind, and that proved to work well and continued until graduation. In the school was not a teacher who urged that more happened, nor did the director, he just wanted to have his statistics complete. And so [we students] prospered in peace through high school and I had no harassment or disadvantages or something resulting from my public non-National Socialist attitude."

His brother Karl-Josef was also a strict opponent of the III Reich, while Peter was a "Father Confessor Nazi" who asked in the confessional whether he may enter the party, "and he could – he was allowed into the National Socialist Leader Corps and was politically – despite his great prudence such a clueless lamb that when I quit the HJ, he flashed me: "Traitor!" Guido was a thicker, more explicit Nazi in the SA. And did not do any harm.

His father had read the party program and said: Yes, there is nothing to object to from the Christian point of view, repressed the party program stark anti-Judaism. He then he applied because as a prominent lawyer, he was urged to enter a party organization, lawyers' association or something. He wrote the application but submitted it too late – an unfortunate "mistake". And then the President of the Chamber said there was a small flaw: the wrong date, alas, we must change that. Heinrich Görres stubbornly replied to the President: "You are asking a Prussian notary for a forgery? Where will we get from here?" And so, Heinrich's entry to the Nazi's lawyer association was omitted.

My grandfather knew of the Anti-Judaism by the years 1933/34, but he judged it to be an extremist stream within the party, countered by other inner party streams along a logic of pick and choose. He alleged: "Something this extreme and crazy, that cannot stay. This will temper and shrink. Once they get rid of their first existential fear, as Nazis, as rulers, they will realize that no Jewish mob slits their throats, and all will become much more reasonable. But it didn't."

In 1932, before Hitler gained power, my grandfather went on a school excursion to Limburg, a small town in Western Germany. He was thirteen or fourteen years old. The school group stumbled upon a Hitler rally taking place in Limburg the same day. In his last months, my grandfather reflects:

"I was standing in a spot where I could strangle him with one hand, so to speak. He was standing a meter away from me, and I thought: "What a disgusting, sweaty, unsympathetic Proletengesicht - a prole's face. And the voice, the voice, you cannot imagine it, how he roared." His school was anti-Nazi minded "through and through" and dissolved shortly after. Official records state about his school _Heimschule am Laacher See_ specify that with the seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933, the funds for Catholic religious schools were canceled. Economic and political circumstances meant that lessons in Albert's school discontinued in 1934/1935.

Around five to six years later, newly inscribed in medical studies, the regime drafted my grandfather as a soldier for the Third Reich and stationed him in the Soviet Union's Caucasus (today's Georgia) as part of an Intelligence force which totaled "perhaps 40-50 people". His unit, the _Oberkommando des Heeres_ OKH had the responsibility of strategic planning of Armies and Army Groups. Until the German defeat at Moscow in December 1941, the OKH and its staff was de facto the most important unit within the German war planning. They trained my grandfather as a decoder and sent him to Russia where the radio traffic ran undisturbed over the Caucasus rather than through the dense radio network in Europe. The system of lines disturbed the signal from being interpreted effectively.

Und dann war also dieser Balladenabend. Der fing an und überraschenderweise kam der Chef, ein Nachrichtengeneral und dann hab ich also meine "Füße im Feuer" brennen lassen, und fertig. Das war's dann. Ja aber dann kam die Geschichte mit dem Hitlerbefehl, dass man alle Medizinstudenten in die Heimat zum studieren schicken solle und zwar – nix und zwar. Aber dann bin ich damit zu einem Chef gerannt und hab ihm das unter die Nase gehalten und dann hat der es aber genau durchgelesen und da stand dann: dies gelte nicht für besondere Spezialisten mit einer besonderen Ausbildung und das waren ja gerade wir. Und dann ist er aber doch mit dem Ding zum General gelaufen und hat ihn gefragt, was er nun machen sollte, obwohl das eindeutig war: er durfte mich nicht entlassen. Und dann hat der General aufgeblickt und hat gefragt: Wer ist denn das, der Görres? Ja das wäre der, der neulich den Abend veranstaltet hätte. Und der General war ein schlampiger Österreicher und der sagte: Na dann lassen Sie ihn mal losfahren.

"One night, to gently poke Nazis, I came up with the idea of a ballad evening. A lieutenant recited something, and I read the poem _Die Füße im Feuer_ by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer - first because this is a very wonderful ballad and secondly because the last sentence reads: revenge is mine, speaks the Lord. And that was disobedient in Russia because the Germans always portrayed the operation as a _Rache- und Vergeltungsfeldzug_ , a campaign of vengeance and retaliation by the Nazis). When my aunt asked whether others understood his hint and what he was referring to, he replied: "Oh, the German Company, they were very clever and educated people; and whoever wanted to understand it, could understand it; who didn't, did not."

"The ballad recital night began, and the boss, an Intelligence General, surprisingly attended. I let "Feet in the Fire" burn. Yet, no consequences! That was it then. However, shortly after the order from Hitler came: all medical students were to be sent home to continue their studies. I ran to my boss and held the order under his nose, except then, he read it line for line and there it stood: this does not apply to special experts with special training – precisely our unit. His superior ran to the General with the piece of paper and asked him what he should do although it was already clear that he was not allowed to dismiss me. The General looked up and asked: "Who is that Görres?"

"Yes, that would be the one who has recently organized the ballad evening." And the general was a sloppy Austrian and said: "Well then, let him go."

My aunt replied: "Due to the disapproval of this evening or precisely for it?" "No, no, he liked just that". The general did not want to get rid of my grandfather but acknowledge his deeds.

"And so I passed the Kyrgyz steppe by train at Stalingrad, where it was dangerous because Russian and Mongolian patrols constantly tried to break, destroy and occupy the railway line. Our train still came through."

My grandfather was the only medical student aboard the military transport.

"The only embarrassing thing was that in Rostock I had no decent command or marching order for the journey home and thus could not get caught by the stripes - of course they could have given me a regular marching order, but that's just not what happened - I did not have one. Or, no, I intended to take a fast train, because I was too slow with the normal troop transports and the express train was only for select persons." The express train was about a day faster.

"And then I'm off to Rostock, and then it became tricky to sit in the express train - and I watched where the patrol went and ran away from it, or spent the time it was near me on the toilet or such things, or at the exit - because you had to do something if you wanted to escape the patrol while on men hunt. At night, they did not want anything, so I went to sleep on the floor."

"What would have happened if they had found you?"

"Oh, then they would have detained me for three days. They probably would not have sent me back, although that was a possibility, too. I went to Vienna, and in Vienna, I had a study friend, and I met him on the street. The next day, I drove on to Tubingen and immersed myself in the student body."

"What was your career intention at that time?"

"I think at that time my job intention was unclear ...?"

"You had already read Freud's first book?", my aunt follows-up.

"Yes. I decided to become a psychoanalyst."

"And you had the desire to become a priest..."

"That was buried. I had put that in a corner."

"And did you have any duties while studying in Tubingen?"

"Yes, we had a schedule. First, our main duty was studying, and then occasionally, once a week there was the drill, much hated; at the end that was our whole military existence."

"Why has not everyone enrolled for medical studies?"

"Because they were too stupid."

My grandfather then studied philosophy, psychology, and medicine in Heidelberg and Tubingen.

Regime disobedience such as by my grandfather did not always end that well as the case of heroes Sophie and Hans Scholl confirms. I believe the "unsullied" past of my father's family is the only reason my parents could get married Still, my grandfather's action remained buried and forgotten even in my head identifying with my mother's perspective, as with those of many Jews in Israel. Almost all Germans made themselves culpable if only for their omission to act like human beings by protecting their neighbors and students and doctors from the mass grave.

"The past is the past", as my German high school classmates repeatedly said. Don't bother us yet again with all those Nazi stories, "we cannot hear it anymore!". My Jewish heritage was not something I emphasized when we discussed history in high school, and judging from the neighborhood I grew up in, blonde hair I wore, and German surname, not something everyone immediately grasped. Even during my university studies, when my later Brazilian boyfriend played "If I were a rich man" by "Fiddler on the Roof" in front of my dear German friend, I felt uneasy, fearing the song confirmed anti-Semitic prejudices.

BOYS

IN THE THIRD YEAR of my Bachelor, I went to Hong Kong for a semester abroad, the coveted exchange spot won as a reward for my good grades. Hong Kong has fascinated me ever since I'd gone on a date with a Jewish guy seven years older. While seated in "Tabasco", an elegant bar in Munich's center, he had kept on boasting about the city's splendor. Asia, with its mesmerizing pace and ambition, is a continent that must be explored if one seeks any contemporary understanding of our world.

Hong Kong: delicious Asian food, little streets bordering on sprawling avenues, glamorous bars, and a pleasantly mild climate. One of Asia's best universities, on the sought-after real estate location Hong Kong Island. A beguiling landscape surrounding it, offering gamely distraction in the form of casinos in Macau and spiritual enlightenment in visits to humongous Buddha statues. I quickly met a whole load of exchange students, easily distinguishable from the crowd by their ethnicity. The four months felt like an extended, joyful backpacking trip. The time of my life.

And I took up every sort of experience that offered itself: rising at 06 am to try out dim sum, surrounded by Hong Kong's elderly population in the town's best spot for it together with a Jewish Lebanese American and Austrian exchange student, sipping chocolate strawberry daiquiri in a secret cocktail nook on weekends and looking at Victoria Harbor from the 40th floor of the city's poshest bar. Every experience offered more deliciousness and expansion - all of this at age 22. Life was glamorous. I would not remember it as my Chinese semester, or party semester, or travel semester, no, in my memory what sticks out most is the number of fascinating men I met in those four months. It was as if I mysteriously attracted them into my life, each playing their own required role. Hence I'll always remember my study abroad months as my _boys semester_.

Guillaume, a fashionable gay Parisian journalist student, was the first man whose presence I reveled in. This French fashionista was self-ironic and a sharp observer of people. He knew how to stylize himself way before Instagram made it a social obligation: holding his glass of red wine so a ray of sunlight would hit it at perfect 45 degrees, accurately dressed for a casual lunch date in dark glassed Ray Bans – it was _impressionante_. Naturally, he was also the first one to figure out where to purchase European goods, heading straight to the fanciest supermarket which sold his beloved French cheese. Hedonistically seeking pleasure, he took his culinary interests _trés_ seriously. Every excursion with him a delightful cultural elucidation.

Chasing the best patisserie selling macarons or the best sunset to catch, Guillaume reminded me of Oscar Wilde: a slightly fraught personality eternally propagating the aesthetic experience. On hikes, he always brought a bottle of wine and some baguette with him. In the university cafeteria, my friend once ordered cheesecake, had a few bites and then was "completely full". Though he wasn't a smoker, in a club one night, he seduced me to share a cigarette with him. I could see why people liked it; still, it tasted cheap. Guillaume mastered _Savoir Vivre_ down to the inch.

On my third day in Hong Kong, I was looking for directions near the student dorm I stayed in, where I shared the room with a genius Chinese American girl attending MIT. A black guy was standing next to my dorm entrance, and when I approached him to see if he knew the way, he replied with genuine politeness. This instantly made my heart stop in its tracks. Ahh! The Americans! Their kindness. Secretly, this had been what I was looking for when applying to study in Asia. It wasn't the promise of getting to know local Chinese men or even their culture. No, it was the promise of meeting handsome and intriguing American men. I was sure that America's best would also come to this city to witness the Chinese economic miracle.

Joe from the Bay Area looked like a copy of my hero Barack Obama. They'd even attended the same college in California, Occidental College. This was 2009, so Obama was all the hype (to me, he still is). The next day, we went out for dinner in a group of students. When we chatted, I sensed this guy had a character depth most college kids still miss. I added him on Facebook a while later, shocked to discover that he was 34 years old. I thought he was maybe 25! He looked and acted just like my age. It must have been the youthful spirit some Americans carry well into their thirties. We started hanging out more, mostly in his dorm, where he would show me the latest law paper he was working on. After his conjuring up of delicious peanut butter and jelly toast, we made out once, but I sensed he was not all that into me. A late bloomer, I was not very experienced in love-making, anyway. There had only been my first love and the Czech. I don't think Joe expected my chastity and am grateful nothing more than a bit smooching took place. My self-respect remained intact, so did his respect for me.

There was a friendly, almost two-meter tall Dutch guy who lived in the same student hall as me and had a handsome face framed by bright blonde hair. He played the piano divinely, which made me listen with a pinch of jealousy, from seven to twelve I had taken lessons but wasn't good at it. Once we went out for pasta in a fancy Italian restaurant on the 20th floor of a high rise in downtown Hong Kong. He patiently listened to my troubles while we sat outside on the sprawling terrace. I find that men with sisters are better with girls; he grew up with two. Though I had been studying in the Netherlands for two years by then, the only fleeting Dutch friend I'd made had been a flatmate. It was good to spend time with the Dutchman, though on a deeper level, I always felt more drawn to southern cultures. Must be my Jewish heritage.

I also befriended David from Nuremberg who usually studied at Germany's best law school in Hamburg. We explored the city together and spoke about family and identity. Once, he took me with him to a dinner at the home of a Hong Kongese girl. Us and her two friends went shopping together for the freshest ingredients at a street market, left with ten different mushrooms, three types of fish balls and a bush of greenery. In her apartment kitchen, we chopped all into the most delicious hotpot I've ever tasted. All ate slowly from the same large pot on the table's middle while David and I answered the girls' curious questions about German society. This was unique, I doubt many others hung out with locals, socially, most merely stay within the confines of Western culture.

During that period, I had a "suitor" in the old-fashioned sense of the word, whose pursuit had begun when I had tipsily kissed him at the end of Oxford University's "Model United Nations" a year earlier. This 1.90 meters tall, overweight and shy man from Istanbul perfectly fit my pattern of attracting late-blooming guys with golden hearts. Though he never told me, it would not surprise me if I was party to his first kiss, too. He twice flew to Hong Kong to take me out for dinner and romantically declare me his feelings. The poor guy – he paced outside my student dormitory until the early morning hours, hoping to get a final glimpse of me again the next morning. My American roommate Alice quickly called him my "stalker", which bothered me because he was purely and foolishly in love and wouldn't even harm a mouse.

While the other study abroad students traveled the Asian continent on weekends and during fall break, I was super happy with where I was. Joe and I participated in a moot law court, which introduced me to human right arguments and China's power over Hong Kong what concerned the freedom of speech. We advanced to the final round, a great honor given the sparse legal background I had. I then asked Joe to drop out as this was not for me. He seemed disappointed but had no choice but to accept. Also, it was slightly stressful to keep living up to the rhetorical skills of this smart black American man twelve years my senior.

I took full advantage of Hong Kong University's massive library, which offered the opportunity to reconnect with the US by perusing book by its authors. I read books about US-China relations, devoured "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang (Ok, she's British), enjoyed "The Audacity of Hope" by Barack Obama laying out his policy program and at last, read "The Color of Purple" by Alice Walker. The goal, in the back of my head, was to return to the US one day to make good on the broken promises of the past.

On a whim, I flew to the Philippines for five days shortly before my family planned to visit. I knew no one there. Nothing about the country, apart from the fact that many of its female citizens were working as housemaids in Hong Kong. On the plane, I was the only white woman, all the other women were flying home to be with their families for Christmas. When I took the cab into Manila, it quickly hit me what desolate city I had arrived in. It felt as if I was the only foreigner in the entire country. Online, my hostel had seemed to be friendly enough. Now I realized its location was in the middle of nowhere: outside the center, away from anything worthwhile visiting apart the local mall. During my short neighborhood excursion, alienation was the dominant feeling that took hold of me. A tall and lone white woman surrounded by sugar-water slurping Filipinos. Peeking into my Lonely Planet guide to determine my next steps, I felt godforsaken. What in the world was I doing here? I did not feel comfortable. How was I going to spend the next four days? Everything seemed foreign.

Then something curious happened. A white guy wearing a "Hong Kong University" polo shirt walked into the hostel's lounge area, looking vaguely familiar. I was reclining on a bamboo stretch chair, guidebook in hand when he opened the door. His accent seemed European. Paul from Austria! We had recently met each other on HKU's campus. How freaky! Was this luck or fate? I like to think of it as a sign I was on the right path and in the right place. Life had rewarded daring the uncomfortable by presenting me with a familiar face. There is intelligence in our air which guides us to certain places at the exact right moment. Some call it the higher self, others intuition. Following those pointers is the golden key to creating miracle moments. With Paul present, my perspective changed 180 degrees: now I was sure this trip would be enjoyable. We headed out for dinner in the center of town with a fellow American tourist who was teaching English in South Korea, choosing a Korean Barbecue restaurant that infinitely thrilled: genius, that idea of grilling your food right on the table.

The next morning, Paul and I left Manila for "White Beach", a beach town in the country's south, quietly enjoying each other's company. Paul originated from a conservative region in Austria, yet had progressive aspirations and diverse interest. A background in economics, renewable energies were an additional professional target of his, and he was planning to sign up for a related vocational program. A little dry, he mostly interpreted the world in academic theories, engaging, yet slightly colliding with my very emotional nature. While we drove the bus towards White Beach in Philippines' south, we listened to Open Yale and Harvard lectures on psychology saved on his iPad. Outside our windows, empty plains, palm trees, and tin shackles appeared and faded. Minutes merged into hours, time lost its significance.

Once arrived, we rapidly noted we were the only white pair of tourists in town, every single other group of two comprised a chubby Caucasian man and a young Asian woman. Romantic! On Christmas day, we listened to Spanish jingles, stretched our legs out on the sand and feasted on delectable Asian curry. I could get used to sunny Christmas on lonely islands. When I returned to Hong Kong, Paul still two days before his flight back from the Philippines.

After two weeks of traveling to mainland China with my family, my boys semester came to its end. Paul and I crossed path once more at on one of Hong Kong's many escalators, waving at each other while my youngest sister Lilly was with me, and then didn't speak for almost seven years until he messaged me on Facebook. Turns out we were both living in Brussels, we met up at a contemporary art center the same night and after that, a few times again.

BRAZIL

ON RETURN TO EUROPE, classes only started two weeks later, so I visited my friend Eva in Paris for a few days, where she studied abroad at Sciences Po. After strolls along the mirrored hallways of Versailles, we compared our experiences of the past few months, then sipped French cocoa in one of its bordering avenues. At night, we watched _La Sonnambula_ at the Opera du Bastille with 5 Euro student tickets, the Nutella crepes we grabbed beforehand at Place de la Bastille a definite highlight moment of the trip, during the performance, we sat on creaky wooden chairs in the room's last row. I reveled in every second of the opera. Crepes and opera tickets for under 10 Euros in one of the world's most beautiful cities. What a privilege it was to be alive.

On Saturday, Eva and I took the RER train to the campus of Nanterre University to attend the rehearsal of its university orchestra. She introduced me to her Brazilian friend Eduardo, who had invited us to listen to him play the contrabass. Playing this instrument during the score they were preparing, he also knew how to play the cello and the classical guitar well. Again, Hanna and I sat on creaky wooden chairs, but this time, one concert performer warmly greeted us. After rehearsal, while we stood on the platform before riding downtown for a coffee, I felt the first spark of attraction to Eduardo. His calm demeanor radiated competence and pride, simultaneously alluring and slightly repellent. His straight look and upright posture spoke of strength and masculinity. He wore armpit long curly black hair and dark-rimmed glasses, his big green eyes and wavy eyelashes visible underneath them. Of tall stature, paired with recognition of its effect, he took on the leadership role of the group, yet, due to his approachability and interest in interaction with others, one felt comfortable with him. After a year of academia in Sao Paulo, he one day heard on the radio that France offered ways for Brazilian students to study in _La Grande Nation_. Familiar with Europe through his training in classical music, fluent in French and German, he moved to the continent of Beethoven, Bach, and Chopin.

In the subway in Paris, he told me about his vision to build a community in Brazil one day, where people could harmoniously live together. I appreciated his daring attitude, which is not something one encounters every day, though his ambition seemed further developed than his sense of reality. He was also a member of the Communist party in his hometown Varginha. Apparently, Brazil still had different lessons to learn than Europe concerning the political impact of radical ideologies. Yet, this man believed in the possibility of unlikely events to materialize – a valuable skill for manifesting one's dreams and embodied a similar potency to the one I had developed during my year abroad. He held the belief that the world could bend to his will and an unbridled sense of opportunity that reminded me of my own.

While we sat in a bustling café in the Quartier Latin, tiny espresso cups in front of us, we at some point gathered that we both of us dreamt of living in Berlin. I had just applied to the Hertie School of Governance, hoping to move there in September, and he planned on doing his exchange at Humboldt University the following January. Our eyes locked for that significant instant: now, the perspective of meeting again in Germany was in the room.

Our conversation moved on to the subject of Psychoanalysis. Eduardo freely shared that he had undergone therapy in his teens, speaking of its benefits with unpretentious praise, astounding myself, this organically made me believe in its benefits again. As I have a natural inclination towards self-observation, a psychoanalyst's work on me always seemed redundant. Only if a psychoanalyst would love me so much that the pain of existence would weigh less on me would it be worth the time investment I believe; for the rest, weed does a more efficient job.

The benefit I see in psychoanalysis is that it creates a space for expression. In ancient epochs, we used to sit and talk while we worked, women weaving baskets next to each other or collecting foods while deep in conversation, men bonding with each other while on the hunt, while on duty, what have you. This outlet is missing for so many of us who are staring into computer screens today, so I perceive therapy's use in the human element; the possibility to let down our guard in the presence of another human being. We require reflection as we feed off our stories, which give us meaning and teach us compassion. Talking to a shrink creates room for delving below the surface and allows us to correct our ways of thinking. Ultimately, however, I believe what we need in times of trial is _doing_ to move closer to a solution, diversion to charge ourselves with joy combined with pure _being_ : realizing how much larger life is than a single stressful episode. One attitude I would recommend is to look at an issue zooming out and examining your entire lifespan. Even two or three bad years aren't all that bad when you got plenty of good ones (training that joy muscle so the good years really can then is vital).

There are endless ways to raise our mood and our life's vibration. The sincere intent to experience the love of God will lead us to them. We must love this life amid the pain it eternally chases us with. Then, many experiences will feel valuable: the text message sharing tenderness; locking eyes with your partner while in an intimate conversation; the clarity after stepping out of a swimming pool. Seeing a project through even if criticism constantly aims to pull us away.

And when a pain older than our lives takes hold even if we have done much good and learned to love ourselves. If it clutches us albeit having freed ourselves of many illusions, the only way is to look forward and accept the imperfection. Because we have a responsibility beyond our own progress; facing that responsibility is the exact progress we need that moment even if it leaves scars or exhausts us. Most of us, wanting to stay instead of running away, ignore the demon in the room and do as well as we can with what else is available.

Sometimes, elucidation appears: what we reject is harmless. The pain that reminds us of our deepest hurts can suddenly be loved and an intimacy with presence arises. The elucidation doesn't entirely eradicate the pain, yet it creates a precious opening that expands if willed.

I'm rambling. How did Eduardo show me bliss on earth? By his lighthearted nature and his drive to experience life outside of the comforts of home. The instruments he played each gave him a unique understanding of the world. In that café in Paris, the connector was that he sought for the depth of life as much as I did, exemplified by his appreciation of psychoanalysis, (coincidentally?) my mother's occupation. It fascinated me that Freud's theories had found their way to Varginha, a small Brazilian town that contained zero museums and focused on manicure, acai, and _churrasco_.

In Europe, people viewed psychoanalysis more critically: how can the analysis of an anal or phallic or oral phase solve our current mind patterns? How can a mental paradigm lead to freedom from it? What good is to analyze a stage of my childhood unless I am also taught how to move beyond it? There must be other approaches that are more effective: behavioral therapy, mental clarity gained through travels, time distance, a good night of sleep, a glass of wine, a puff of weed. Present and concurrently excited about the future, driven by hope.

When this 21-year-old openly shared how the therapy he had undergone in his teenage years had made him a better person, his attitude felt progressive. No hiding behind a false mask of masculine strength, his vulnerability embellished him. Foreign ideas intrigued rather than scared him, and he bravely pushed beyond his cultural horizons. His transparent search for answers endeared him as it was balanced by the capacity to take good care of himself. Eduardo's premise that society overplayed gender identity ironically allowed him to sincerely appreciate my difference to him, my femininity.

Maybe my embrace could calm and nourish him, my European roots and viewpoints on education, political developments, and household tasks challenge him. Eckhart Tolle says in "The Power of Now" that some cultures have weak "pain bodies", this confirms my perception of North and South Americans, who with their New World identity and optimism, can heighten the vibrations of the inhabitants of older cultures.

A little newer to industrialization and spoiled with the sun, they embody the understanding that life is good with a self-evidence that, to onlookers, can be healing. Centuries of strife and disaster in Europe which required strategizing to solve and intense mental activity had their effect. I grew up with a strong sense of responsibility for avenging from the horrors of the past, for fully realizing the miracle of life, including my family's survival of the Holocaust. Fascism scarred Europeans' belief in a realizable utopia, even though we continue to work towards making earth a more paradise-like place every day and have undoubtedly achieved much.

Eva and I greeted him goodbye and returned to her tiny little studio in the 7th arrondissement to concoct a delicious evening meal. Eduardo had left a good impression on me even after noting his naïve and slightly dissentious nature. One could sense a certain machismo of infallibility. Although he was from the supposedly warm culture, his personality was much colder than mine. Emotionally, I am profoundly shaped by my mother's culture. Serve the people around me, yet stand up for myself, I match well with people who are equally others-oriented. Eduardo's attitude appeared self-serving even when cloaked by communal political orientation. During our conversation, he shared that it had been challenging for him to establish friendships when he was younger. Even with countless hours of therapy, his impenetrable emotive wall stilled appeared erect.

Eva warned me of Eduardo, complained that he was pushy and didn't take no for an answer. That night while we were having dinner, he called three times in a row. Though complimented by his tenacity, I saw what she had meant. Three weeks later, Eduardo planned to visit Eva to experience the famous carnival in Maastricht. Eva then had a Spanish-American boyfriend who shared her tiny room in a student house with her – obviously, there was no way that Eduardo would share room with the two. Thus, Eva asked me if I could allow Eduardo to "couchsurf" at my place, to which I agreed to with little afterthought. I knew I was not all that into him yet could sense a tension evolving between us via our email exchange.

Eduardo texted me he would arrive at my place at around 11.30 pm, hitchhiking from Paris. He rang the bell at about 01.30 am, with fries in his hand. I could not look at the food because I had overeaten that evening, a form of self-protection so I would feel wholly unattractive. Not do something I wasn't ready for. As I had only one small room, I placed Eduardo's half of my genius Ikea mattress (it could be split with a zip in the middle) on the other side of the room. Eduardo laughed at this when he saw it and asked if he could move the mattress near my bed. I concurred. Another example of how he did not accept the boundaries set at the beginning. Then, he put his mattress off the floor and next to mine. We now shared the bedframe. We lay next to each other, but I refused to engage in anything. Then he softly stroked my hand. Damn! That's when he got me. South Americans and their magical touch.

From then on, we visited each other by traveling back and forth between Maastricht and Paris by train – a short and convenient, if not cheap, 2.5-hour ride. One Friday evening after I arrived with my train, I came to meet him at the bar "Indiana" at Place de la Bastille he tended to support his studies. Don't get me wrong: I sat there at my wooden table peacefully, and I could tell that he was sweet, but we inhabited different worlds, did not have the best conversations with each other. Physically, we were an excellent match. I had so much to learn at this stage.

On my birthday in May, we went to the Pont des Arts at night where he handed me a lock that had our names carved onto it. He also presented me with two silver rings, one for each of us, with the day we got together inscribed on the insides. There were a little book and a perfume – a perfect gift box. It felt like a scene out of a movie – the two of us seated on a wooden bridge, the European and the South American, the bridge symbolic of our union crossing distant cultures. The first official relationship of my life, however random our match. Yes, my sight was blinded by those love glasses on my nose. I was in luuuuv – What beautiful sensation! Walking arm in arm along the Seine, we soaked up the magic of the moment, 100% clear we inhabited a valuable part in this universe.

During a visit of his in Maastricht, listening to the soft sounds of Joao Gilberto's bossa nova after breakfast, we came up with the plan to visit Brazil together during summer. I booked a flight ticket that spanned two months with the return right before the beginning of my master program in Berlin. Eduardo would reach South America three weeks after me as he planned a family road trip across Europe.

First stop was Buenos Aires, a charming, yet decadent city reminding of glorious times past more than of present success. Andrea, the friend I'd made on the exchange student trip in the US, warmly welcomed me in the home of her parents. The harmony between her parents left a lasting impression, I observed signs of loyalty in South American marriages that resembled Jewish culture. Being there for each other. Marriage as a permanent promise.

My memory conserved golden moments: The glimpse of a sunray at lunchtime in La Boca; the sweetness of a man moaning his nation's decline while I relished a delicious empanada filled with tomato and cheese; the disappointed expression on the face of my host where I stayed in a guest room for a few days after Germany beat Argentina in World Cup's Quarter Finals. The smell of hot chocolate. After two weeks, I moved north, taking the ferry to Uruguay.

Following a two-day stopover in Montevideo where I stayed and smoked weed with Juan (feeling the urge to kiss again, but wisely restraining myself this time), the prior exchange son of Gary and Helen, I flew to Curitiba in the south of Brazil. This eco-friendly city hosted the country's first university, an innovative bus network, and many German and Polish immigrants. I curiously walked the city's streets but knew there was more to expect from the country than I saw here. From this soft cultural landing spot, I took a long night bus to Rio de Janeiro.

At the station, a kind man, concerned about this young lady moving on her own, asked me where I was headed. He knew of a hostel right next to the beach in Ipanema and dropped me off there. But too many wandering souls sat in the lounge area and stared at their Mac Air screens.

Couchsurfing would be the route forward for me. This way I would use my resources wisely and learn about the country as locals experienced it. Eduardo had told me tales of roaming across Europa via that website the summer before, and we had couchsurfed together in Bruges for two nights with friends. I wrote to around twelve trustworthy-seeming profiles. First nobody got back, but I persisted, and sure enough, the one affirmative response came from a couple who had been to the Oktoberfest: "they'd be glad to host me, their trip to Munich had been so great, and when would I arrive at their apartment in Copacabana?" He was a photographer, she worked in the corporate environment. The wonders when you dare the unusual. For the next ten days, I had a free place to stay in one of the city's most iconic neighborhoods, doorman included.

I fell in love with Rio and Brazil. I think I fit its culture, at least guys there really responded to me. One time, I was taking a stroll along Copacabana beach, sipping a coconut, when a European-looking guy approached me. We chatted, and it turns out he was Jewish, too, stemming from Russia – Alexander Stjeinman. He promptly invited me for lunch at his family's place – together with his entire family. Brazilian hospitality. Seated around a large table in the living room, the parents dished up delicacy after delicacy and treated me like a new daughter, the reception an entirely different level to what I knew from Europe.

For one week, I attended a Portuguese language course in Ipanema. After class, we tanned and swam at Ipanema beach. A Spanish girl and the attractive creole Brazilian teacher who had grown up in the favelas (symbolizing intellectual emancipation), said I looked like a model which immensely flattered me. The city was like a fun version of New York City as it had a beach. When I left, grateful for my Couchsurfing hosts opening their doors for me, I gave the host's brother the only valuable item I carried with me: my camera - in 2010, this was still worth something. I did not care much for freezing time in pictures anyhow. True art is to realize the present moment as complete, without the need to hold on to it.

I then boarded a night bus to meet Eduardo in his hometown Varginha in Brazil's second most populous state Minas Gerais, prior mining territory, a middle-sized city forming a triangle with Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. We stayed at his parent's place. His former German teacher kindly offered to give me Portuguese lessons at no charge, so each afternoon, I attended my private classes learning to pronounce _voce, sozinho_ and _beleza_. Later in our relationship, Eduardo and I mastered singing _La Garota de Ipanema_ in original version together, he played, and I sang the lyrics by heart. Eduardo took me on a motorcycle excursion around town. When climbing the motorbike in my new Havaianas, my foot's skin got burned on the cycle's sizzling engine, the view over town was fantastic indeed. We visited the scenic anterior gold-digger town Tiradentes with his parents for a day and learned about Brazil's colonial history.

In terms of food, _farofa_ fascinated me \- a more delicious version of couscous reminiscent of toasted breadcrumbs. In Brasilia, where we observed the genius of Oscar Niemeyer in the capital's government buildings, we pulled the mattress into the garden to make love under the palm trees. In Sao Paulo, we met his aging Jewish friend and visited the Opera for a classical concert together. The traffic was horrible; the music was good. Brazil stirred me. It showed me an optimistic yet fragile culture that came across as the more vivacious cousin of the United States.

BERLIN

I RETURNED TO GERMANY and moved to Berlin. My master studies in Public Policy were about to begin. At the welcome reception, I overheard a conversation of two guys, one from China, one from India, this cohort's visiting students from Columbia University in New York. I joined their table, picking up on the term China, which I'd overheard them speak about, and offered my opinion on the economic tiger based on my experience of living in Hong Kong. Soon, the Indian and I found ourselves chatting in a small corner of our own. He was taller than me (the perfect amount), thin, and handsome. An irresistible smile, he openly flirted with me and bragged about New York after I confessed my admiration of it.

But you could see through the farce of his snobby discourse: here was an Indian guy showing this blonde German girl he was knowledgeable and worldly. Permissible if you ask me. That he had just lived in my favorite city and attended Columbia University intrigued me. He also knew Vienna well, where he had attended high school, a city close to my heart as it was my grandfather's birthplace.

Vikram thus understood German culture to a certain extent despite not speaking a word of it – matching my impression of him as a "no-clue expat" living in a safe, yet ignorant diplomat's bubble. If only he knew what he missed out on. When you learn the local language, a new universe reveals itself to you. You feel a stronger connection and appreciation for the culture and its inhabitants. But German must have seemed frighteningly foreign to him. Europeans are familiar with diversity from an early age on, hearing Europe's languages on subway rides, summer vacations or reading them on food menus. India also hosts a diversity languages, but maybe it's not as inviting to learn your neighbor's state language as on the continent named after a Greek mythological creature.

What Vikram and I shared was an identity existing in between cultures and religions, a cosmopolitan outlook and an uncertainty of where our identity belonged. I, daughter of an immigrant Jew and Atheist father, do not solely identify with Judaism. Though I profoundly love the religion, I feel like a slight outsider to its hidden beauties. The culture has become mine through my conscious embrace, melting away any imaginary doors, yet it was a chosen journey. I would call myself an enlightened Jew (Moses Mendelssohn lässt grüßen), freed from the ghettoish ways of being and thinking. The German identity, so natural from growing up in the country, and spending time with my Dad's side of the family, is something I had the luxury to distance myself from. While it feels stifling and lacking warmth, I understand that it depends on me what I make of it and a colossal enrichment to my understanding of the world. Why not define what it means to be German myself? Borders are a false construct, as my studies had taught me. Truth be told, I am blessed to have been born in this country. And yet, European is the identity I feel most comfortable with. A European who is prouder of her emotional breadth than the extent of her rationality. Was it not rationality put to extremes that brought us pure destruction sixty years earlier? In the book "Civilization and its Discontents" by Freud, a chapter of which was required reading in my Bachelor, he interpreted the mechanical killing of humans as the hellish brother of technological rationalism.

The third culture kid Vikram combining Eastern and Western culture was meant to meet the German who always saw herself a citizen of the world rather than a Bavarian. Soon after our meeting, he asked me out for coffee, but I declined, explaining that I was in a relationship. In early October, Vikram invited me to his 25th birthday party at this flat. I came with Eduardo. Vikram wasn't aware of him being there as his apartment was packed with people to the brim.

As soon as I entered the door, he sweetly grabbed my hands to pull me on the dance floor (my hand felt perfect in his). At a certain point, it became awkward as Vikram noticed that Eduardo was looking onto us. Vikram could not believe, he was my boyfriend; I think he expected me to have a much more handsome in the classical sense kind of partner. Eduardo had (very) long curly black hair, which made him look unruly and contrarian. He was wearing a blue-checkered farmer's shirt I'd picked for him at H&M, but it was easy to see that he usually did not wear the latest fashion. That was not what Vikram had associated with this girl wearing red lipstick and vintage boots. He was taken aback. After we left the party, I did not see Vikram for another four months. He didn't hang out at the Hertie School very much.

Eduardo and I then shared an apartment in Kreuzberg on Bergmannstrasse previously inhabited by the brother of the movie director Friedrich Henkel von Donnersmarck (remember the film "The Life of Others?"). Sophie had made the connection. We decorated it creatively. There was a red velvet couch we took over from the previous tenants. There was the five Euro red Japanese futon we found online and planted on a wooden foldable bed frame we'd purchased for ten. We had a large bar table and a washing machine and a chic wooden table we'd picked up for 20 Euros. Thrifty and smart about spending on decoration, the apartment still looked elegant.

I was attached to Eduardo, even though on some fundamental level, we clearly did not meet. Most importantly, I got the growing sense that he was not interested in what was going on for me. I was looking after him, helping him improve his German, meet my friends from Germany's "elite" study program, but there was little curiosity about my universe, apart from the occasional questioning of my mental state and cliché assumptions about my parents that he occasionally held against me. This was one-sided emotional capacity, with my side the functioning one I dare say. Against my consent, he often arranged for his friends to stay at our place, his egocentrism rampant. Often it seemed he would not get the most everyday points of human interaction like allowing the other person to take their own choices. Or inquiring about my thoughts on something for once. Maybe I didn't have that much to say? It took a while to understand that he hadn't practiced the intellectual conversation we Europeans pride ourselves in at his parent's home. His father, who does reasonably well, owned a truck company that transported coffee, his mother was a bank teller.

Whereas I had grown up very used to companionship that both soothed and challenged me in the form of my younger sister, his sister was seven years younger than him. It seemed the only child syndrome (which he was for seven formative years) was active at play: used to getting what he wanted, not really used to making space for a second opinion. On the upside, he had a powerful calmness that relaxed me, and was less socially competitive than me (I've been sprinting against my sister my entire life). On the other hand, he lived externally focused, needing many superficial friends but unable to go deeper with any one person. One-directional in his thinking, he exhibited a sort of stubbornness I attributed to him wearing glasses all his life. I knew this from home, my father wears glasses, too. Wearing spectacles from a young age can foster a sense of alienation from your environment, which he, in my view, tries to overcome by forming quick ties with people who may not actually be a good character match for him. I felt a wider age gap than the 16 months that separated us, in some domains, a lifetime ahead of him.

Our domestic life was mostly blissful though. We often concocted casual meals that were healthy and nourishing as well as affordable. Sometimes, we went out and treated ourselves to a mango chicken curry down Bergmann street, feeling like we were in the center of it all. Of Kreuzberg, Berlin, this fabulous European continent. Eduardo tried his hands at baking yogurt cakes, I focused on my studies. We regularly attended classical concerts, kissed each other good night every evening and sometimes made love in the middle of the day when I returned from class after which my choir friends complimenting me for my facial glow. But ultimately, he was looking for connections with many people at the same time while I was looking for emotional intimacy with one person, him. I longed for us to be more than a sexual unit; he was unable to offer that to me.

I wondered whether there was any difference in the degree of love he felt for me or our shared friend Eva, so indistinguishable did his talking to me and her seem. It's a special kind of loneliness when you are with someone but do not feel fully seen in your value. So ultimately, it was the lack of appreciation for me as an individual that led me to see him more critically.

After a Humboldt University concert that we gave early February in Bremen – I sang in the choir, and he played the contrabass in the accompanying orchestra – I sensed that we had come full circle. It had been one year and three days when I broke up with him in our kitchen two days after we returned from Northern Germany.

Eduardo did not accept my choice. A relationship ended when he decided to. We had never-ending discussions about my right to finish the relationship without his consent. It was obscene, almost entertaining in its ridiculousness. I would sit opposite of him in the living room and listen to a long monologue of his. There was no bending to my point of view. This was the obvious downside to his determined and strong will. We debated who would stay in the apartment (which was evident would be me, as I had found the place through my friend, but he disagreed). We fought about which piece of furniture he would take with him.

The period of disentanglement was very taxing. He also still insisted on continuing to make love, I had to really show him it was physically over, too. Then he fought over me moving to the living room to sleep. One night, after Eduardo's relentless opening of the bedroom door that led to the living room, where I was trying to get some sleep, leading to a door closed/door open scenario for a good two hours, I exasperatedly called the police. They calmed me down and said they could not do much. I was caught in a kindergarten dynamic. Eduardo also refused to move out. What he did instead was book a one-month holiday to Israel, leaving precisely a month after our break-up. This meant that his belongings would remain in the apartment until mid-April. Hopefully, he would pack his things and go after his return to Kreuzberg. A few days before my mother arrived in town with Anton, our Polish handyman, he finally moved out. But not before hosting his Italian friend Andrea from Bari for a few days. They repeatedly played the Italian Communist song "Bella Ciao" together in the kitchen. What are you gonna do?

The second semester began in February 2011 with me freshly single. Tuesday night at 7pm, about to go home, I crossed path with Vikram in the locker room. He joked; we had a natural unpretentiousness with each other, besides, a mutual curiosity. We made plans for dinner together in the next weeks. Thursday, I bumped into Vikram on my way to campus on Friedrichstrasse, thoroughly ruffled up from a confrontation with Eduardo, mumbling to myself. I must have come across very disturbed. But with Vikram, there were zero masks required. I felt that he would find me outstandingly pretty even with a giant pimple on my nose. Eduardo and I still shared apartments at this point, but two days before Vikram's and my date, he left for Israel (out of all countries, to shoot a movie about the plight of Palestinians).

It was March 18th, three days earlier, Eduardo had left our apartment for Tel-Aviv. We had arranged to meet at "Kimchi Princess", a cool Korean place in Manteuffelstrasse. Vikram arrived half an hour too late although his apartment was on the very same street. I smiled and continued sipping my green tea when he finally entered. He apologized: his sister had held him up on the phone. I thought: could he not have told her to call later? Then Vikram charmed me with his wit and self-irony. We got along effortlessly, slowly enjoying our Korean pancakes. There was an admiration for me, which I later realized stemmed from his sexual innocence. Still, I found Vikram endearing in his elegant gentleness, eloquence and self-deprecating humor.

For our second date, we went to a Tibetan restaurant that served Momos. Vikram loves food the way only people from a country with a rich culinary culture can. Indian cuisine is such an essential part of being Indian, even more than Italian food to Italians it seems to me. Eating became a highly sensual experience for us. His warmth and emotionality drew me in. My soft Jewish heart felt like it had found a twin. Vikram was two years older than me, but I could barely feel the age difference. He had a wise side, which matched his graying and slightly receding hair, nonetheless could be extremely childish. His taste in music – House – reflected some belief in a sort of irresponsible forever long youth. At the same time, he knew about life's trials and challenges, about family obligation and loyalty. Indians are faithful friends. Our Indo-Aryan cultures also matched in appreciation for art and aesthetic delight.

Shortly after I started dating Vikram, I met up with Eduardo one afternoon intending to create a clean and official end. I suggested we engage in a symbolic act that would mark the end of our relationship. The proposal was to meet next to the Spree river in Berlin and dispose of our two silver rings by throwing them into the river together. So, we did, standing next to each other and jolting the rings behind us, making peace with what was. A cleansing act. Looking back, it was crazy how I was already dating Vikram but still felt that Eduardo and I required a closure.

The interesting fact about Eduardo and I is that love, in the form of familiarity and comfort, continued to exist. Yes, he was dismissive of me, and yes, I could not stand him on some level. Our underlying dynamic endured: A mysterious attraction remained for my first boyfriend, which he both relished in and disrespected me for. Eduardo started to study in the building of the Hertie School though he was studying psychology in the south of the city in Humboldt's Adlerhof campus.

He was applying to do the same master program starting September 2011, using a recommendation letter written by a Portuguese classmate of mine. When I saw him on campus, I looked at him both searching for beauty and something to loathe. During the occasional shared lunch at Humboldt University's cafeteria, his self-efficacy would anger me, yet I showed up. I was alone and did not spend a lot of free time with my other study colleagues. It would take a lot more disrespect towards me over the years for me to finally draw a line.

Vikram is an attractive and fashionable man. Born in Shimla, once the summer capital of British India, his family moved to Austria when he was sixteen years old. He then studied Geography at the London School of Economics and began a Masters in Renewable Energy Engineering. His younger sister was already interning for the GEF in Washington DC when we met. As I would soon find out, he was sexually inexperienced because both culture and a physical condition called phimosis had put a brake on his manly instincts. A doctor had warned him that a tight foreskin would make intercourse painful. Hence Vikram never attempted it, waiting for a girl he would feel genuinely attracted to. He must have realized that I am non-judgmental in these matters, my dignified European ways paired with un-pretentiousness might have added to the attraction. We both share a strong bond with our nucleus families.

Vikram confided in me and opened his heart to me. We soon spent a lot of time together, mostly at his place because Eduardo's ghost still lived in my apartment. One night, I encouraged him to just try sleeping with me. Miraculously, it worked. I had tears in the corner of my eyes afterward. This felt like a liberation. Vikram was over the roof. Finally, manhood had been accomplished. Soon Vikram's only ambition was to make love, compensating for time lost. I followed, albeit eventually, the focus became exaggerated, bordering on pathological. Yet, the storm had a firm grip on me. I was in Vikram universe, abandoning my other relationships, practically moving in with him, leaving my freshly renovated apartment behind. That could wait, our love was what mattered. I decided to leave the semester early without taking part in the final exams.

We later called this Bollywoodian episode our "Summer of Love". Sleeping in, brunching at 1.30pm, strolling along Berlin's Maybachufer and having extended dinners at Berlin's rich culinary buffet became our primary occupation. There was our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, preferred ice cream parlor Fräulein Frost on Friedelstraße, the best vegetarian falafel place and the organic supermarket on the corner to shop tofu sausages at. I pitied my career-focused and compliant classmates: while they boringly followed the rules by studying quantitative analysis, I was living unrestrained romantic freedom, full time.

When my parents learned about my decision to abandon my studies, they flew straight to Berlin. In a Clean Chic Vietnamese restaurant facing Kreuzberg's water channel, we held a family "emergency meeting". Milena was in town, too, so the four of us discussed the consequences of me having interrupted university. My parents asked me to sign a written contract which confirmed that I would no longer be financially supported if I was not enrolled in University. I still had savings, but Vikram's and my habit of eating out every day in Berlin's many eateries left my bank account dwindling slowly but surely, even if Vikram's father often paid. I went to a pawnshop to hand in a gold bracelet my godfather had given me for my bat mitzvah, feeling it was more useful that way than around my arm wrist. Money was secondary: we would find a way. I could always become a barista to put food on the table. Love, love, love was what counted!

Still, slowly but steadily, Vikram questioned whether our sex life satisfied me. Tragically, my past with Eduardo began playing a role. Our previous physical connection became a nostalgic element as if my prior partner was an invisible participant in mine and Vikram's couple dynamic. I had been one hundred percent clear about ending ties with Eduardo, yet, Vikram's insecurity made me question whether there was something to miss about the Brazilian. What a sick mind game: I could literally tell that something severely wrong was developing, saw unhealthy thinking fester and infiltrate our conversations.

Woefully, with Vikram's inexperience in both love-making and relationships, Eduardo gradually came to represent virility, and Vikram his intellectual and emotional, but not performative superior. While I saw it play out, I perceived the insanity, but Vikram's mind was set that he did not live up to my supposed expectations. As Vikram knew Eduardo, as well as the drama when we had split ways, it was easy for him to understand the part I had enjoyed about my relationship to the South American.

Vikram repeatedly mocked Eduardo's actions or behaviors, also pointing out how there had been an instant of physical roughness between the two of us. Vikram indeed had witnessed a situation where I pushed Eduardo away from me, who was blocking the entry door for me when I returned to our shared apartment and had Vikram in tow. My mother visited early May to renovate the apartment I was living in, and with her visit looming, Eduardo finally moved out.

The issue grew way out of proportion and became a regular point of contention. Vikram was greedy for self-satisfaction and not too concerned about mine. I felt obliged to show him how much I cared about him, yet could feel exasperation creep in. Vikram also did not appreciate the fact I had lived together with a partner before him, which to him felt as though I had already been promised to someone else. I wasn't the innocent girl his father had found in his mother, nineteen and a virgin when they got married. This was becoming a real Bollywood drama. The expectations he had for me were naïve and delusional. But what was I supposed to do, break up with a man I had just met and loved?

He put me in a place where I somehow had to avenge for my sullied past by being entirely devoted to him. How could I prove that I loved him more than Eduardo; that the past was the past, and I done with it? How could I top the experience with Eduardo, with whom I had traveled and lived together? I felt pressured to show him he too was a "first": my first (and lasting) profound love, the first time I felt like I'd found a soul mate.

One afternoon after making love, Vikram asked me whether I wanted to marry him. I felt a flash of ecstasy, concomitantly aware of the question's immature nature. "We are already married", I muttered, meaning that our union was so unique, we didn't have to get married. Like a mother taming the ambitions of an impatient son, I calmed him as if showing how dating worked on the European continent. Sooner or later, a relationship with such skewed power dynamic is bound to go astray, even with the best intentions of all participants involved.

Vikram needed me to show to him I loved him none withstanding his lack of experience. Slowly, a bizarre mental conviction formed in me: the highest proof of love would be to want to a child from him. That way, we would straighten out the inconvenience of me having been in a serious relationship before. That way, our love would be sealed in the form of an Indo-German child which we would blithely raise as bilingual and bi-religious. Oh, the insanity of it all!

In June, I asked him if we should stop using contraception. He was hesitant at first but eventually conceded. I had way more influence on him than was healthy, not because I was so manipulative, but because he feared speaking up against me. They say a first son often subconsciously takes on his mother's role in his relationships. I intended this to be a joint decision, hence suggested we dispose of the pills in a symbolic collaborative act. On a sunny day, we went out for a walk in Kreuzberg, where his apartment was located. Holding hands, we threw my last pack of pills into one of Berlin's typical orange trash bins and walked back to his apartment hand in hand.

Because of Vikram's condition, I did not believe I could get pregnant, convinced the semen would never reach to impregnate me. Well thought through, I know. In my next life, I'll study medicine. I could blame Berlin, which invites you to forget all your worries and live for the day, but mostly, I imagined that bearing a child was very improbable and would take years to materialize. We continued our worry-free strolls along the Turkish market at Maybachufer, where we joined rows with lots of people "doing nothing" all day long. Vikram, me, and the city carried our nonchalance proudly, Berlin the fantasyland for grown-ups we thrived on. One month later the strip revealed the red cross.

Coming from a traditional family, Vikram would be expected to be the provider. Looking at the messy apartment he shared with Danilo, the Chilean-German philosopher and Vikram's own chaotic past, which had involved the desertion of a master at Imperial College, it was unlikely that he would know the way forward easily. I could not imagine us living together in the near foreseeable future. There was no basis for that. I loved Vikram – intensely. But we had only been together for three months. Shortly after, he called his parents to share the news. He was on the phone for hours with his father describing, debating, discussing, and describing again. On the phone with him an hour later, describing, discussing, debating. At times, he forgot I was in the room. The situation turned into the newest dramatic episode of Vikram, who'd had already delivered a few hick-ups to entertain his family at the dinner table.

Vikram and I decided that my parents had to know, and that we needed to tell them in person. We booked a shared ride from Berlin to Munich and only barely made it to the pickup point because fighting we had forgotten to charge our phones. It dawned on me that I acted more like a 15-year-old volatile teenager than a 24-year-old master student when I was with him. We made it to Munich as last minute as it gets.

The next day, Vikram and I deliberated once more how to go about this whole crazy situation we had put ourselves in. That night, a dinner with my father was scheduled, my mother had other plans. But Vikram bolted against the thought of attending that meal. Facing my father must have been a threating prospect. So Vikram escaped, catching a bus near my home in the late afternoon. Who can blame him? He bailed off to Munich's Hauptbahnhof, where he slept on the benches until the early morning hours of the following day when he caught a bus to Vienna. The first blatant signal he wasn't wholly with me: we would not present this central news unitedly.

I wanted to keep it; I had wanted this child. Yes, it came much faster than planned, but now it was here, I would rearrange my life to accommodate for the developments. I could move in with my parents again. But Vikram left in a fight, which made me wonder if he was ready to become a father as he insisted, he was. He was being much more dramatic about this situation than I was. That night, I broke the news to my father while we were out for our planned dinner at a Greek restaurant. When I saw the hard look on his face, where under any other circumstance, there would have been joy, I realized that something was deadly wrong. All the worldly indicators were telling me that the impregnation was not a cause for celebration.

My father did not make any suggestions, saying that ultimately this would be my decision. But there were several questions I could not answer. How would we support the child? Where would we live? Marriage was not even a subject of the conversation, so unfathomable was it, also to me. We were both still studying, had an income of zero, and there was no safety that Vikram and I even functioned as a couple.

The next day, my father informed my mother. I was still holding on to keeping the child, the motherly allegiance to the entity growing inside more commanding with each passing day. I must have been in my seventh week by then. My mother, not directly, but in encounters in the kitchen and in passing, hinted that abortion would have to be up for discussion. How ice cold of her to say. My maternal hormones were flowing. Yes, it happened earlier than planned, but this was no reason to end the pregnancy!

On Sunday, my boyfriend returned, this time with his parents in tow. The three had taken the car from Vienna and arrived at our place around noon. The plan was to meet for lunch and discuss the situation together. Remember, this was also the first time the parents met each other. It felt like we had skipped ten steps and suddenly, two families were discussing a child together. Yet, I was glad for them to make that trip. This made it easier to carry the weight of the situation. My mother had bought finger food and prepared a few other delicacies. From the looks of it, it seemed like we were hosting a festive brunch, not an burning crisis meeting. Seated around the table after a round of pictures and a pleasant enough lunch, the atmosphere in the room turned solemn. Each one offered his or her opinion.

Vikram straightaway stated that he would support me in whichever decision I would take. Then his parents began, in unison: In an equally passionate and enthusiastic appeal, they expressed that while they were pleased for me and Vikram to be together, one had to look at things practically. It was evident that their son was incapable of supporting this child. We were not married. We were both students. I had just deserted my studies, and Vikram still had unfinished coursework to do at Columbia University. Though he was supposed to graduate this summer, he had little progressed on his master thesis due two months earlier. For them, the practical approach was one direction only: termination of the pregnancy. The ugly proposition of an abortion act was put tabled. Where was the consideration for my attachment to the life growing inside of me? I thought Indians were the romantic ones, advocating for early family formation and eternal love! Did not love trump all, as Vikram had always described his parents' attitude toward that divine emotion? While Deepak and Prya were gentle and considerate in their delivery, I could not agree with them at all, their mental conclusion like daggers pinching my skin.

Then my mother weighed in. She made no fuzz about what she thought: She would not want me to live at home; I was not supposed to give up my professional dreams, this child had been conceived prematurely. I respected what she said, still, her words resembled arrows directed at my chest, her delivery too fervent and utterly dismissive of her daughter's feelings. Vikram and I would find a way! I had been open to being a mother! 24 years old was young but old enough. Yes, there were disadvantages, but these would be compensated by Vikram and me maturing concomitantly with the child. New life always asked for celebration. Then, a shift in my perception occurred. I realized my Vikram's parents and my mother were right.

My dad took the philosophical approach, which I gratefully received. He was the only one who steered the debate towards an essential point: I could not be forced into an abortion. This decision was entirely within my discretion, it was my body and my future and my child. Then he made the most religious argument of all: "life should not be interfered with, that one should accept, even welcome what one was given". My dad the atheist, the one who always discredited "backward" faith, spoke about life as a holy good! But at that point, I found his approach removed from reality, had he not noticed that my mother's passionate delivery, even if laden with her trademark furiousness, had triggered a switch in me?

And yet, my final shift of opinion was self-motivated and came from a deep internal place: during our debate, it had become blatantly obvious that the only sane thing to do was not to have the child. Let it be clear: it was not a matter of peer pressure or being talked into something. It was a matter of fully grasping our situation. Of understanding that having this child would be a pure and utter disaster. Vikram and I, frankly, were not equipped to have this child together. Not given his maturity levels, not given my professional status, not given our economic situation (our both bank accounts were empty).

After the debate, Vikram and I went for a walk. I expressed that the only right way forward was to go ahead with the procedure. Zero doubts remained. Vikram calmly listened, concurred and decided we would go through with this together. When his parents left for Vienna, he stayed on.

In Germany, for an abortion, one needs to meet with a state-accredited counselor who goes through a standard set of questions to make sure the person receives mental support where they need it. Yet, when we sat in that office facing a middle-aged woman looking to expose a covered-up sadness in us, I felt irritated. After having come to this decision in a genuinely deliberative process, the counseling seemed like an artificial barrier to overcome. Today I recognize that not everyone is granted that comfort. There were no doubts left for the therapist to alleviate or for us to wallow in. Vikram and I were crystal clear about our decision. With this session, we had qualified for the medical intervention. After meeting with the "Pro Familia" psychologists, a mandatory three working days interval is required until operation, allowing for "reflection". Pointless to me, as it unnecessarily prolongs the whole sorry process and adds to the psychological tension. We saw the state shrink on a Tuesday, thus could only schedule the procedure the Monday after that. I was already in the ninth week of my pregnancy. I walked away feeling that this was an embarrassing and pitiful affair, as state-driven institutions tend to make one feel: instead of lifting up, additional weight is projected onto the circumstance. At least we had a good lunch at Georgenhof around the corner afterward.

Vikram and I then went through the motions of finding a gynecologist to check on me and recommend the right hospital. Being there for each other made it all bearable even if paired with regret over our own past limitations. This literal partnership in crime ultimately enabled us to continue our love relationship, which this step inevitably would put at risk.

The Sunday before D-Day, my body unexpectedly bled forcefully. I was highly strung and sensitive, breaking up in tears at the slightest irritation. Tami's husband Peter was visiting from the United States (New York present again at my toughest hour?). He knew of my state but must have been shocked by my howling wrath. I was ashamed for hysterically crying, for finding myself in such a condition.

Acting on my body's violent bleeding, my mum suggested we should go see one of her friends who was a gynecologist to check on me. I gratefully agreed. He scanned my stomach and diagnosed an "abortus interruptus" - an autoimmune induced abortion which had not come to completion yet. Had my body taken care of the situation on its own already? Was it reacting to the fact I was mentally no longer aligned with the pregnancy? Maybe my body was more intelligent than I knew and had received my emotional messages.

The next morning, Vikram my mum and I got up at dawn so we would make the operation at 07am. It was weird to go in there perfectly healthy and be put to sleep. The procedure itself is uncomplicated, like vacuum-cleaning. When I woke up around after 45 minutes, it was all over. Just a time warp, no pain. Vikram greeted me in the waiting room and my mom picked us up to get home. The next days, I solely rested.

What counts is that Vikram was at my side when it mattered most. We had taken and gone through with this decision together, and for better or worse, this experience would be imprinted in our memories for the rest of our lives.

Without a doubt, I realized that my days of innocent youth were over. This hardcore transition to "being grown-up" shattered a major illusion: of a fairy tale life, a straightforward lifeline, a direct path to success in love and career. With consequences lived, the "Summer of Love" came to a close.

Even amidst all the support I had received, I felt tarnished by the events. First, I felt chagrined by the sheer insanity of how our story had unfolded. Second, I felt alone in this experience: nobody I knew had taken that same radical decision. My sisters would never do something silly like that, I thought to myself. The naïve bubble of mine and Vikram's relationship had burst. A year later, something unexpected happened. A very close friend had an abortion. And that, interestingly, has led to the most healing for me. I am no longer alone with that experience, no longer a psychic outcast. How our friends heal us in the most unexpected ways. And yes, the act allowed me to pursue my career first and have children when I would be truly ready for it. For that, I am eternally grateful. A course correction from madness.

I told a few friends, but it seemed improper to share with acquaintances. Some people heard it through the grapevine. It surely subtly changed the feeling I had in my body for a while: a natural process had been stopped in its tracks, which led me to disassociate from my God-given body. Time, as well as facing my full range of feelings, healed that. Once we examine the hidden corners of our past, and it is always the past we fear (we cannot fear an emotion we have not experienced before), we can face it lightly and close that chapter with a healing torch shone on it. Even if a trace of grief about a possibility that didn't see the light of day remains. I say: to new births, to other beginnings.

Now it was time to take care of my professional future. What would be my next step? Would I ever find a job, given that I had a discontinued Master on my CV and barely any work experience? Vikram's father helped me out by offering me an internship at UNIDO. The United Nations had fascinated me ever since I was thirteen years old. Fortunately, the placement in Vienna offered my life the structure it relished from September onwards again.

WIEN

OUR VIBRATIONS BRING us to the places we need to be so we can reconnect with our ancestors (and resolve our past) or build our future. Vienna is the city three of my great-grandparents grew up in and my grandfather Erwin Alter was born in. It gathered the epitome of European thought, to which Jewish writers, scientists, and musicians such as Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, and Fritz Kreisler contributed. The father of Ludwig Wittgenstein was a Jew from Bohemia. A hop away from my new room in the 2nd District, I visited their places of reflection, where they had sat and debated for hours around ten decades earlier: The Café Griensteidl, Café Central, the Café Landtmann.

During my three months there, I frequently strolled the library of the University of Vienna and sat down in the large reading hall where Sigmund Freud, a man I felt an intense connection to, had studied philosophy and medicine more than a century ago. I stayed in a shared apartment on Berggasse, the actual street the ground-breaking psychoanalyst had lived on. One could see the occasional orthodox Jew when getting ice cream at Schwedenplatz. Apfelstrudel, debate, self-irony, sarcasm and decadence, the city felt very Jewish. On weekends, I walked Vienna's many small alleys and parquet museum floors. The city's promenades along the Danube gave me space to process the summer's events.

In October, I visited Vikram in Berlin, who had just gone ahead with a sort of circumcision. After having consulted several doctors a scary, yet freeing act, God bless him. He recovered from the small operation in his apartment. When I took the bus from Vienna to Berlin to visit him, Vikram seemed vulnerable, but also not as much in the relationship as before the events of late summer, as if he had seen something about me he did not appreciate and now the spell I'd had on him had broken. Inexplicably, our relationship continued its roller coaster dynamic. Wasn't he also glad for this calmer phase, ideal for building a more mature and enlightened rapport?

When Vikram came to Vienna for a weekend, he first spent three hours at his parents' place and then "graciously" joined me at a friend's party. I was mad about his late arrival, which in turn led him to not come home with me. I could not believe it! His irate behavior was mind-boggling. Were we in a relationship or not? It was unclear whether his priority lay with his parents or his girlfriend. But who was I kidding? It was glaringly apparent that his family came first, and me second, just like in a teenage relationship. Here was a 26-year-old man on the imaginary leash of his parents. It did not surprise me that the son of a housewife struggled with his career choices and was confused about his direction in life, the determination to carve out a European existence probably didn't make it any easier. Though sweet and generous and a product of her time, I came to sort of disrespect that in his mother, precisely because her fate had become a distinct possibility for me. If I'd kept the child dependency on my partner could have well come of it.

Something in our dynamic was askew. Vikram was making the occasional odd remark about my friend Eva who studied a second master in Berlin. Were they new best friends now while I was far away in Vienna? And Eva wasn't as emotionally available as she had once been. I was putting all my cards into the relationship with Vikram, not hanging out with many people besides him, and I only saw him every six weeks. Reading, as always, was my escape and my solace (Ian Morris' "Why the West Rules" an intellectual tour de force). Often Vikram accused me of the most ridiculous things, which I simply couldn't take seriously; or obsess about a negligible detail. Then, suddenly, when he was sick of the debate and his own banter, he'd zoom out entirely and watch a game of soccer.

It was always me who made an effort we see each other; I pushed and pushed and was frustrated he did not express the need to see me. Why did I have to become a fan of his? Was he feeding off my adoration for him, throwing in the occasional "I love you so much" so I would excitedly await his next gigantic declaration of affection? I invited Vikram to spend New Year's Eve in a chalet in Kitzbühel with my family and me, but he canceled with a lame excuse last minute, the ensuing disappointment still vivid. How can you continue to let another person down and not measure up to it by breaking the relationship off? And that is the main accusation I hold against him: He wasn't man enough to call it quits. Maybe to keep his own sense of self alive and kicking. He should have ended the relationship but was incapable of doing so. And I could not at that point, having promised my unrelenting love, and meant it: if you promise love, unhappiness is irrelevant. Love reigns supreme. This is how we destroy ourselves.

In February, he went to New York as he still had to finish his statistics class to graduate. In the meantime, I returned to the Hertie School of Governance to complete my master in Berlin, which meant I had to retake the courses I had not finished the spring semester a year earlier. The understanding that you acted immaturely and therefore will graduate a year later than planned was humbling. A year is a lot of time! I've always wanted to be straightforward about my career; like a lot of first-borns, I am ambitious, want to move the clan forward, give back to my parents, live up to or even exceed their expectation. Be a role model for my sisters if possible.

Why was Vikram sent into my life, and why was I receptive to the madness? Part of it was that I came from a place of strength, the strength of experience and emotional stability in the home I grew up in. I was in a position to guide someone, bring someone in. What attracted me with Vikram was his sense of family, a deeply ingrained part of him, sticking together, being there for each other. And the promise of creating a family spoke to me. Life is much more rewarding when we give to a new life, are bighearted and include more people in our circle of loved ones. Mainly, I find it boring to put myself and my needs first always, and so much more rewarding to give to the group.

Vikram and I wrote and Facetimed a lot, and though officially we were in a relationship, the concept felt fake in this context. We lived separate lives, he in the US and me in Europe. This never bothered him as much as it did me. I could not wait for the nightly phone call while he was always "fine on his own", "doing different things". But Vikram lived in his own world of article perusal and occasional blogging. I could not understand how a person could believe they're "busy" when all they're doing is listening to electronic music, watching Charlie Rose or saving online articles in their browsers. At times, I had the feeling that Vikram was kidding himself, and then others. Almost as if it was too shameful to see that he was spending half a year of his life to complete a single freaking statistics class. One course, four months of living in the US for it.

Vikram grew up privileged under the wing of his father, who is a high-ranking diplomat at the United Nations. Still, when I visited Vikram in New York for his graduation, we had a wonderful time together. It's just that I felt I was too grown-up for him, that girls a couple of years younger would fit him better.

In summer 2012, I went on a three-week language stay to Barcelona funded by my _Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes_ scholarship. There was a German medical student who had been a club swimmer and reignited my love for the sport when we dipped in the Mediterranean Sea together. Although the first time he swam in any sea, he moved right past me with assertive strokes.

I always adored swimming but never pursued it as a real exercise option. Two weeks later while vacationing with my parents in the Austrian mountains, I swam again in a public pool. Moving my way through the life-giving element, it suddenly hit me: this is where I thoroughly belonged. Even if all else went berserk, here I could always return, in water I would find joy and authenticity, remember who I was under the layers of thought accumulated for years. From that point on, I frequently, even intensely swam through any remaining emotional scars to reclaim feeling at home in my body. The German was also a photography geek and took pictures of me which showed that I had overcome last years' events and looked healthy and happy. Two years later, we coincidentally met in front of Munich's Olympic pool, and from there, the second episode of our friendship evolved. He was a late bloomer, too.

Vikram said he loved me and then directed a disrespectful statement at me. When a man starts to insult a woman with derogatory comments, the woman better leaves as soon as possible. In the fall of 2012, while we were visiting Milan together for a weekend, I broke up with him. Vikram was furious and held onto me, harshly insulted me, gripped my arms at Milan's Central Station until I freed myself to go for a calming walk. He cried sitting in the bed of our hotel room the morning I departed, but I had zero doubts that this was the only sane decision to take. Two days after I was back in Berlin, I booked flights for a four-week trip to India. It was time to discover that country whose son had shaped my life so much these past one and half years. Four weeks, on my own.

I later found out that Vikram had cheated on me three months after my abortion. With my supposed best friend: "We just clicked. But after three weeks we could no longer continue because we realized that this was not fair to you." And then they kept this little detail from me for four years until Vikram's subsequent girlfriend slipped the news item when she was entirely fed up and had equally broken up with him. She called me to reveal the facts, having found my number in his phone, he had confessed his sins to her. It's not that the act itself hurt me, which is meaningless. It was also not that I feared Vikram did not love me, which he did in his own contorted way. It's that he and my friend lacked the decency to be honest with me. To admit to their faults. They forgot to respect my right of choosing whether I would still like to be friends with them after the fact.

Maybe they feared that my hurt would be stronger than our connection. But if someone does something like that the bond cannot be that strong in the first place. Out of pure principle, I cannot imagine myself sleeping with the boyfriend of my girlfriends, much less than with the boyfriends of any other woman. If having sisters has taught me one thing, it is to respect women. It's senseless and ultimately hurtful to oneself to allow an affair to develop with a man who is (even if only "still") in a relationship. Respecting the existing union and entering an amorous entanglement when one can be sure the person is mentally and factually available is essential. If a man or woman is not taken rightfully, one person is likely to walk out hurt on the other end. One can never fix a broken beginning.

And me, innocent fool, called him, wrote to him, repeatedly invited him. I wanted to move on from the drama of the summer. When I visited Eva in January, I noticed a strange and inexplicable subtle change in her behavior towards me; as if being kind needed trying. There were underlying vibes I sensed were tarnished without knowing why. Here too, I was shouting into a forest with no echo. But friendship is forgiving, and our initial spark of friendship stays valid, the experiences we share remaining precious in the history of humanity, the amicable bond more significant than an embarrassing mistake. We still appreciate our friends for their unique and non-exchangeable qualities.

Oddly, it also felt like a lousy compliment that Eva slept with my boyfriend. From Vikram's side, I can see the cheating also motivated by newfound sexual confidence, which he would try on whoever was available. What was interesting for me was to see how, in my loyalty, I had held on to two people who obviously did not know how to love me in the right way. It is an audacious act to admit long-held illusions about friendship or love to oneself, but ultimately, it is an empowering liberation.

INDIA

WHEN I WAS A YOUNG girl, I first delved into the world of India via children's novels. The Untouchables, the castes, the Ganges; German children's book author Klaus Kordon masterfully wrote about the colorful subcontinent. Friends of my parents adopted two daughters from Mother Teresa's orphanage in Calcutta. While on exchange in the US, my American host mother's sister Joy told of her visit to India that exerted a powerful attraction on me. She warned me of its poverty as if Westerners cannot bear to see the limited availability of resources. One day I would see that country for myself, my sixteen-year-old self already knew without a doubt as I listened to her – everything in this world deserves to be seen.

Even after having visited the subcontinent, returning to spend a few weeks in a Southern Indian Ashram or following Beatles' footsteps by training as a yoga teacher at the foot of the Himalaya in Rishikesh excites my imagination. What you fall in love with as a child lasts for a lifetime: this goes for people as well as for places.

As a Jew, spirituality is important to me. And India offers a geographic space for living love for the divine with no local prejudice, invites you to dig deeper, release rusty conventions and encounter pure joie de vivre. Body weight gets shed and beliefs shattered, and if we let it, our essence shines through stronger each day on visit in the land of Mahatma and Indira Gandhi. Enlightenment can happen anywhere, but we need to create the mental and physical room for it, which India offers in abundance.

True spirituality is too expansive to demarcate with rules or the framework of a written story, and in an age where many religions appear backward-thinking, a fresh interpretation of the holy carries a sexy appeal. We all know what I am talking about: though we may love our faith, its value is primarily in the cultural treasure it transmits. Established faith may offer an entry point to transcendence, but all too often, our visits to synagogues and churches are profoundly rooted in the worldly.

I flew to India intending to work at Mother Teresa's in Calcutta, at least that's what I'd told Vikram when he incredulously asked why I was flying to his country of birth. Volunteering was justification for me, the master student, a valid reason for traveling to this wild land on my own. Truth is, I had no fixed plans whatsoever. My hotel room with pick-up from Mumbai Airport was booked for two nights, and the state of Goa attracted me – a high school friend had shared stories about family trips there and I had admired the colorful bangles she returned to class with each January. I would decide my route on the spot along my philosophy that life unfolds best without force. This journey would by customized personal graduation preceding my academic, so when the dean would hand me my master certificate the following summer, I'd have graduated in self-knowledge, too.

At the baggage claim of Mumbai Airport I got the first taste of the city's chaos as I feverishly looked for my nowhere-to-be-seen backpack. Finally, I sighted it in a quiet corner. The driver of my hotel had been waiting two hours for me: both luggage and airplane had taken their time to reach destination. The calm man took it lightly and shrugged his shoulder, drove me to my little hostel in a small hidden corner of Mumbai and moved on to his next responsibility. At the hostel, I was led to a tiny, nondescript single room, where I slept long into the next morning while the air conditioner blew reassuringly. The time difference had made my first day arrive quickly.

Waking up, I could hear the buzz of life all around me. The staff's sentences in Marathi bounced off the walls of my door Back in Asia! I decided to move to the shared dorm section of the hostel to facilitate meeting fellow travelers. New arrivals joined me in the cozy living room. I went out for dinner around the corner with a German brother and sister who were about to return to Europe. Sitting on the metal bench of the 2x2 meter restaurant shack, I tasted my first proper Indian mango lassie for 50 cents while they told me of their last eight weeks backpacking. I could never travel that long with my sister, I thought while I had _Gulab Jamun_ for dessert, a fried Indian sweet Vikram's parents had already introduced me to in their Viennese living room. I noticed a tire shop filled with black rubber parts in the shack next door.

When we got back to the hostel, two Israeli guys played backgammon in the living room. These were my people, I knew within a split second. One was Guy, who'd studied law at Jerusalem University, the other Itay, who'd sold stuff on eBay to pay for this trip after the completion of his army service. Guy was the business school type, taking control of the situation, very expressive, American lingo; Itay more easy-going, exuding warmth and a religion called "non-judgment". Oh, gorgeous Israeli representatives, so much was clear. I told them about my attachment to their country, home to many friends and family. Wasn't it _sababa_ that we stumbled upon each other now, here, in Mumbai? Their sweetness and curiosity about me and my story touched me, immediately, they felt like extended family. The exact people I was supposed to meet, my intuition told me. The perfect timing of meeting Guy would be confirmed again in the coming weeks.

As the evening progressed, we hostel visitors moved to the laundry room, where we hung out to smoke a little weed. A joint made its rounds. Surrounded by dryers and tumblers forming a balanced circle, we happily made casual conversation. Suddenly I was intensely aware of the utter beauty of this moment. Spontaneous creation. I'd rather be nowhere else. This trip, menacing when I left the comforts of home with no clarity about who I would meet or where I would go had been the right decision.

On a portable speaker, Itay and Guy played the song "Sara" by Bob Dylan, which I hadn't even heard of before. How did they instinctively know what would crack my heart wide open? I was not even used to the generous attention I received from them: Vikram had been treating me so miserably, been verbally abusive, neglected to so much as listen to my side of an argument. The three previous years had made me forget my sense of normalcy when it came to love relationships. Respecting women came naturally to these two guys, treasuring women is a deep-seated part of Israeli culture and shaped by Judaism's numerous matriarchal aspects. Guy's and Itay's interest and warmth was the finest validation I could receive for booking that trip, embodying the lightness I longed for and reminding me of the cleverness and inventiveness we find all around when visiting Tel Aviv. As if departing my parents' home in Munich had led me straight into the arms of my spiritual home.

Later that night Marieke, 18 years old, long blonde hair, arrived from the Netherlands and made quarters in the bunk bed above mine. Like me, she had no clue about where she would head, we both organically followed the flow. Itay mentioned he would leave for a tiny hippy village the next morning, Arambol in the north of Goa. A beach town with a relaxed atmosphere sounded perfect. Marieke and I would head there just like him, an inner voice told me as soon as the lean Israeli finished his sentence. Still disoriented from having just arrived, Marieke agreed without the needing much convincing. The next day we explored Mumbai and bought train tickets at its humming central station, departure 07.30 the day after. When we arrived at the tracks the following day, the train did not move for another two hours. Eleven hours later, we reached Arambol. Had we covered the train ride in Europe, it would have taken five.

On board, we chatted with an Argentinian cook, who told us tales about his global travels. A beautiful moment of strangers bonding in a train cabin. From my wooden cot, I observed the Indian tea walla chant "Chaaaaaaai, Chaaaaaai" in the walkway and then serve teensy weensy cups of the most delicious masala chai tea to all passengers. I would soon get addicted to these, three doses required per day.

Once arrived at Arambol station, a funny Brit we met at the train station shared the tuk-tuk with us and invited us to stay at his hostel, the same one he had visited a year early – he was an Arambol regular. Called something like "The Dancing Cock", it smelled of just the wrong vibe, I sensed as soon as the hotel manager greeted us. For one night, this eerie dwelling did its job, but early next day, Marijke and I moved to the place where Itay stayed already. Only a hundred meters away, the "Hemp Hostel" mysteriously attracted people who got high a lot.

I wondered if Arambol was an uber alternative village laced with either LSD or hemp type of places. But when I walked out on the beach, I recognized its distinctive beauty. No annoying club bars with fake white leather and blue glowing fire bars, no McDonald's or Doner Kebab stand, just twenty improvised beach shacks fronted by delusional Russians meditating on the sand dressed in purple Ganesh T-shirts. The ocean sprawling out for kilometers; the beach speckled with palm trees. Ahhh, I breathed in deeply. What bliss.

I still wasn't entirely content with the Hemp Hostel, so the search for fitting sleeping quarters continued. Another fifty meters down the beach "The Laughing Buddha" promised an appropriate ambiance. Nomen est omen: it comprised several bamboo huts from which one could hear the ocean waves rolling, sported a little terrace and the village's most exquisite home cuisine. Opposite from me, a Swedish guitar-playing couple rented a shack.

For breakfast, the Laughing Buddha served homemade hummus, evenings delivered the most excellent choice of curries and freshly baked naan bread. Two shy waiters eagerly served each meal with speed and innate gentleness at an optimal price-quality ratio. That's what I am talking about, honey. At nights, I listened to the Swedes sing a goodnight lullaby for me.

Arambol has a unique energy that attracts Russian hippies, Israeli travelers, and European adventurers alike. The "Magic Village", a collection of teepee tents and a sprawling wooden terrace, offered the highest quality organic foods and outdoor music concerts. Intellectuals paired with escapists, Russian explorers and sincere spiritual seekers meditating on the beach gave that Goan village an enchanted touch, like a small utopian bubble not yet discovered by the wider world.

The manifestation of every peace and love fantasy I'd ever harnessed, each day at sundown people spontaneously gathered for a beach concert and danced, the sun blithely disappearing where sea and sky met. Remarkably, the trip was spiritual without me trying. I indeed merged with the moment, no other existence required. Two meals per day sufficed for most of my Indian spell, yet the foods I enjoyed left some of my most enduring memories: butter masala curry, palak paneer, naan, rice, all so freaking tasty! Breakfast was Israeli, as many hostels had adapted their menus, so I would feast on fresh hummus sided by homemade limonana..

One night, we were a group of around five, an Israeli girl, her Indian boyfriend, an Ethiopian who lived in India, an Indian from Tamil Nadu, Marieke and me. Seated around a white plastic table on the beach, we had dinner and played games. Then the Ethiopian casually mentioned that he had swallowed magic mushrooms earlier in the day. Though remaining collected, I was astounded. The world of drugs was something I read about, but only rarely witnessed live. It's not something I have been drawn to too much. Was this dangerous to them? Mushrooms. I guess it sounded crazier than it was. But it seemed like a big decision to try something like that out. A typical traveler's window into a different lifestyle. Perhaps he appeared to show me that the world is diverse, that Ethiopian men are moving to India in search of economic opportunity. That the path of ambition is paved with temptation.

During a party on the beach in Arambol, the redhead Brit walked around spreading hugs and tenderness, he usually carried the typical British stiff upper lip (specked with a pinch of humor). Turns out he had just popped MDMA, a drug that makes you love everyone. His sudden warmth made more sense now. A Swiss traveler, deeply tanned from his extensive world travels put on a happy show of no worries, but underneath the party joviality, his vibes whispered of certain brokenness.

I spent most days with Itay, who enjoyed his weed (being sober wasn't a priority) and Marieke, who had just graduated high school and exhibited a moving interest in life. One morning, us three and a quirky Russian IT entrepreneur living in Deli took a stroll to a nearby beach. We followed a little footpath, walked through bushes, up a hill, until we reached a small opening under a tree. Playing the flute, a sadhu wearing a short orange cloth and his fellow Hindu ascetics sat on an organic platform. We formed a circle in the midst of a tree accumulation. Silence, nature humming. A smoky wooden chillum made its rounds. No signs, just word of mouth had led us here. The kind of authentic moment most of us are too critical to enjoy fully, a magical serendipity reserved to the curious-minded.

After about a week in Arambol, Itay and Marieke left, whereas I stayed on as our former Au Pair Stefania also visited India that month and lodged in a nearby town. But it I quickly found new friends. A Spanish-French man with a greying beard and penetrating eyes in his forties took a liking in me. He was into astrology and read my birth chart. Pluto was 180 degrees opposite Venus when I was born, according to astrology this means my eroticism (represented by the planet of Venus) should be used as power (represented by Pluto) to teach, given that numerous men came into my life with little experience in that department and the desire to grow in that area, it strongly resonated. I do agree with the stipulation that we are all born with a particular energy shaping our outlook and purpose in life. I don't know about set character traits every Taurus exhibits or the compatibility between two signs, but I trust that there is more to our existence than our current paradigm suggests.

One evening, we went to the "Hemp Bar" together, meeting place of all local stoners. They offered a "special" green lassi, which I spontaneously picked. Soon, the most unexpected thing happened. First, felt nothing, followed by a great calm that pervaded me and one of the most peaceful, almost healing nights of sleep. When I woke up, it was 1pm the next day. Well, oh well...

I had not brought a camera; I did not have a smartphone then; this trip was about my personal perception, not a holiday I picked to brag about back home. Only occasionally did I go to the Internet café to check my email, which often included an email from Vikram crying he "could not believe I went to India without him". Every time I saw an email of his, my entire body tensed up. "Leave me in peace, for God's sake!" I thought and considered installing a filter so his emails would skip my inbox. Unbelievable, the psychological drama this guy was attached to.

Time went by slower, and I fully relaxed into the food, the vibe and the people around me. When I moved from Arambol to Hampi in Karnataka after ten days, my general theory of perfect timing received its proof: I magically stumbled upon Guy sitting at the village riverbank waiting for the same small boat as the Korean backpacking girl I had paired up with and me. It had been two weeks since Guy had flown from Mumbai to Kerala and I had just gotten off a nine-hour bus ride; we hadn't communicated once since. You meet whom you're supposed to in life, traveling reveals that in abundance. We smiled. Then we climbed the dinghy taking us to the other shore where a line of dreamy hostels awaited us.

Through Guy, I reconnected to the Israeli mentality, the country my mother was born in. We attended a Shabbat dinner hosted by the local Chabad rabbi and his wife, packed with Israelis who were traveling Asia to disconnect from military service. Motorcycle excursions took us to open fields speckled with golden stone landscapes and villages with curious children. We'd also just sit in my hostel's wooden patio café laid out with Persian carpets from which one overlooked green rice patties. Sitting at low tables like those in Bedouin tents, Guy would smoke hemp while I would take diary notes. On rented bikes we reached a nearby lake to swim, the Israeli with his freckles much more scared of getting sunburned than the sun-adoring European. And yes, it was a little more than friendship.

We welcomed the new year quietly while stretched out on a wooden swing at his hostel, a few fireworks igniting in the background and content with exactly where we were. Not disconnected from our bodies, not wishing we were in another city or another country, in love with our own presence as the most magnificent good. "Existence is SO satisfying by itself!", I thought.

Our family, all that is not present, is a figment of our imagination anyway, I understood again. That insight that when you enter a room, you are clear that people will respond well to you as you are a walking piece of love. It's when nobody is texting you, and you celebrate it. When the world blessedly does not need you. When you do your thing, and the planet turns, and you are here, and all the others are fine where they are. We went to sleep early in Hampi, Karnataka.

When we venture into the world, we learn about our silly habits back home, about our small addictions (in my case, eating chocolate every day) and realize we are freer of them than we supposed. This is the value of going off on your own. You understand your partner or parents are fine without you, in fact, you offer them space to look at their own lives and improve it instead of focusing on you. Most precious in hindsight was that social media did not exist all around, backpackers did not yet constantly hold on to their IPhones. Apart from a phone call to my parents every three to four days, I could ignore Europe and shed my usual identity. It's such a pity that escaping who we are has become ever rarer.

My mother worried about my safety. It was her ego identity as a caring mother that obliged me to get an Indian phone number so they knew I was well. I did not want their opinion, this was to be my trip. But we are children, and we bow to the expectations of our parents. We meet them at their fears. Dutifully, I called. And yet! The hero version of me would have told her: "I am making this trip to be away. I am a 25-year-old woman, and I am responsible. If something happens, it happens, and there will be nothing you can do about it from Germany. If I die, I die. Part of life. Please trust already in my capacity to steer this and tread in shallow waters". This everlasting negotiation between who we aim to be and then realize we can't because others continue to hold power over us.

For these entire four weeks, I was surrounded by people at dinner, rewarding as in the apartment I shared with a Northern German girl in Berlin, I often dined on my own at our kitchen table. Here, the distinct sense that my existence benefitted accompanied me. People, even if only for reason of them having someone to share their meal with, were glad I was present.

I returned to Munich in January, slept and recharged for two weeks at my parent's place and then returned to Berlin to write my thesis and attend my final master semester. These months were simple: get up at 07am, go to Uni, find an empty room, write. Take a break to go swimming, return to campus, continue. I handed in my thesis at the end of April and then enjoyed myself. On my birthday in mid-May, friends and I went to a lake near Berlin, followed by chilling out on a patch of green next to the Spree in Berlin Mitte while feasting on chocolate cake, celebrating our newly gained freedom from academia. In June, after attending universities for six years, I finally graduated with a Master in Public Policy.

I had reconnected with Vikram in the months after I returned from India, and visited him once more in New York, where he had yet another course to finish to qualify for his degree. The flame between us still burned, but again, we fought like two hamsters in a cage. Vikram still had the mental movie playing I had hurt or done something awful to him, such as going off on my own to India, while in reality he projected his faults onto me and externalized guilt by holding standard behavior against me.

Vikram came from Vienna for my graduation ceremony in Berlin. Afraid that he would miss his night bus, I barely slept the night before my graduation. On the day, I felt like a ghost, keeping my two mouth corners erect required serious effort. It saddens me to this day how much life quality I lost to this man. Yet, the one thing I am grateful for is that we finally came full circle. After two years, our romantic entanglement dissipated the way it had begun: gradually.

After graduation, we spent one good week in Paris together, which I believe is key to why for the succeeding years, I still considered Vikram a close friend. I had rented a tiny room in the city of love's elegant 7th arrondissement, literally around eight meters long and two meters wide, a "Chambre des Bonnes", previously the housekeepers' quarter. On a small cooking plate, we cooked Risotto, the room's tiny shower a meter away, the nearby Eiffel tower granting our cave-like intimacy a refined, romantic touch. Vikram's first trip to Paris.

We visited the French Open, rekindled a mutual passion having overcome the past traumas and finally, were sincerely grateful for each other. At this point, it became about supporting each other in our respective paths, fully aware that they were likely to diverge lastingly. After Vikram left town, I biked to the OECD and promised myself I would somehow make it beyond the metal security barrier and work at this international body.

Looking at the two men that shaped my twenties, the first stood for the discovery of my body in unison with another. It would take me years to learn that every time I gave in to Eduardo, I relented my dignity. By engaging with him, I may have opened the door for other people to mistreat me similarly. We must be clear and concise in what we permit others in relation to us. If we don't draw the line, nobody will. Vikram and I explored the bridging of unconscious cultural assumptions of what affection means. Ultimately, it was a love destined to turn back into friendship. Meanwhile, India continues to stir my imagination.

GERMANY

DOES EVERYTHING HAPPEN for a reason? Can we transform challenges into wins? At what cost? I believe so. Mistakes can lead to valuable outcomes. Such as when my computer broke down and I got myself an iPad, which eventually led to this book.

If life is supposed to guide us into an agonizing direction, it will stealthily find its way. It's impossible to escape the hurdles that find into our experience. Resolving these hurdles can take a few weeks, occasionally a year, other times, decades, for some of us, it takes a disease or the threat of death to reach elucidation. Like when a hurricane clutches a building: it will take some time for the garden to flower in full bloom again. We may blurt the agony out, starve ourselves to avoid stomaching it, but denying ourselves of the genuine and rooted sense of accomplishment and fulfillment when we dare admit all that has been wrong and continues is so refreshing. Open your beautiful eyes darling, so you can take in the whole truth! No guarantee that unending happiness comes from it, but looking at it all offers the capacity, the skill to be whole. So that all of us can be a little more whole.

In February 2012, I returned to Berlin to repeat the semester I had ditched the year before. I threw myself into my studies and soaked up all that my program offered. A release for my stored up emotions was required. I felt stained, and occasionally, an illusory pain in the right area of my lower stomach. Second, I had to process the humiliation of sharing the classroom with students who started their master either one year or as some classes were only available in the fall semester, two years later than me.

Over the summer between spring and fall semester in Barcelona, I remembered the healing properties of water. Saltwater in particular, but sweet water works just as well. Soon one could find me at Berlin's _Stadtbad Mitte_ pool between three to four times per week, either mentally preparing for my second edition of "Applied Quantitative Methods" or cleansing my mind from feelings of regret over my past decisions. Though Vikram and I were still together, he lived far away in Vienna.

To get rid of the chlorine, I always brought a shampoo bottle with me. One day before classes the bottle leaked inside my bag and spilled onto my laptop. My treasured Macair worked for another year, but in the middle of my traineeship in Paris a year later, it muted irrevocably. By then, I had graduated from my masters, interned in Geneva and moved to a lovely little studio in Paris' 16th Arrondissement, around the corner from the Eiffel Tower. As I lived in France, I believed there would not be a laptop with a German keyboard available. I'd never seen the point of iPads, but now it seemed like a smart alternative, maybe I could hook up a keyboard to it and use it like I had my laptop, language adaptable. I certainly could watch "House of Cards" on it.

At the time, I was interning at the Africa Desk of the OECD's Development Centre. The summer of my graduation, I had stood in front of the main building's security gate and sworn myself that I would make it through it soon enough. That summer, I also passed through Geneva on the way to Munich back from a family vacation. So, in early October, I moved to Switzerland, the multiple applications I had sent to the OECD still unanswered. I wanted to give the UN another chance. But no. By the end of my first day, I knew that making my job exciting would require grinding effort.

A contact from graduate school worked at the World Economic Forum, an organization that had long fascinated me. I loved the WEF's reports, its spirit, diversity of content, its combination of substance, coolness, and glamour. Through his reference, I secured a phone interview.

Then, an email from the OECD appeared in my Inbox: was I interested in supporting a small dedicated team for the upcoming African Development Report? I postponed my answer, expecting the WEF to call any moment. Five weeks of nothingness. No reply, even after repeated inquiry calls. After five weeks, finally a "no". My eyes opened: I wanted to accept the OECD offer! Not a vast salary improvement, but a city I've felt drawn to since youth. Finally, rigorous work. Hence after four months in Geneva, I moved to Paris.

I enjoyed the OECD's academic rigor. But even in an international organization that did a lot of valuable work, 50% seemed to be about internal politics, comfortable salaries and using the newest trendy academic vocabulary. Sure, it was all reasonably glamorous, and a dream come true. But the entrepreneurial spirit in me longed for work with visible impact, that instead of smooching high-level administrators, touched people directly. We all appreciate a decent salary, but do we really want to spend our lives supporting massive bureaucracies that spun out reports which often end up collecting dust in desk drawers?

While the OECD does valuable work on taxes and education, the UN's hollow vocabulary irritated me: "We believe that now is the time to strengthen international cooperation for industrial development, which should be based on foreign direct investment, transfer of knowledge and technology, appropriate financial mechanisms, and new partnerships built on a broad multi-stakeholder basis, and on mutually agreed terms" – really? I could not imagine putting ink to paper like that for the rest of my days.

Years of passionate involvement with my university's Model UN chapter and the two internships at UN bodies in Vienna and Geneva alarmed me about the millions that ended up in the pockets of an over-educated elite before a comparatively small percentage trickled down to where it was supposed to go. Though the jargon was more specific at the OECD, after countless hours spent on quantitative research turned into a few graphs for the African Economic Outlook 2014, I yearned for work on a smaller scaler yet with tangible outcome.

On a short wedding trip to Israel, I had spotted the headquarters of the software company WIX at the Tel Aviv port. "If you have an idea, we'll enable you to translate it to the world", the company's headquarters seemed to whisper. Hence, shortly after my team at the Development Centre in Paris submitted the chapter on Africa's integrations into global value chains and my supervisor shifted to a different internal position, I dabbled with the design of websites. Maybe something interesting would come of it, perhaps I could establish an existence that would not require constant diplomatic haggling and the patience of a turtle. Who chose to wait for fifteen years to reach a position of actual influence? Me not. It's a red flag when an organization's trainees are not kept busy.

A soft spot for spirituality and self-realization, I honed my web design skills by creating two sites on empowerment and enlightenment, people had stopped caring what I was doing during my workday, anyhow. It would be hard to turn those sites into a business, though, the market already flooded with self-proclaimed gurus and wisdom teaching guides and did I really want to go down that road? What had I completed my Master for then? Slowly, a concept more in line with my background and personality formed in my head.

How about I combined my fascination for relevant content, spontaneous sparks of genius with the concept of Airbnb? Why not bring the TED talks from their expansive stage to a more private surrounding and motivate people to open their living rooms to welcome artists, entrepreneurs or musicians for an evening of intellectual exchange?

I had always had a knack for the concept of salons, those cultural spaces primarily instituted by women in the 18th and 19th century. Felix Mendelssohn's sister Fanny Mendelssohn had regularly hosted musical get-togethers in her stately apartment in Berlin's Mohrenstraße (a hop away from my graduate school); in Geneva during the Napoleonic era, Madame de Stäel had shaped political opinions by inviting the epoch's sharpest thinkers. Let's bring structured conversation, the hallmark of culture to our city flats and modern living rooms. And people could make money with it, too, charging guests an entry fee for each event, profits split between host and speaker. I carefully designed a website, registered it under www.salonfest.com and drafted a business plan. I signed up on Angellist to find investors and with friends, discussed the need for apartment insurance policies. But as the end of my internship approached, reality slowly dawned on me: it would be genuinely hard to pull this off without proper funding and an established network of artists and thinkers. No, for now, it would be wiser to focus on finding a stable full-time position. Perhaps I could use the digital skills gained in the process later.

Once in Munich, I figured, I could always work for my father's company again. Yes, it had not been entirely my cup of tea when I had worked there during previous summers, but one adapts, one makes it work, I thought. Paris had been lovely, fashionable and reasonably entertaining, it had also not been mine. And why make it so? Munich's air was better, my family closer and the Alps around the corner. I naturally dreaded the prospect of moving in with my parent's again, but I would find my way out soon enough.

I had no functioning computer nor any saving to purchase myself a new one, too meager or non-existent had my salaries been for the past year. A few days after I arrived, my mother handed me her former laptop, a massive black HP machine, no Word program installed on it, built around a decade earlier. Already de-motivated, I despised working with Open Documents and shunned working in a lackluster company just for the sake of being employed. I loathed giving up on my original dream of working in an international context with some form of other-oriented purpose rather than pure profit. What for had I studied in English, wandered the globe, taken on unpaid work in the past? It all seemed redundant.

With each further day I spent in the tiny room of my parent's house, my felt entitlement to a good position with a decent salary seemed to decrease. Writing application letters was cumbersome, the target not clear, each day I considered different cities, diverse sectors, various types of positions. Just a year earlier, I had mastered the phase with so much ease! But I didn't know where could finally become that proper German I, too, wished to be at some point. Meanwhile, my younger sister enjoyed her job as a management consultant at a top employer in London, most of my friends established in positions already, at least partly.

To my disappointment, my father did not want to hire me, of the stubborn conviction I should prove myself elsewhere first. Part of me agreed with him, paving out an independent path forward would be more beneficial to my psyche. And yet, I am convinced I would have meant the progress and context that would have stabilized me at that point.

The search continued. Should I focus on becoming a management consultant or should I combine my background in politics with the corporate world by applying for companies' government affairs departments? A feeling of having flunked the year before for not having secured a full-time position even though I could have seeped in. Had I chosen to stay at the UN in Geneva and not taken up the internship offer in Paris my Swiss salary would have been more than comfortable by now. Berlin, a city I loved, seemed worlds away. London, where Milena lived, appeared highly attractive, and impossible to reach.

Combined with the shame of financially depending on my parents, the doubt about my competence to operate as an adult grew larger: how was it even possible I felt so powerless at the ripe age of twenty-seven? Why, when the entire world spoke of "digital possibilities", "living your potential" and the latest disruptive start-up did I still stare at my hefty laptop every day? Logging on to Facebook only confronted me further with my unglamorous lifestyle.

Aware that my background in public policy and European Studies would not make employment easy in an environment that favored hiring business graduates from Mannheim and St. Gallen Universities, I tried my luck at a few management consultancies. Rejections. By late September, without the job offer from a consultancy hiking trip that doubly served as a "hiring trip", I had enough. Ready to take on a job that did not require a college certificate. At least the entry barriers promised to be surmountable. And it would finally get me out of the house. A catering company with Munich's trade fair as main client opened its gates to me within a day.

For a few months, I served coffees, beer and meat rolls to the fair visitors, once in a fake Alpine Hut when a construction company celebrated Christmas. During Munich Media Days, behind the counter in the VIP section, I spotted an acquaintance who had graduated from the Hertie School a year after me; she accompanied the Head of Public Affairs of Germany's largest newspaper. Her skirt was infinitely more elegant than my white apron. We nodded towards each other, then I returned to removing breadcrumbs from the surrounding cocktail tables. A few hours later, I spotted a friend of my parents. Luckily this time I went unrecognized. Except that the bolt of humiliation had already struck me. It was high time I found a desk job somewhere.

Online I saw that due to the recent influx of migrants, Munich's Department for Unaccompanied Minors was searching for additional hands. Again no lengthy interview required; I could start the same week. Soon, one could find me standing in front of a massive desk of drawers filing documents according to the alphabet. They handed me a pack of folders. With my headphones plucked in, I counted the hours, and to make them pass quicker, occasionally read the paper's content. One migrant had lost his parents on the journey from Pakistan and was now repetitively throwing his head against the walls of his assisted living quarters. Another "unaccompanied minor" had spent his monthly stipend on expensive sneakers. A third left the Home for Children and Young People for days on end only to return drunk, disheveled and yelling loudly, put under house arrest if I remember correctly.

To manage the unprecedented migrant stream, the city had established temporary living quarters in the Olympiazentrum. Its VIP section now hosted around 150 refugees of all ages, spread out across one large room, each with their own little stretcher. I volunteered on site, sorting donated clothes and teaching German to teenagers from Syria, Afghanistan, and Nigeria who hungrily soaked up my every word. I did not have the impression they wanted to laze around.

I also took a job at one of Rocket Internet! copycat companies, delivering groceries to people's home either by bike or by borrowing my mother's car. How I detested my walk's through Aldi's and Lidl's food alleys picking up pork sausages and port wine for people who did not want to do their own groceries. On one Saturday I even worked as a Santa Claus at a gas station outside Munich, God forbid. I knew I had something to offer, but my future appeared doomed. So yes, one chaotic experience can have effects far and wide.

Even the one interview I was genuinely looking forward to did not play out as planned. The night before I an interview at one of Munich's best communication consultancies, my mother, father and I visited my grandmother at her elderly home. It had been months since I had last seen her, now the first time since I had returned to Munich last July. She laid on her bed, her body that was once stately now frail, her mind barely lucid. Her bronchitis had rendered her every breath a strained effort. We quietly observed her, the only noise her letting air in and then out again. It reminded me how breathing is the one fundamental signal of life.

At three o'clock that night, the receiver in my room rang. My aunt was informing me that my grandmother had just died. I woke my father and stayed awake until I heard him leave the house. A few hours later, I woke up crumpled, only an inch of energy left inside me. I was determined to attend the interview. After a swim that I hoped would restore my spirit, I showed up at the consultancy looking like a corpse myself, efforts to cover my inner state up with mascara and lipstick futile. The energy I had mustered did not suffice to get the job. We got ready for the funeral. Though we had not been close in her last years, the way she had wholeheartedly laughed about life I remember. Life didn't always offer you what was comfortable or convenient, her seven children had taught her that, her elegance intact throughout.

An American friend who worked for a US state in Munich sadly took up the majority of my romantic attention. We had met during the first week of my graduate studies when I was exuding confidence and ambition. Like an inverse mirror, he now reflected at me all I seemed to be no longer: determined, accomplished, focused on my career. Once or twice, I waited in front of his office nearby Munich's shopping area, hoping he would look out of his office window or step out so I could pretend I had just passed by. There wasn't anything more urgent on my agenda.

This diversion didn't always work as he often voyaged, so on evenings, I watched plenty of YouTube videos on empowerment and "living in the present moment", trying hard to accept and "surrender to my current life circumstances". Not sure it worked. Swimming and reading were the only two things that made me feel good about myself. Where could I put all my life force, my energy, my desire to build a family one day? How embarrassed I felt in front of my friends, former college classmates, my network, my extended family, my sisters.

After six months of avoiding recognition by anyone during my "jobs of shame", of wallowing in my thoughts and envying my sister's lives, in February a public relations firm with a focus on private equity hired me. It was led by my mother's short-tempered female friend of a friend who I had sent my CV to before Christmas. Three months later and just after my 28th birthday she fired me. Politics would be a better fit for me than public relations, she said.

I had fought hard to remain in the job but it wasn't meant to be. My mother urged me to get the help the government entitled me to. Even for best of us, it's almost impossible to escape even the stigma that follows a walk to the social services center, but at least food and other expenses were covered for. Not that I led a luxurious lifestyle anyhow, still at home with the parents. And I could now invest in a new job application tool: a functioning laptop not built in 1999. Now I would secure a job that fit me.

By then, the iPad I had acquired had turned into a valuable item for me. In the previous months, I had discovered that it offered itself as the ideal reading device for my needs: a screen for reading English Kindle books. Before, one had to browse the sparse English sections of German bookstores to get a hold of something fascinating; now I had access to an unlimited amount of literature at the speed of a click. I soon became the book devourer I had been as a child, reading books on technological changes, wealth creation and becoming a spiritual master, trusting the words would keep me sane. I read tons of memoirs, real stories so I could learn from real challenges. "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl and "I can see clearly now" by Wayne Dyer. "Leaving before the rains come" by Alexandra Fuller". Each story a consolation: I wasn't the only one who went through very rough times.

Andrew Agassi's "Open" and his love for Steffi moved me to the core, "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt put things into perspective. If a woman could swim all the way from Florida to Cuba at age sixty-three what was I still capable of? Even if stories were all that filled the rest of my days, my existence would be valuable as their witness. It remains miraculous that we can learn from another person's entire life experience with a simple download. And the books instructed me, too. Maybe, if I wrote down affirmations that emphasized self-encouragement and belief in myself as Jack Canfield advised in "The Success Principles" I could manifest my destiny. I also still owned a secret weapon: the Lamy fountain pen Vikram had prompted me to buy in Berlin three years back with which I religiously noted down my intentions each morning.

Then a miracle happened: I found work as Project Coordinator for the World Economic Forum at Novartis in Basel. If that wasn't divine intervention, I don't know what is. Within six months from the lowest level unemployment benefits to rubbing shoulders with some of the wealthiest people on the planet. "If you believe..." On an earthly dimension, it was a combination of my mother's helping hand and a friendship I had nurtured in Maastricht that led to my ultimate blessing.

During a summer party, my mother met the Head of German Public Affairs of a British Pharmaceutical with offices in Munich. In those months, I had decided that I would give my all, that I had seen enough of dirty plates and one-day jobs. While the position at the Public Relations firm had not worked out, I deserved to work in a company valuing the six years of education I had invested. The lady agreed to meet with me for an hour of career advice. After a visit to her offices, she forwarded my CV to the Head of Government Affairs at Novartis' headquarters in Switzerland. Mrs. Lauch swiftly offered a phone interview. First foot in.

Concomitantly, during a wine tasting weekend in the Baden wine region organized by my friend Verena, I met a British girl who worked at Novartis's Human Resource department. If I visited the Novartis Campus for a day, surely Mrs. Lauch would sense my motivation through the phone line in the upcoming interview. The impeccable timing of meeting the girl did not escape me. She agreed that she would open the gates to the closed-off property so I could familiarize myself with the company. Two weeks later, fresh off the four-hour train ride from Munich to Basel, a worker's paradise welcomed me: one architectural gem neighbored the next where Novartis had planted its offices. Frank Gehry and Herzog de Meuron, the world's crème de la crème of designers had left their signature on the privatized Fabrikstraße.

I entered the street's oldest building, a classical stone building dating back to the company's early days at the turn to the 19th century and asked for Mrs. Lauch. Scoop! Her office in this building, on the third floor. I knew she was on vacation, that had been precisely the reason I felt comfortable walking down the building's hallways: nobody would recognize me from the little picture on the top right corner of my CV. Pricey pieces of art hung on every square of empty wall, the building breathed of affluence. Two girls around my age were chatting in an office room with the door open. Click. That was it. These would be my connectors. I had seen what I needed to see to feel adequately prepared for the interview scheduled the week after.

I marched back to the Rhine and from a park bench, observed swimmers floating down the pristine Rhine water, then took the train back to Munich and searched for the profiles employed in Novartis Government affairs team resembling the girls. And found one. To my utmost joy, she agreed to a phone call, in which I wanted to learn more about her tasks and the position. Paired with the extensive research about the company I delved into, Mrs. Lauch would hopefully feel my enthusiasm over the phone. I felt super prepared. Then my interview got postponed. Mrs. Lauch was very busy.

At the beginning of August, we finally spoke. Her secretary promised I would receive notice within two weeks. Nothing happened. In the meantime, my father had finally agreed to hire me, and in between organizing sales meetings for him, I received an email from Mrs. Lauch's secretary at last. She explained that there were "no open positions, but should that change, she would definitely be in touch". Hh-hm. I knew what that meant. I kept going. Every two weeks, I inquired whether something had changed and that I would "also be available for an internship" \- by then I had learned to keep my demands low.

Mid-September, I received an email: would I be interested in supporting the team in preparation of the upcoming World Economic Forum participation? I jumped out of my seat. Thunder had struck. Time stopped. My life had a future again. Yes, yes, yes, I would be available! Two years back, I had walked up to the WEF's headquarters just outside of Geneva before my internship began, my application process then also resurfaced from memory. Back then, I had stood in front of the black iron gates and sent out the wish to the universe to one day work for that organization. Sheer persistence had paid off, my belief in a bright future made a giant leap forward. Thank you, God.

I soon found a room in an apartment I would share with a Swiss-Italian, cook in training at the renowned "Les Trois Rois" Hotel. The elegant Art Deco stone building my office was in about a kilometer away. In early November 2015, I moved to Basel, the same city my great-grandfather and architect Hans Volkart had stemmed from and, presumably, first fell in love with the subject of architecture. Hello, whopping salary, independent living, and breathtaking office!

The next three months went by in a hurry. A team of five, each one of us prepared the attendance of one of Novartis' senior management. As Novartis hired me for the coordinating the project and to manage the attendance of the CEO of Switzerland's second largest company. Every few weeks, I would prepare a list of all meeting requests and suggested agenda, walking over to the security protected glass building his office was based on handing the latest list of meeting requests to him.

His powerful secretary welcomed me with a nod and blew a busy "Merci" at me, I handed her a folder organized along Yes/No/Maybe options and then quickly ran back to make sure I answered the twenty emails that arrived in my absence as promptly as possible. The CEO of Goldman Sachs wanted to meet, so did Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau. The Governor of Texas warmly welcomed a catch-up with Novartis' CEO, an American. My task was to follow up on meetings with European Commissioners, was Vice President Timmermans available, would the Commissioner for Health meet with Mr. Joe Jimenez? On-site in Davos, I got up at 5am to prepare the day's latest agenda, arrange last-minute meetings for the Novartis's Head of Compliance and Public Policy, or call our colleagues in Novartis' Tunisia office to collect intelligence on their government's position before the meeting with the Tunisian Minister of Health in two hours. We prepared all policy briefs and made sure the delegates had nothing to worry about, down to the minute. When our days ended at around 10pm, we went out for a giant portion of _Kaaspatzn._

I tried to secure a permanent position, of course I did. Not an easy task. Even at the seat of power, the entry barriers to Novartis' Government Affairs team were extremely high. Every position's existence had already been fought hard into existence, and with decreasing margin's in the industry and the pressure to cut costs, cut costs of the sky-high salaries, there was no room for another young professional knocking on the door. A German colleague based in Brussels sent around a few emails in the European capital. Two weeks later, I started work near Schumann Square.

How did this book you're reading come about? During my year of jobs paid by the hour, I stumbled upon a book called "Choose yourself". That title intrigued me. Its contents confirmed a truth we all hold within: rather than to give other people power over our lives, it was time to take more control over our career, confidence and rather than for someone else to make that choice, chose ourselves. Yes, keep the power within! Stop outsourcing my self-esteem to my boss! Its author was the entrepreneur and chess player James Altucher, a smart and funny Jewish New Yorker, who had made and lost 15 million dollars, gotten divorced and then rebuilt his life and relationships. In his blogs, he wrote about his traumas with sincerity and with a humor that touched me. Like me, he had a knack for simplicity, had given away all of his belongings (I kept enough to fill two suitcases) and lived in Airbnbs for two years (I've stopped counting the number of my moves).

Two years later, I would read his "Choose Yourself – Guide to Wealth" and "Reinvent yourself" while on vacation with Eva in Israel. I liked the author's Instagram pictures. A few hours later, he followed my account. And responded to a _Shana Tova_ message I sent him, it was the day of _Rosh Hashana_.. I was smitten. In case I would ever meet him in person, I wrote down this story.

Die Füße im Feuer by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

Wild zuckt der Blitz. In fahlem Lichte steht ein Turm.

Der Donner rollt. Ein Reiter kämpft mit seinem Roß,

Springt ab und pocht ans Tor und lärmt. Sein Mantel saust

Im Wind. Er hält den scheuen Fuchs am Zügel fest.

Ein schmales Gitterfenster schimmert goldenhell

\- »Ich bin ein Knecht des Königs, als Kurier geschickt

Nach Nîmes. Herbergt mich! Ihr kennt des Königs Rock!«

\- »Es stürmt. Mein Gast bist du. Dein Kleid, was kümmert's mich?

Tritt ein und wärme dich! Ich sorge für dein Tier!«

Der Reiter tritt in einen dunkeln Ahnensaal,

Von eines weiten Herdes Feuer schwach erhellt,

Und je nach seines Flackerns launenhaftem Licht

Droht hier ein Hugenott im Harnisch, dort ein Weib,

Ein stolzes Edelweib aus braunem Ahnenbild...

Der Reiter wirft sich in den Sessel vor dem Herd

Und starrt in den lebend'gen Brand. Er brütet, gafft...

Leis sträubt sich ihm das Haar. Er kennt den Herd, den Saal...

Die Flamme zischt. Zwei Füße zucken in der Glut.

Den Abendtisch bestellt die greise Schaffnerin

Mit Linnen blendend weiß. Das Edelmägdlein hilft.

Ein Knabe trug den Krug mit Wein. Der Kinder Blick

Hangt schreckensstarr am Gast und hangt am Herd entsetzt...

Die Flamme zischt. Zwei Füße zucken in der Glut.

\- »Verdammt! Dasselbe Wappen! Dieser selbe Saal!

Drei Jahre sind's... Auf einer Hugenottenjagd...

Ein fein, halsstarrig Weib... "Wo steckt der Junker? Sprich!"

Sie schweigt. "Bekenn!" Sie schweigt. "Gib ihn heraus!" Sie schweigt

Ich werde wild. Der Stolz! Ich zerre das Geschöpf...

Die nackten Füße pack ich ihr und strecke sie

Tief mitten in die Glut.. "Gib ihn heraus!".. Sie schweigt...

Sie windet sich... Sahst du das Wappen nicht am Tor?

Wer hieß dich hier zu Gaste gehen, dummer Narr?

Hat er nur einen Tropfen Bluts, erwürgt er dich.«

Eintritt der Edelmann. »Du träumst! Zu Tische, Gast...

Da sitzen sie. Die drei in ihrer schwarzen Tracht

Und er. Doch keins der Kinder spricht das Tischgebet.

Ihn starren sie mit aufgerißnen Augen an-

Den Becher füllt und übergießt er, stürzt den Trunk,

Springt auf: »Herr, gebet jetzt mir meine Lagerstatt!

Müd bin ich wie ein Hund!« Ein Diener leuchtet ihm,

Doch auf der Schwelle wirft er einen Blick zurück

Und sieht den Knaben flüstern in des Vaters Ohr...

Dem Diener folgt er taumelnd in das Turmgemach.

Fest riegelt er die Tür. Er prüft Pistol und Schwert.

Gell pfeift der Sturm. Die Diele bebt. Die Decke stöhnt.

Die Treppe kracht... Dröhnt hier ein Tritt?... Schleicht dort ein Schritt?...

Ihn täuscht das Ohr. Vorüberwandelt Mitternacht.

Auf seinen Lidern lastet Blei und schlummernd sinkt

Er auf das Lager. Draußen plätschert Regenflut.

Er träumt. »Gesteh!« Sie schweigt. »Gib ihn heraus!« Sie schweigt.

Er zerrt das Weib. Zwei Füße zucken in der Glut.

Aufsprüht und zischt ein Feuermeer, das ihn verschlingt...

\- »Erwach! Du solltest längst von hinnen sein! Es tagt!«

Durch die Tapetentür in das Gemach gelangt,

Vor seinem Lager steht des Schlosses Herr - ergraut,

Dem gestern dunkelbraun sich noch gekraust das Haar.

Sie reiten durch den Wald. Kein Lüftchen regt sich heut.

Zersplittert liegen Ästetrümmer quer im Pfad.

Die frühsten Vöglein zwitschern, halb im Traume noch.

Friedsel'ge Wolken schwimmen durch die klare Luft,

Als kehrten Engel heim von einer nächt'gen Wacht.

Die dunkeln Schollen atmen kräft'gen Erdgeruch.

Die Ebne öffnet sich. Im Felde geht ein Pflug.

Der Reiter lauert aus den Augenwinkeln: »Herr,

Ihr seid ein kluger Mann und voll Besonnenheit

Und wißt, daß ich dem größten König eigen bin.

Lebt wohl. Auf Nimmerwiedersehn!« Der andre spricht:

»Du sagst's! Dem größten König eigen! Heute ward

Sein Dienst mir schwer.. Gemordet hast du teuflisch mir

Mein Weib! Und lebst!... Mein ist die Rache, redet Gott.«

 Emotional German word for connection to one's homeland in a territorial sense

 My actual first name!

