I´ve got to interrupt the stream of consciousness here for a short reverence to a heroic figure of our time - no: of a time that´s just now about to close.



To make that absolutely clear: It´s Zidane who´s the God. Ronaldinho is spectacular beyond doubt. But he won´t achieve what Zidane achieved: to be a symbol, a superhuman as if transferred from the time of Greek mythology. Zidane wasn´t only great for his own sake. From having seen him play but also from having read the appraisals I know that he made his entire team shine. It´s not only his dribblings and his own goals - it´s how many times his passes made his fellow players score. How his playing changed the course of a game not by a single decisive action of his - but because he made his team overcome any opponent through his power and wit.

This, for me, will always separate him from Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Maradona.

The first thing I remember well is the Taxi ride from the airport to my hotel. I had picked the place from "Let´s Go Mexico", and we leave the story for a short message from our travel guide:

"Let´s Go is the choice! Go Let´s Go! Let´s go "let´s go-ing!"

What I remember about the Taxi ride was the rush of anticipation. I was sitting in the car wide-eyed, full of curiosity and anxiousness. Every hut, every street, every person. This moment of arriving, alienated, and at the same time the thrill of having the opportunity to lose that feeling of alienation. A thrill that quickly overcame my surliness at the fact that the "Lost Baggage" office had told me only minutes before that while at Houston airport, while I myself had taken the plane to Mexico City, my baggage had jumped aboard the plane to Chicago.

I had six weeks, I went to a couple of fantastic places Let´s Go took me to: Teotihuacán, Veracruz, Merida, Chichén Itzá, and five days before my flight back was due I returned to the capital that, as I now knew, the locals call "D.F." (for "Distrito Federal"). So I went to the station and took the train to Oaxaca, a city way, way south that everyone loved. The ride would take "between 13 and 16 hours", as the man behind the ticket counter had told me. For something like 800 kilometers? Yes, indeed.

After a few hours, the train was rolling through the most beautiful, picturesque countryside. At times, mountain sides rose up right from the edge of the tracks, while to the other side, a riverbed opened the view on endless wilderness. The train was going no more than 30 km/h, sometimes a lot less. So the passengers opened the doors of the car just for the fun of it. For an hour, I found myself sitting on the stairs that in a station would have led down to the platform. At 15 km/h, the air was warm, and the countryside smelled fresh - smelled of water rushing down the stony riverbed.

After a small village station, a narrow path began to run alongside the tracks. Every now and then, a local farmer trod along for a while, sometimes driving a mule, sometimes pushing a bike laden with all sorts of merchandise. At that speed, you could shake hands with any passerby, chat a few words at ease, then wave goodbye. While doing so, the train car´s concessionary would come by in the corridor behind, offering drinks and sandwiches. I wished the ride would never end.

It did, eventually, after 17 hours. And it ended for good sometime later - Mexico simply shut down its entire passenger train service in 1995. Oaxaca turned out to be a sweet place, it still is most certainly. But getting there on the Soothing Train, feet dangling out of the passenger door, is something that has passed away. Exists in my head though, dear to me.

The day I stood in the line at the immatriculation office of Free University (FU) Berlin, I had no clue what studying would mean. I was confused by the whole system as such. Obviously, the newbies standing in line with me weren´t the right people to ask either. After a while I was admitted into the room where two ladies of advanced age put you down as students. I sat down, showed my credentials, and without looking up the lady said for the 100th time that day: "So what subjects do you want to be enrolled for?"

I, proudly: "History!" She, unmoved: "...and?" Me, irritated: "And what?" Well, it turned out that I just couldnt study history by itself - regulations demanded I take one or two more side subjects. Hm. There I sat. After a second, I remembered that in school I had always liked Political Science. Relieved, I offered to the lady: "History and... Political Science!" She, still unmoved, replied: "...and?" Now I was really dumbfounded. Thankfully, it occurred to me that our parents had always gone on holidays to Ibiza and the Canary Islands with us and that on our last trip I had been able to order a Coke with ice in fluent Spanish. Clearly, this was a founding stone. "Spanish!" I exclaimed to the elderly lady.

5 months later I found myself on the airport of Mexico City pleading with the officer on duty at the "Lost Baggage" booth.

One night, there was to be a catholic service in the compound´s chapel. A Bavarian guy I had met on the road from tel Aviv, Ralph, and I were the only young people around, and the Mother Superior invited us to Mass most cordially. I was reluctant at first. Being of Lutheran confession I didn´t want to participate and embarrass myself in a ceremony the rules of which I didn´t know. Ralph however, catholic to the core like all Bavarians, accepted no excuses. And so to church I went, subdued, half dragged, unsure of what to expect.

When we arrived we found a small congregation. All in all, there were no more than 20 people. A few pilgrims, a priest and two nuns visiting from a monastery in Germany, the nuns of the school staff, the two of us, and the head of the school, an old priest who can only be described as saintly. Pater ("Father") Düsing was his name. He was a tall, slender man in his late 70s then. He had long, silvery white hair and a beard of the same shining colour. Most of the tmes I had met him, this beard framed a heartfelt smile that would light up the things and people around him. When we had talked in the living room hall of the castle house one afternoon, I told him I was a soldier on temporary escape. He laughed and answered, yes, he knew what I meant. He had been a Feldwebel, a German non-commissioned officer, in the war.

We hadn´t fully arrived at the chapel that night when Pater Düsing stepped up to me and asked if I wouldn´t like to do the Reading. I had no real idea what that meant, but I knew I could read, so I said yes. As the service started, I kept an eye on Ralph and did what he did with two seconds delay. When the Reading was due, the Pater smiled and waved me close with his hand. I saw the book lying open, and with trembling voice I read aloud what was written there.

Then, afterwards, the Pater ascended the pulpit and began the sermon. He talked to us with the smile he always wore, and his voice was full of certainty. He didn´t speak about ideas or ideals - to be fair, I don´t remember what he actually spoke about, content-wise. But what he did and what I remember is that he transmitted the word of God, with an unfailing sincerity that gripped me by the throat. He spoke of God as if he had just met him at the bus stop. As if God was a close friend, a neighbour who we all knew and liked and who, more than anything, we all had met and seen many times. No ifs, no interpretations, not the shadow of a doubt.

I had never been part of a ceremony so beautiful and real. I have never been to this day. When I returned home, again, I was saved.

The larger part of that journey I stayed in Jerusalem. Luck made me knock on the iron door of a walled compound just outside of the Old Town. A place, a school, a pilgrims hostel run by a catholic order. Bunk beds. Breakfast in the halls of the castle-like building that had been erected in the early days of the 20th century on grounds donated to the German emperor by the Turkish sultan. The Palestinian girls working in the administration of the place showed me some strange places inside the Old Town. They had to drag me along since every couple of steps I stood open-mouthed. Via Dolorosa. Until I saw the street sign I just hadn´t thought that this street had ever been for real. And the Life of Brian-esque comedy of watching a large group of elderly pilgrims squeezing through this narrow street, carrying a giant cross that casually swept all sorts of cheap merchandise off the hooks of the crammed Arab souvenir stalls as they passed by. Much shouting and swearing ensued. Then the pilgrims would stroll further down the street and stop at another location of Jesus´ path of suffering. Doing so in their many, they plugged all traffic in Via Dolorosa. More shouting and swearing ensued. And much smiling on my part. All was full of scents and sunlight.

A year after my first journey, I had changed in a way I didn´t like but couldn´t help. It was September again, and I had become so sick and tired of the olive attire. It wasn´t the hardships of life in the barracks - in fact, these hardships were softships really if compared to what military service meant in most other countries of the world. Even in places only 20 kilometers away. I was with a military intelligence unit, stationed a stone´s throw from the Iron Curtain, and there was no slouching about in the mud for us - that was for our pitied fellows in the Infantry battallions. Or for the guys serving in the East German Army. Since we watched, listened, located their units every day, we knew a lot about them. Their uncomfortable uniforms that would give them a rash after marching a couple of kilometers. On our end, I remember one NCO - StUffz Risse. What I remember about him is that over the years he had washed his uniform so many times that the olive colour had come off. Beneath it, his uniform was grey. The clearest Feldgrau you could have imagined. I still see myself standing on the parade ground and thinking: Funny. If you wash away the NATO color, just a little too much detergent, it´s the Wehrmacht colour. And it looks good. Real good.

That September, my colours had come off, too. I was desperate to get away. From my ridiculously low pay I bought a ticket to Tel Aviv. I snorkeled through the coral reefs off Eilat and saw the Lake Genezareth shimmering from atop the Galilee mountains. I marveled at beautiful girls taking off their uniforms at Jaffa beach and wearing shiny yellow bikinis underneath. On a warm Sabbath morning, i stood for hours by the roadside on the outskirts of a town called Safed trying to get a ride to the coast. But above anything, I discovered Jerusalem. This journey, this city, the tangible spirits, the beautiful people. I was saved then. This I will never forget.

I was 19, and it was the summer before I would be drafted into the German Army. I was afraid to go, but it seemed to be the easier way - anything else would have meant to leave the path of least resistance that was so neatly laid out for me. But before I´d go, I had to get away for a while. It was not even that I was looking for something specific. What could I have been looking for without knowing anything? I just had to leave for a while.

So my parents bought an Interrail ticket for me - the magic train ride that would go on for a month, all over Europe, no paying extra anywhere. Amsterdam, Hoek van Holland-Calais-London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, London-Calais-Paris, Lyon, Costa Brava, Barcelona, Madrid, Marseille, Nice, Rome, Florence, Vienna - and home. 30 days. In Madrid I had some sort of breakdown of exhaustion. In the night train crossing the alps I shared the cabin, alone, with a stoned Austrian lingerie model. Years later I met a friend of hers in the secluded room where Israeli airport security take you to get you half undressed for a body search.

What has become of all these places? Edinburgh I´ve never seen again, while London became an occasional place to work. As did many of the cities, with cheap air travel becoming ubiquitous and me turning from an insecure white boy into a "media professional" over the years. Lyon I haven´t revisited. Marseille.

Back then I got my taste. Before I had had no idea if i´d even like travelling. It was just that I had to leave for a while. That was all. And now...