APRIL 1992: We pour out of the kindergarten into the playground, shrieking with excitement. Most kids run straight to the swings, but my group knows better. We’ve got a secret: if you walk counter-clockwise around the monkey bars, close your eyes, and let someone lead you under the slide, you’ll wake up in Narnia.

JUNE 1992: During my exchange year in South Africa my Indian host father becomes so forward that I move families. I learn to appreciate my family at home and miss Germany.

JUNE 1992: It becomes clear to me that even in philosophy some thoughts are forbidden.

JULY 1992: I do hernia surgery on a horse in the Gambia. At the first cut, I am hit by a hoof and again only my lips are bruised. Ten centimeters closer, my head would have been smashed.

JULY 1992: My godfather dies of AIDS.

JULY 1992: I experience the festival of sacrifice in Turkey for the first time. We are at my grandma's in the city and I walk out of the house. A headless animal is hanging from the roof but that doesn't interest me, it's the water mixed with blood in the courtyard which is soaking through my summer slippers.

JULY 1992: It is 10 PM, I am going for a walk, after that I have to pore over nonlinear equations and tomorrow I have to take the exam in organizational theory. I wonder why I am putting myself through this.

AUGUST 1992: I am accepted by the grammar school. Here at last I find friends.

NOVEMBER 1992: Anita, the most talented of our theatre company, jumps off the Kichenfeldbrücke in the middle of the night with her Bible in her pocket.

DECEMBER 1992: In a brown envelope there is a letter on red paper from Stefan. I have never read anything as beautiful.