20
My arm hanged out of the window, my head was on my arm. We were driving through fields at tempo 30, with the sun shining upon us, somewhere behind Rahnsdorf, and it was the most beautiful and relaxing moment I’ve ever experienced. I couldn’t really say what was relaxing about it, because it was only a car ride, and I’ve experienced those a lot. But there’s a difference between whether you’re sitting next to an adult who keeps on babbling about assholes and Angela Merkel, or whether there’s just nobody there and it’s silence. Tschick also had his arm out of the window and drove the car with his right hand. It was, as if there were only the Lada and the field in this world, it was something else, another universe. Everything was bigger, the colors brighter, the sounds Dolby Surround, and I, to be honest, wouldn’t be surprised if a dinosaur or a huge cruise suddenly appeared in front of us.
We drove the direct way out of Berlin, the morning rush hour behind us, and stumbled upon the lonely streets of the suburb. The first thing we noticed was that we didn’t have a map. Only a street plan of Berlin.
“Maps are for dummies.” Tschick said, and logically, he had a point. But if you want to make it to Walachei without knowing where Rahnsdorf is, the problem was obvious. So we just went south. Because Walachei is in Romania, and Romania is towards the south.
The next problem was we didn’t know which direction was south. Though it’s just the morning, clouds were starting to pile up, and you couldn’t see the sun anymore. It was at least forty degrees outside, even hotter than yesterday.
I had this small compass on my key chain, which I got from a gum ATM, but somehow it didn’t work properly in the car, and it just showed whichever direction it wanted outside. We even stopped just to make sure. And when I got on the car again, I realized that something was under my foot mat – a music cassette. The name was The Solid Gold Collection of Richard Clayderman, and it wasn’t really music, but just piano solos like Mozart. But we didn’t have anything else, and because we also didn’t know what was possibly on there, we played it. Fourty-five minutes. I had to give in: After we’ve had enough of Rieshah and his piano, we also decided to try the other side, which was the exact same, but it was still better than nothing. Seriously, I didn’t tell Tschick, and I really don’t want to say it now: But this minor shit really pulled the plug for me. I had to think about Tatjana and how she looked at me when I gave her the drawing, and then we crampled on the highway with “Ballade pour Adeline”.
We had some trouble on the feeder road, and Tschick, who could drive to some extent but hasn’t experienced the German highway yet, really went hardcore on it. When he was supposed to merge into the traffic, he braked, gave gas, braked again, and then went in the speed of a snail, and finally managed to switch to the left lane. Thank goodness nobody rammed us from behind. I thought, if we died here, Rieshah and his piano were to blame. But we didn’t. We agreed to driving out at the next exit and only take street and field roads from here. There was a problem: There was a man in a black Mercedes next to us, he looked at us and made wild moves with his hands. He seemed to be writing out numbers with his had, and then he held his phone up high as if he were recording our license plate. That got me on my nerves, but Tschick just shrudded his shoulders and acted as if he was thankful for letting us notice that we were driving with lights on, and then we lost him in the traffic.
Tschick looked older than fourteen, but definitely not eighteen. But we didn’t know what he looked like in a running car through the dirty wind shield. To test it, we even drove a few rounds on a deserted road. I stood by the road, and Tschick had to drive past me for like twenty times, so that I could see how adult-like he looked. He put both sleeping bags on his seat as pillows, had my sunglasses tucked in his hair, shoved a cigarette in his mouth and stuck a few pieces of black tape on his face to try and mimic the Kevin Kurányi beard. But he didn’t look like Kevin Kurányi at all, but just a fourteen year old who stuck tape on his face. In the end, he ripped everything again and only kept a small piece under the nose. He looked like Hitler, but in some sort, that worked out fine. And because we’re in Brandenburg, it couldn’t cause any politcal conflict.
Now, there was only the problem with the orientation. We saw Dresden on a sign. I was fairly sure Dresden was to the south, so we went in that direction. But when we had to choose between two roads, we just took whichever was smaller and had less traffic, and then there were less and less guides, and they only show the way to the next village and not Dresden. Is Burig on the south or is it Freienbink? We threw a coin. Tschick found the thing with the coin great and said, we were only gonna depend on the coin from now. Head for right, and tail for left, and when it stood, we went straight. But logically, the coin couldn’t stand, so we didn’t make any forward progress. So we gave up the coin eventually and just went right-left-right-legt, that was my suggestion, but it wasn’t any better. You would think that you couldn’t go in a circle if you switched between left and right, but we somehow managed it. When we reached a sign with left to Markgrafpieske and right to Spreenhagen for the third time, Tschick came up with the idea to only go to places that started with a M or a T. But there were too little of those. I thought we could choose those places whose distance was a prime number, but we made a mistake with Bad Freienwalde 51 km, it was too late when we realized it (three times seventeen).
Finally, the sun shined through. The road split in a corn field. Left was endless cobblestone, and right was endless sand. We had difficulty telling which road was more towards south. The sun wasn’t really in the middle. It was almost eleven.
“South is that way.” Tschick said.
“That’s east.”
We got out and ate a few chocolate cookies which were already half melted. The insects in the corn field made a weird noise.
“You do know that you can tell the directions with a watch, right?” Tschick held his watch up. An old, Russian model. He had it between us, but I didn’t know how it’s supposed to work, and he didn’t either. I think you had to point a hand toward the sun, and then the other hand shows north or something. But right now, it’s almost eleven, and both hands are pointing toward the sun.
“Maybe it can also show south.” Tschick said.
“And south is gonna be over there half an hour later?”
“Maybe because it’s summertime. It doesn’t work in summer. I’ll turn it back an hour.”
“And what’s that supposed to do? The hands turn in an hour, but the directions don’t change that fast.”
“But when the compass turns itself – maybe it’s a geocompass.”
“A geocompass!”
“Haven’t you heard anything of it?”
“A geocompass has nothing to do with turning. It doesn’t turn.” I said, “It has something to do with alcohol. There’s alcohol involved.”
“You’re definitely talking shit here.”
“I learned it from a book, where a captain broke the compass because he was an alcoholic, and then the whole ship lost directions.”
“That sounds like a hell of a book.”
“You have a point. It’s called, I believe, The Seabear. Or The Seawolf.”
“You mean Steppenwolf. It’s also about dragon. My brother reads these kinds of things.”
“Steppenwolf just happened to also be a band.” I said.
“So, I would say, if we don’t know where south is, we just take the sand route.” Tschick said and put his watch back on. “There’s less people.”
And just as usual, he was right. It was a good decision. We didn’t see any cars for a whole hour. We were at a place where no more houses could be seen at the horizon. Pumpkins lied on a field, about a medicine ball’s size.