24
When I woke up the next morning, I was alone. I looked all around me. Light fog was on the hill, and no sight of Tschick. But because his air mattress was still there, I didn’t really put it on my mind. I tried to fall asleep again, but the noise completely chased my sleepiness away. I went up the sightseeing platform and looked down from all sides. I was the only person on the hill. The shop was still closed. The sun looked like a red peach in a bowl of milk, and along with the first streaks of sunshine came a group of cyclists, and then it wasn’t ten minutes until Tschick also climbed up the hill. I felt a lot easier. He just ran back and checked on the Lada. it was still there. We chatted for a while, and finally decided on going on with the car immediately, because this whole waiting was absolutely pointless.
The cyclists also got on the hill while we were talking, a dozen boys and girls our age and one grown-up. They were eating breakfast and talking quietly with one another, and they really looked amazing. The group was too small for a class trip, too big for a family and too well-dressed for a beadhouse tour. But something was up with them. They all wore rags, but it didn’t look cheap, on the opposite side, it looked very expensive and somewhat hindered. And they all had really, really clean faces. I don’t know how I’m supposed to describe it, but they were somehow clean. Tschick asked a girl about which place they were from, and the girl said: “From nowhere. We are nobels on the bicycle. We ride everywhere.” She said it seriously and politely. Maybe she wanted to pull off a joke or something, and it was the bike tour of the clown school nearby.
“And you guys?” She asked.
“What about us?”
“Are you also making a bike tour?”
“We are mobilists.”