Trafika Europe 4 - Armenian Rhapsody

hundred kilometres from Munich. It was so close to Belgium that Grandpa could get their Sunday night chips just over the border before he bought the sausage on the way back in Mathildesberg’s Currywurst booth. I went for the ride every time we visited them, hoping we’d meet some British soldiers in their grey-green trucks on the way and that they’d answer my friendly waving. Possibly – as a collective – they were my second love. My first love was Fergus, and at some point he taught me a few words so that, leaning out of the back window of Grandpa’s car, I was able to address them in English. Paul had wanted to hear nothing of Grandma’s and Grandpa’s theories that it would be better for me to grow up in a small village like Mathildesberg rather than in a, well, turbulent city like Munich. He decided to finish university in Munich and, most importantly, to stay with me in the commune, no matter how difficult life might be for a penniless, single-parent biology student living with a bunch of constantly changing flatmates. He never explained why, although this was a question that could and had to be asked, because with me in Mathildeberg things would certainly have been easier. Grandma would have continued ironing at home for her neighbours while I would have been sitting at her feet watching the steam billowing from her ironing machine, which puffed and hissed and spat tiny “Hallo,” I yelled into the wind, towards the military trucks. “How do you do!”

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