Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

two crimestories

exclusively of punk rock, metal and indie music, which the girls didn’t like anyway. Cem was an amazing chess and skat player, but nobody except us thought that was cool. A guy from our class had found out that after school he read the Turkish newspaper out loud to his father, who couldn’t read it for himself. The others laughed themselves sick over that one. And I was simply the freak, because I was too tall, too skinny, too lanky, too pale, and too red-haired. Ever since elementary school, they’d called me “Feuerlöscher” - “Fire Extinguisher” - which they shortened to Löschi. At some point, my father even started to call me this whenever he wanted to get on my nerves. Anyway, this was the

coolest birthday of my life, because everyone I had invited actually came. Silvana had made me a mixtape, since she knew I liked to listen to music. Unfortunately, it was all commercial crap, but I didn’t say anything. She had even made a little cover for the cassette case, on which she had very neatly written out all the songs. She really thought I loved INXS and Simply Red. This was the first time we’d ever had beer. We stayed up at the hut until eleven o’clock, and then the parents who had agreed to drive us back home started to show up. They also had some beer, stood around gossiping for a while, and after polishing off a large share of the potato salad, set off for home. Cem’s parents

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