Chronicle
When we sailed to the Bahamas, the children were eleven and thirteen. They were in school, of course, but in the US education is organized in a unique way. There are no national examinations, there is no Federal oversight or inspection, everything is done at a local level. In addition, there are countless private schools that do not answer to any authority. Nico and Jana attended the public school. On the advice of the principal I called the County Commissioner and told him we were going away for a while.
In the autumn of 1980 I traveled by train from Holland via Osnabrück and Hanover to East Berlin. I was twenty-six at the time. On the way I read "The Berlin Stories" by the English writer Christopher Isherwood, who was riding the same rails exactly fifty years earlier, when he was twenty-six.
'He live here?' the punk asked. 'This is a restaurant.' 'It's the right address ,' I said. We parked at the bottom of the hill, at the river bank. 'Caddie ain't here,' the punk said. He had a talent for making superfluous remarks. The parking lot was empty. I straightened my tie and got out of the car. The punk didn't move.