"My sudden love affair with Aitmatov nearly made me flunk my German exam in tenth grade. 'Heroes of Our Everyday Socialist Life' was to be the topic of our written compositions. I wrote an essay about Aitmatov’s novel The Place of the Skull. [My German teacher] managed to save me from flunking. But Aitmatov saved
More
"I have managed to put something of a 'tips' post together by mentioning my column and asking my Facebook friends: What's your favorite summer holiday place? Could you describe it in a few words? I turned the answers I got and a few of my own favorites into what comes next... photos and short blurbs."
More
"In history class, I single-handedly denigrated the Soviet Union. We were sitting with our textbooks open. I felt bored. There was a photo of Lenin on the page. With my ballpoint pen, I drew Lenin an earring and a Mohican haircut... Forty years earlier in Thuringia, a schoolgirl had adorned a portrait of Stalin with
MoreWith climate records being handed down from his father, Harald claims to have proof of global warming in Saxony: "You may have lived in Leipzig in 2012 and 2013, remembering that temperatures occasionally dropped to -25°C – these were outliers. The overall trend is going in one direction only. As opposed to my father, I
More
