Leaving Aachen : PART II

Angelika was born in Magdeburg on May 15, 1973, roughly 4 centuries after Charlemagne’s crowning. Her parents are Rudigard Oberwesen and Rita Süsemädel, a policeman and housewife respectively. Angelika had always been a grade A student as they say; of exemplary conduct and all that jazz. And yet, everything went horribly, horribly wrong when she went to Heidelburg on a quest to study social science. There she met a certain Michael Haneke, senior student at the psychology department (in fact his graduation was almost 4 years overdue – for those that need a reference; that’s almost two decades!), self-proclaimed artist and heavy drinker. He was, what is called in the parlance of our days, a loser; hopelessly in thrall to a host of substances, emotional abuser of women and to top it all of, left-handed. He started borrowing money from her a mere two weeks after their first date (he took her to a convention of the Green Party). This was the man she was deeply in love with. This was the man who was going to save her. After three months she no longer could afford to buy the necessary books for her courses and another month later she switched to eating cheap spaghetti from the communal restaurant. Anyway, to cut a long story short; the only thing that could separate her from this rapscallion was the 31 Hohenstaufenallee – Wiesental city bus going 80 kilometers per hour (for those that need a reference point; that’s as good as 12 times across the globe per week). It proved too much for the heavily inebriated Michael and the highly erratic trajectory that he and his borrowed bicycle were on at the time. He died instantly. Angelika can be found on the streets nowadays. She started visiting Walter on a daily basis soon after I arrived. The funny thing about her, and it struck me as uncanny for a homeless person, is that she took notes. Angelika would come and sit for an hour and take notes. Maybe that’s a German thing. Even drifters take notes in this land of bureaucratic fastidiousness. The other mysterious feature was her brand-new blue-graphite pearl effect-colored Volkswagen Golf. Nothing fancy like a GTI or fully decked-out model with aluminum rims or anything of the sort. But still, it was brand-new Golf! Once again I managed to rationalize it as a quirk of the German welfare system.