2025-07-11, 10:33 PM
I board the ICE train and put my backpack on the seat next to me. Hopefully, they'll hire me. I passed my chef's exam, and my graciously extended, but still temporary, contract expires at the end of August. There's no successor in sight, so two months of something completely different would be a welcome change.
After arriving in Cologne, I take the tram to the station and meet several other applicants there. Most are between 18 and 25, so at 20, I'm well within the range. First, there's a language test, after which the first few are allowed to leave. Because good English is valued in the catering industry, even if, like me, you only work behind the scenes as a chef, that's no problem for me. Next, we get stone-placing lessons and finally, we're given a track to build under the watchful eye of Robin Weijers. At the end of the construction time, we have to knock over our work of art, and it shouldn't get stuck, but it does anyway. Whatever the case, I'm one of the chosen ones and am supposed to move to Leeuwarden, Netherlands, for two months in September.
Back in Hamburg, I cook my way through the last few weeks, and finally, it's my last day of work at the fish restaurant where I've trained and worked for the past four years. My boss hands me an envelope, and I skim through the contents on the subway. It's a job posting for Nuremberg, but I'm never going there. Inland? Not me. I was born and raised in Hamburg, speak Low German better than High German, and my horizon of happiness stretches about as far inland as one can see from the top of the dike. Accordingly, only Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and the coast of Lower Saxony are possible locations for my future career.
I board the IC and heave my suitcase into the overhead compartment. After an endless five and a half hours and several transfers, I finally arrive in Leeuwarden and am met by a driver. Two other girls arrived on the same train—no thanks. Just looking at their uninhibited giggles, I have to agree with Klaus Wowereit: "I'm gay, and that's a good thing!" Even though the women certainly regret it for a reason, but more on that later. Hopefully, there'll be a cute boy to look at in the huge group of people building the train. That he's gay, too, and that would lead to something more, is probably asking too much of Fortuna.
Arriving at the dorm, after a brief greeting from Robin, I meet my roommate, who moved in a few hours earlier: "Hello! I'm Christopher." His Hessian accent betrays his origins just as clearly as my Hamburg accent; his attempt to use mostly High German words and as little Northern German pronunciation as possible is only moderately successful. "Moin moin, Aaron. You can see it, too." A quirk of nature ensures that I look like Aaron Carter, and one of my parents ensures that I have the same first name. I only have to pass on the last name, because it's German: Baumgart. "That's right, you can really see that name. Will I have to keep my girlfriend away from you on Family Day? She's so into Aaron Carter that I'm starting to get jealous of the guy, even though he lives in America." - "Don't worry, I won't steal her away from you." If only he knew why not...
Over the next few days, there's more instruction in arranging dominoes, because it's a completely different thing to set up a row in the station's foyer than a picture. And after a week, it's time to move on to the living object. The huge hall on the one hand and 4.3 million dominoes on the other have a somewhat depressing effect. Groups of people fill up tiny spots in the hall; it's like a drop in the ocean. On top of that, a lot of things go wrong due to the lack of routine. After a week, the feeling of emptiness finally subsides, and you start to look around a little more closely. And so it hits me one morning. We work with different people on each project, and that morning I notice a boy my age, whose name, according to his team shirt, is Felix, and who comes from Switzerland. He has short brown hair, a great body, two earrings on his left hand, and a dragon tattoo on his left upper arm. Whenever the setup allows, I sneak a look at him. I don't get any further because I'm far too shy. I've also had bad experiences with coming out in the past, which might happen at some point. I'd rather have something nice to look at than have him turn away from me.
The problem of coming out is brought back to me on family day, when my sister, her boyfriend, and my best friend arrive. My parents and my brother, and my grandfather, have all but forgotten about me since the coming out. My grandmother would have loved to come along, but she didn't want to risk the trip. Felix was visited by his parents and a boy of about 16, obviously his brother. At some point, my sister whispers to me: "You have good taste." - "What?" - "Well, you could probably start dressing the Swiss boy again. Your looks are tearing his clothes off." Hendrik, my friend, murmurs to me: "Our dike sheep Aaron is falling for a mountain goat? I can't believe it!" Shocked, I ask: "Is it that obvious?" - "If you know you, definitely. But even otherwise, it probably doesn't take much imagination to guess."
It's now mid-October, and I'm back working with Felix on a team. We're talking about our normal lives at breakfast. He's also 20, a trained automotive electrician, and lives in Interlaken. He doesn't have a girlfriend, but is there a glimmer of hope?
We continue building and just before the end it happens. Felix hits a stone and it drags several thousand more with it to their doom. I slump to my elbows in despair and watch the mishap. A French woman in our group snaps at him: "Can't you be careful? Now we're back where we were this morning!" The others join in the chorus. A tear runs down Felix's cheek, then he gets up and runs towards the exit, while Robin yells across the hall: "Hey! Don't run!" I say to the group: "You start rebuilding the field, I'll try the same with Felix," before I also run out the door, but without exceeding Robin's speed limit. From the lock, I see Felix running out the main exit. Now I'm allowed to run too, and I stay right behind him. The FEC is on the outskirts of town and we run along a canal towards a railway bridge. I finally caught up with him under the bridge. He gave up and slumped down on the bank of the railway embankment. I sat down next to him. Painfully, he blurted out, "I'm sorry I ruined your day," then he started to cry. "Can I lean on your shoulder?" he asked through his tears. Of course he could... "Sure, it doesn't bother me." - "You just have to be careful when you don't know people that well. Otherwise, you'll get hasty thoughts." That hit home. My thoughts might not be what I feared, that I might think he's gay, but they were apparently still 'hasty,' and the way he used the word sounded negative. I put my arm around his shoulders anyway and comforted him.
After he's calmed down, we head back to the hall just in time for the end of the shift. Felix avoids the group and, after a brief goodbye, goes to lunch alone. After lunch, I call my sister from a quiet corner behind a partition and tell her about the incident, raving about our experience on the railway embankment. After 20 minutes, I press the button with the red receiver, step out of my semi-hiding place, and get the shock of my life. Felix walks off less than three meters further at a brisk pace and doesn't appear again for the rest of the day. What did he hear?
After a very restless night, I discover at breakfast that Felix isn't there. Feeling rather out of sorts, I start my shift, but he doesn't show up. After a few accidents, I'm assigned to build 'islands' where I can, at best, knock over my own work. Others make the connection to the overall work of art. During the shift change, Felix comes into the workshop; he's been transferred to the other shift.
With some resentment, I continue building over the next few weeks, until the Monday before the show, when the sparrow flies into the hall. After the hunter shoots down the little troublemaker, we're behind schedule, and our work of art, which I've grown closer to Felix, is in ruins. Troy was supposed to fall in keeping with history, but not before the Big Bang, but only in ancient times! During the reconstruction, we end up in the same shift again, but he avoids my gaze for two days, building as far away as possible. After dinner, I meet him alone in the hallway. "Felix? I think we need to talk." He gives me a sad, disappointed look and moves on. Naturally, I come back to my room, pretty angry, and slam the door. Christopher jolts out of his book: "Man, Aaron. Does that really have to happen?" - "Yes!" - "I don't think so. What's wrong? You've been totally different a few weeks ago, much more serious and all." - "That's none of your business!" He looks at me pityingly: "That's what I thought at first. But we share this room, and if you're spreading a bad mood, then that's my business." - "But you still don't want to know. Believe me." - "Oh yes, I do. Or you can switch to a good mood now and stay in this mode until Saturday. As soon as we're on separate trains, you can be as grumpy as you want again."
The experiment worked for exactly 24 hours. The next day, I addressed Felix questioningly by name, but he rejected me: "Leave me alone. In the end, it'll only lead to disappointment." So he heard it and is now angry with me. So I returned to the room in a correspondingly bad mood. I managed to grab the door as it swung shut at the last moment and quietly closed it, but Christopher slammed his book all the more loudly: "Okay, that's enough! What's going on? And believe me, now I really want to know!" - "You don't want to. It has to do with the fact that I'm gay." - "So what? What's wrong? I already have two gay friends. So?" - "Oh, man. I guess we'll never get rid of you?" - "Yes, on Saturday. But we had an agreement that you didn't keep." - "Okay. I've fallen in love with a boy on the team..." - "Surely the little Swiss guy with the two earrings and the tattoo on his arm? What's his name again? Felix, right?" - "Oh my goodness. You were curious about that?" - "No, not really. But the day he overturned the field and then got so heckled by the group and ran out, you were the only one who didn't join in and went after him. Afterwards, you came back together. So I just put two and two together when you said you were in love. Because without love, you'd probably be furious if someone messed up a five-and-a-half-hour job with 30 minutes to go." - "Okay. You did the math. I just comforted him that day, and we were pretty close. Afterwards, I told my sister about it on the phone from what I thought was a quiet corner. And he overheard it. He's been avoiding me ever since." -
After arriving in Cologne, I take the tram to the station and meet several other applicants there. Most are between 18 and 25, so at 20, I'm well within the range. First, there's a language test, after which the first few are allowed to leave. Because good English is valued in the catering industry, even if, like me, you only work behind the scenes as a chef, that's no problem for me. Next, we get stone-placing lessons and finally, we're given a track to build under the watchful eye of Robin Weijers. At the end of the construction time, we have to knock over our work of art, and it shouldn't get stuck, but it does anyway. Whatever the case, I'm one of the chosen ones and am supposed to move to Leeuwarden, Netherlands, for two months in September.
Back in Hamburg, I cook my way through the last few weeks, and finally, it's my last day of work at the fish restaurant where I've trained and worked for the past four years. My boss hands me an envelope, and I skim through the contents on the subway. It's a job posting for Nuremberg, but I'm never going there. Inland? Not me. I was born and raised in Hamburg, speak Low German better than High German, and my horizon of happiness stretches about as far inland as one can see from the top of the dike. Accordingly, only Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and the coast of Lower Saxony are possible locations for my future career.
I board the IC and heave my suitcase into the overhead compartment. After an endless five and a half hours and several transfers, I finally arrive in Leeuwarden and am met by a driver. Two other girls arrived on the same train—no thanks. Just looking at their uninhibited giggles, I have to agree with Klaus Wowereit: "I'm gay, and that's a good thing!" Even though the women certainly regret it for a reason, but more on that later. Hopefully, there'll be a cute boy to look at in the huge group of people building the train. That he's gay, too, and that would lead to something more, is probably asking too much of Fortuna.
Arriving at the dorm, after a brief greeting from Robin, I meet my roommate, who moved in a few hours earlier: "Hello! I'm Christopher." His Hessian accent betrays his origins just as clearly as my Hamburg accent; his attempt to use mostly High German words and as little Northern German pronunciation as possible is only moderately successful. "Moin moin, Aaron. You can see it, too." A quirk of nature ensures that I look like Aaron Carter, and one of my parents ensures that I have the same first name. I only have to pass on the last name, because it's German: Baumgart. "That's right, you can really see that name. Will I have to keep my girlfriend away from you on Family Day? She's so into Aaron Carter that I'm starting to get jealous of the guy, even though he lives in America." - "Don't worry, I won't steal her away from you." If only he knew why not...
Over the next few days, there's more instruction in arranging dominoes, because it's a completely different thing to set up a row in the station's foyer than a picture. And after a week, it's time to move on to the living object. The huge hall on the one hand and 4.3 million dominoes on the other have a somewhat depressing effect. Groups of people fill up tiny spots in the hall; it's like a drop in the ocean. On top of that, a lot of things go wrong due to the lack of routine. After a week, the feeling of emptiness finally subsides, and you start to look around a little more closely. And so it hits me one morning. We work with different people on each project, and that morning I notice a boy my age, whose name, according to his team shirt, is Felix, and who comes from Switzerland. He has short brown hair, a great body, two earrings on his left hand, and a dragon tattoo on his left upper arm. Whenever the setup allows, I sneak a look at him. I don't get any further because I'm far too shy. I've also had bad experiences with coming out in the past, which might happen at some point. I'd rather have something nice to look at than have him turn away from me.
The problem of coming out is brought back to me on family day, when my sister, her boyfriend, and my best friend arrive. My parents and my brother, and my grandfather, have all but forgotten about me since the coming out. My grandmother would have loved to come along, but she didn't want to risk the trip. Felix was visited by his parents and a boy of about 16, obviously his brother. At some point, my sister whispers to me: "You have good taste." - "What?" - "Well, you could probably start dressing the Swiss boy again. Your looks are tearing his clothes off." Hendrik, my friend, murmurs to me: "Our dike sheep Aaron is falling for a mountain goat? I can't believe it!" Shocked, I ask: "Is it that obvious?" - "If you know you, definitely. But even otherwise, it probably doesn't take much imagination to guess."
It's now mid-October, and I'm back working with Felix on a team. We're talking about our normal lives at breakfast. He's also 20, a trained automotive electrician, and lives in Interlaken. He doesn't have a girlfriend, but is there a glimmer of hope?
We continue building and just before the end it happens. Felix hits a stone and it drags several thousand more with it to their doom. I slump to my elbows in despair and watch the mishap. A French woman in our group snaps at him: "Can't you be careful? Now we're back where we were this morning!" The others join in the chorus. A tear runs down Felix's cheek, then he gets up and runs towards the exit, while Robin yells across the hall: "Hey! Don't run!" I say to the group: "You start rebuilding the field, I'll try the same with Felix," before I also run out the door, but without exceeding Robin's speed limit. From the lock, I see Felix running out the main exit. Now I'm allowed to run too, and I stay right behind him. The FEC is on the outskirts of town and we run along a canal towards a railway bridge. I finally caught up with him under the bridge. He gave up and slumped down on the bank of the railway embankment. I sat down next to him. Painfully, he blurted out, "I'm sorry I ruined your day," then he started to cry. "Can I lean on your shoulder?" he asked through his tears. Of course he could... "Sure, it doesn't bother me." - "You just have to be careful when you don't know people that well. Otherwise, you'll get hasty thoughts." That hit home. My thoughts might not be what I feared, that I might think he's gay, but they were apparently still 'hasty,' and the way he used the word sounded negative. I put my arm around his shoulders anyway and comforted him.
After he's calmed down, we head back to the hall just in time for the end of the shift. Felix avoids the group and, after a brief goodbye, goes to lunch alone. After lunch, I call my sister from a quiet corner behind a partition and tell her about the incident, raving about our experience on the railway embankment. After 20 minutes, I press the button with the red receiver, step out of my semi-hiding place, and get the shock of my life. Felix walks off less than three meters further at a brisk pace and doesn't appear again for the rest of the day. What did he hear?
After a very restless night, I discover at breakfast that Felix isn't there. Feeling rather out of sorts, I start my shift, but he doesn't show up. After a few accidents, I'm assigned to build 'islands' where I can, at best, knock over my own work. Others make the connection to the overall work of art. During the shift change, Felix comes into the workshop; he's been transferred to the other shift.
With some resentment, I continue building over the next few weeks, until the Monday before the show, when the sparrow flies into the hall. After the hunter shoots down the little troublemaker, we're behind schedule, and our work of art, which I've grown closer to Felix, is in ruins. Troy was supposed to fall in keeping with history, but not before the Big Bang, but only in ancient times! During the reconstruction, we end up in the same shift again, but he avoids my gaze for two days, building as far away as possible. After dinner, I meet him alone in the hallway. "Felix? I think we need to talk." He gives me a sad, disappointed look and moves on. Naturally, I come back to my room, pretty angry, and slam the door. Christopher jolts out of his book: "Man, Aaron. Does that really have to happen?" - "Yes!" - "I don't think so. What's wrong? You've been totally different a few weeks ago, much more serious and all." - "That's none of your business!" He looks at me pityingly: "That's what I thought at first. But we share this room, and if you're spreading a bad mood, then that's my business." - "But you still don't want to know. Believe me." - "Oh yes, I do. Or you can switch to a good mood now and stay in this mode until Saturday. As soon as we're on separate trains, you can be as grumpy as you want again."
The experiment worked for exactly 24 hours. The next day, I addressed Felix questioningly by name, but he rejected me: "Leave me alone. In the end, it'll only lead to disappointment." So he heard it and is now angry with me. So I returned to the room in a correspondingly bad mood. I managed to grab the door as it swung shut at the last moment and quietly closed it, but Christopher slammed his book all the more loudly: "Okay, that's enough! What's going on? And believe me, now I really want to know!" - "You don't want to. It has to do with the fact that I'm gay." - "So what? What's wrong? I already have two gay friends. So?" - "Oh, man. I guess we'll never get rid of you?" - "Yes, on Saturday. But we had an agreement that you didn't keep." - "Okay. I've fallen in love with a boy on the team..." - "Surely the little Swiss guy with the two earrings and the tattoo on his arm? What's his name again? Felix, right?" - "Oh my goodness. You were curious about that?" - "No, not really. But the day he overturned the field and then got so heckled by the group and ran out, you were the only one who didn't join in and went after him. Afterwards, you came back together. So I just put two and two together when you said you were in love. Because without love, you'd probably be furious if someone messed up a five-and-a-half-hour job with 30 minutes to go." - "Okay. You did the math. I just comforted him that day, and we were pretty close. Afterwards, I told my sister about it on the phone from what I thought was a quiet corner. And he overheard it. He's been avoiding me ever since." -