When the municipal authorities of East Berlin – the Magistrat – decided to join two secondary schools to form a High School (if you're British you'd call it a grammar school) that got its proper name only much later (it became the Charles Darwin High School), I jumped at the occasion, having just got fired before I even started. I was supposed to become a computer specialist, but the company just didn't have any money. So I made my abitur in two years. After that I became a shop window dresser, realizing almost at the beginning, that this is not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I learned this job anyway only because some carreer advisor told me that this would be like being a set designer – well, I was never much trusting and this just was it with carreer advisorship. I still finished the whole thing (in December 1994), but what a disaster...

After that I decided to study. As a kid I always wanted to become an archaeologist, being most interested in the ancient times. Though the Egyptian history is interesting too, my major interests were Šumer, Hatti and Urartu. And of course the Greek - I just loved their mythology, fell heavily in love with Αθήνη... well, nothing ever came of it, she never appeared to me. Still, I wanted to study archaeology until my parents reasoned with me, that in the German Democratic Republic I will most likely spend my life digging in the local woods and caring for the little museum of local history, which wasn't exactly my cup of tea. Little did we suspect, that by the time I'd be able to study those restrains did not apply any more.

Now I went for it, there was one thing to get over with - the military service. So I announced my plans to the army and got drafted - entering a time that was worse than anything before. Let's say, by the time I was released I didn't know anymore where my arse was. Still struggling very unsuccessfully to get into the world of entertainment...

After a very bleak year 1996 I left Berlin, starting over in Wiesbaden, where I found work through temp agencies and friends of friends of something - among other things for an insurrance company, chemical factory, waste recycling company, compact disc factory, and a commerce for computer accessories. Inbetween I made a retraining course that was just awfully conceived - having no focus whatsoever. But I knew that upfront, but it was a chance to get a practical training financed that I wanted in a film company. So I worked for Heimir Jónasson at Scorpio Production, but again, nothing came of it. (Well, there's no one else to blame but me, this time.)

But this is a time where my private life had a major influence on my future, so let me get the basics. At that retraining I met a woman, fell in love, and it turned out she was Christian, very Christian. Well, being a hardcore Atheist myself, it seemed unlikely that there was any hope, but I was trying it anyway. Even started to pray... But the more time I spend there I realized that their view of the world was frightening. Not because they claimed the existence of forces beyond our control, so we had to give our being to Jesus Christ, but because they felt that only they knew the truth. What was funny though that certain elements of reality were simply left out, self-censored in their brains, ignored because they didn't fit into their nicely adjusted world. Things you couldn't ask.

I joined them because at the beginning they managed to give reasonable answers of Christianity, had a response to the Marxist failure with which I still struggled. They helped me to see it, to detach myself from my upbringing in this so-called Communism. By giving me that gift, they gave me also the power to see their holy cows as plain stupid cattle. I realized that they did the same thing, except – and that's another frightening part – that they're not in power, not anymore, and not yet again. But there I would pray that that is never going to happen.

I eventually left them, after almost one year being with Christians, to realize that all those things need further investigation. It took a while, but finally I came to the conclusion that I wanted to study physics and philosophy, to unravel these mysteries...

Part I  —  Part III