Are you at ROSI’S today?*

BLURB

Lotte likes life and the perfect soundtrack for her life. If the beat is wrong, the rest won’t be fun. She dances unrestrained in the clubs to the sound to Brit Pop, Grunge and Indie-Rock and lives by guess and by gosh. Lotte plans only till dawn. Everything else is irrelevant: relationships, rules, everyday life. The boys in school and men in the clubs are just buddies for her. Sometimes they even broaden her musical horizon. But on the way from flat land to the nightlife in Berlin, not everything is easy going, even if the music fits. Because at some point, life knocks on the door. And life wants decisions. And men too.

 CONTENTS

Summer camp

Chapter one
Mr. Vedder, Lara and Grunge
My gang, the baker boys and one cell phone number
We want to love each other, but we don’t know how
Jamiroquai and Mr. Ponytail man
Something cleared up on their own - or not.
Missed calls, “L.A. California” and handmade bread
And then?
By by summer

Chapter two
Who the fuck was Mr. Vedder?
Everything has its own time
Punk-Snow Whites and Heavy Metal cowls
What are these three-liners supposed to do?
Party or fries?
It’s done.          
I
We have to talk.
Pseudo affected behaviour, construction sites and appointments
“Sex on Fire” with Angina
Forgotten by chance

Chapter three
Who the hell are you?
Thursday is the new Friday
The Other and the dance mission
Same week, next dance
Public enemy No. 1
See you again is a pleasure
Diagnosis: Disease epistemological resistance
Which script, please?
“Jauchzet, frohlocket!”
No compromises and switch the light on your bike
Well, explain yourself!
We
Heart tiredness
Are you at ROSI’S today?

Acknowledgement
Musical register

SUMMER CAMP

When I was thirteen years old, I went for two weeks to a summer camp in the Baltic Sea. These two weeks meant sun, beach and open-air discos. The discos were the highlight.
  Twice a week, thirty children and teenagers got on their knees to the rhythm of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and clapped their hands and stamped their feet on the dance floor. I was one of the first kids on the dance floor. After dinner the parties went off. I swallowed the slices of bread covered with translucent slices of Salami, sipped the stale peppermint tea and feverishly awaited the evening. It was exciting to stay up into the night. On the big square in front of the main building I danced on the floor slabs in the open air until DJ Sequinsshirt turned off the music.
  I had never heard something of body feeling before, let alone perceived it in me. I flung my arms uncontrollably, tried to twitch my upper body in time like in the aerobic videos and mercilessly stomped imaginary dents into the floor with my legs. That wasn’t dancing, that was failed pop gymnastics. I voluntarily made myself a body freak. I didn’t care at all.
  After the tearjerker “Hunting High and Low” by the swedish band a-ha the party ended. We all walked back to our bungalow happily exhausted.
  While the others fell asleep, I was lying in my bunk bed trying to remember the playlist and certain melodies. The next day I wrote down the song titles I had remembered in mutilated English, something like “Giff mor fium”, which means “Give me more of you”.
  The open-air discos were THE key experience. From then on I wanted to dance through the nights more often. That was for sure for me. But I was still too young to go through the clubs. Apart from that, in these very tiny town where I grew up, there were no clubs, at most a dilapidated youth club. And it wasn’t a cool club.
  It was also as clear as cold broth that those who went to bed on time during summer camp did not have any friends at home or camp. They were boring.
  In my bungalow the nerdy girls were sleeping, which adored Dave Gahan and Martin Gore of Depeche Mode. Their music sounded to me like beeps in operating theatres and the band members stared arrogantly at the posters they had brought with them in their black leather jackets and highly styled hair. The girls had stuck the milk roll faces on the wardrobe doors. My roommates then lay dreamily in their beds and swooned. They’d rather pet horses than have an enjoyable evening.
  In the bungalow next door the guys who listened to Heavy Metal, Metallica, Judas Priest and Slayer were funny, cheeky and different. There was no curfew for them. The guys did their own thing. I wanted to hang out with them. During the day they lounged in front of their bungalow, listened to their tapes up and down and in the evening they hung out in some corners on the campsite. They probably secretly smoked cigarettes. They were a sworn troop inaccessible to everyone in the camp. I found them fascinating and wanted to get to know them. Instead I ended up on the table tennis team.
  I wasn’t very good at sports, but table tennis was okay. My team trained almost every day for some unnecessary competition. I eventually made friends with a fellow player. After countless practices we eventually got along quite well.
  The penultimate evening he told me about a common player that wanted to meet me behind the green bungalow near the table tennis court during the last disco. I wondered why he wanted to see me now. I enjoyed every song and just danced like a savage. What did he want from me? I left the dance floor without any merriment and went to the meeting point. As I stood in front of him, we greeted each other shortly. Then he took my hands in his without a word and attacked me with a disgusting wet kiss. His tongue circled once around my lips, then he pushed it into my mouth, let it rotate another round. It felt as though he had swept the plaque off my teeth. And he made smacking noises. What was that? In any case no kiss.
  I just wanted to went back to the dance floor. When he detached himself from me it felt like an eternity, I wiped his drool from my mouth with the back of my hand, looked at him disgusted and made me leave the field. What a senseless action. The table tennis games took place the next day without me.
  Before departure the howling started with some girls. During the two weeks they had somehow fallen in love with the boys in the camp. I was looking forward to returning home and had learned two lessons: Never meet a guy behind a bungalow and fucking dance as long as you can, always!

*The book is written in German.