And further in our small series NeuStadt- in former times, today and always in between.
On the today stupid and abandoned traffic island in Hinnburchstr. (name changed) used to be the playground, actually two of them. Seen from me on the left was the area for little ones. Sandbox, three seesaws, also benches for the caregivers. A small climbing frame? Unbelievable, I forgot. In the middle some electricity house, then, so right now, an arch-like climbing frame to shimmy around, furthermore two swings. Behind, already at the Keiserstr. (name changed) the KIOSK, also the TRINKHALLE, center of my early desires. First: Capri. Then: Dolomiti. Third: Brown bear, but there I was already almost gone. Dolomiti was actually the most ingenious. With this I had my first contact with "thinking about names". ("why is that called so funny?") and MyUncle told me poetically about the Dolomites, and yes, with every popsicle a little girl with gap teeth and side parting dreamed of the green mats of the same. Until one day they changed the recipe, probably the original was poisonous, since then, I swear, it no longer tastes right and I don't care about the Dolomites. Pig's ears (so pastry now, this fragile), that just mentioned here, were also never really good again after 1975. Wiesu denn bluß?! I denounce that at this point. So forced change to Brown Bear, the change can hardly be more blatant. Winnetou! Oh, Winnetou!
At the Trinkhalle gave also, what else, HB and Binding beer (certainly also Peter Styvesand (sic?), Reval, Eckstein, WY (? So yellow packs) and last but not least ROTHHÄNDLE, what my socialist great-grandfather smoked most of the time). And when 1972 was oil crisis and Sunday driving ban, I was allowed to go shopping for MyFather for the first time, proud and excited, shortly before 5 years old. This small sentence contains a lot of unbelievable things. 1. Oil crisis 2. Sunday driving ban 3. A 4 year old buying beer and cigarettes (still without gap in her teeth, only with side parting). What do we see? The times they are a-changing. Sunday driving ban, I just have to say it again.
With ice-smeared mouth and babbic fingers on the swing, metal chains. Smell of sand-ice-metal. In short "playground. There one wasted the time, at the beginning still tightly supervised, then increasingly freely and loosely arranged with schoolmates, I still see the first skateboards, red, yellow, blue or green, they were called Rollbrett and I wonder what the skaters today to 1. Would say and 2. If they could drive them. Has who still one? A rolling board?
Today still beautiful, although, cf. Dolomiti, no longer real: the gas lanterns. From the outside the same. But, who remembers? I was still cared for and MyUncle told me we had to go home slowly now, because the little gas man was already coming to light the lanterns. ??? We went to the next lantern, there I heard a soft noise in the top of it, that was the lantern-man, who strikes the matches. Clickclickclick and the lantern went on slowly, rich yellow light. 10 meters further, the next lantern. I feverishly look for the little man with the matches, there, the noise, it was probably too fast or too small?, next lantern burns. And the next and the one after and always 10 meters further and as if by a miracle we stand at exactly the right Heimkommmzeit before exactly our red house and the green lantern burns yellow. Until the 90s I sometimes played the lantern man game, but suddenly, tout à coup, suddenly and abruptly the outwardly identical lanterns came on remotely at the same time, which is why you can never stand in front of your own door at exactly the right time anymore, but are always surprised by the suddenly strangely poisonous orange glow of a whole legion of lanterns, they surround me and above all without knocking they all seem to come to you at the same time. "And what does the little man do?", asks something that reminds me of my former voice and I answer "That's retired.