Photo by Ioana Cristiana on Unsplash

Tante Helga

Tante Helga ist Lehrerin, sie ist fünf und dreißig und wohnt in Bonn. This sentence has been with me for around 20 years.

It’s from a German textbook, Die Kontakte, which fooled us to believe a 35-year old auntie Helga was an adult. At 32 I feel less adult than in the 4th grade — no job title, no permanent city to live in.

Sometimes it feels tante Helga’s role is to mock me. Other times, she seems more forgiving. Perhaps, if you’re lucky, she tells me, you too will be immortalised as a sentence in a German textbook.

💟 The next story is about true friendship.