IRC-Galleria

I once visited Germany, a city called Freiburg. That stands for “free castle” and it had a university where my older brother studied at – that was my reason for visiting the place. It’s located in South-West Germany and was one of the most beautiful cities I had ever seen (staying for a week was not enough for me).

We had had some morning espresso in a cosy cafeteria near the university. It was noon already and we didn’t have a plan on how to waste the day. “Let’s just go to the campus, shut up and read something, huh?” he asked me. I didn’t have a better idea – actually I didn’t have any ideas at all – so ok, I nodded.

The campus was quite a big area with loads of green grass and very few people because it was Saturday. We sat on a bench and both of us grabbed a book from my brotherÂ’s bag.
I wasnÂ’t in the mood for reading, not in the mood for doing anything. I had slept the night lousily in a lousy bed which had a lousy gap in the middle. Taking a few deep breaths I started to feel a bit better. Not good but better. That was something.

A bunch of pigeons were picking on a piece of bread or whatever it was they’d picked up from a nearby garbage bin. They tossed it around with their beaks, up and down and back and forth in such an incredibly stupid way. Almost as stupid as the way they moved their heads, their necks – retarded person meets 80’s disco. I had never liked that.

Suddenly this guy walking past us and sitting down two benches away from us caught my attention. With a tremendous mass of fuzzy, curly hair blasting out from the back of his head and his eyes deep in his head looking red and tired the man gave an impression of a drunk bum. He wore a black leather jacket and was carrying two huge plastic bags ofÂ… something; I didnÂ’t know. There he sat and had put all that stuff on the ground: the bags, a carton of cheap white wine, some juice. It looked like he had no home. He was slow in what he did and he didnÂ’t do anything too sensible: odd faces as if he was angry at himself, loud coughing and some kind of swearing, I suppose. He even slapped himself in the face. I wonder if he suffered from schizophrenia. I wonder if that was GodÂ’s will. Now and then he would rise up and stumble around, suck in some wine, then sit down again laughing and, soon after that, hit himself again.

I had a look at the pigeons again. That stupid piece of bread was still there, the necks were plunging back and forth, the bread was being tossed about. The comedy went on and on.
Some tiny birds appeared soon – they must have been only a fifth of the size of a pigeon. I watched one of them fly to the bread, grab it into its beak and fly away. What style! Justice had happened! The evil little son of a bitch even knew how to eat it: break it between the ground and its beak. The pigeons looked as empty-headed as always. We laughed (I noticed that my brother had been staring at the episode too).

A little boy wearing a baseball cap and a girl dressed in a pink skirt trotted past us, ran to the pigeons shooing them, scaring the hell out of those dumb fuckers, shouting stupid things I didnÂ’t understand. Justice! Again! I didnÂ’t have to see their disco-dancing necks anymore.
Soon we stood up and walked away but I had to allow myself to take a final glance at Mr. Schizophrenia. He was rolling up a cigarette. When he got it ready and lit it up he took a good breath and smiled to the emptiness in front of him. Or, when I think of it, maybe he saw somebody thereÂ…

I have not seen many people smile like that.