post 12a © Lilly Schwartz 2011

Yesterday I attempted to get out of the dullness of the immediate surroundings and go to an industrial area in Neuss, namely the Rheinparkcenter. I used to go to school in Neuss after I moved to West Germany when I was 17.  Neuss is one of the smelliest places one can imagine, because they produce oil and Sauerkraut here. People who are from here don’t notice it anymore and think other places smell, but it’s not true. It’s actually the smell of having no distinct smell at all.

Apart from that Neuss is rather unremarkable. A boring shopping area that is not so interesting since Düsseldorf is only 15 minutes away on a train, a catholic girls school, a former boys school and apparently a pronounced drug problem among a lot of the youths in the area. My dad actually wanted me to go to the catholic girls school, but I just laughed. They would have kicked me out after a week anyway since I was a bit of a rebel back then and had a mohawk. In the end I went to the former boys school which was full of rich people’s kids. It was not exactly a highly intellectually stimulating place. No wonder I had only average marks back then. I couldn’t even be bothered to show up, that’s how dull it was.

One of my friends lived near the Rheinparkcenter and I remember going to a LAN party at his place once. We played computer games all night and it was rather amusing. I think however, that as always back then I was just waiting for my life to finally start. It seemed on hold as long as I was required to be at school every day and I couldn’t actually do what I want. I only later realised that life is like that for most people: we’re required to be at some random place every day to get degrees or earn money to pay rent or out of obligation to the family. Since I figured that out I have been trying to get to a certain condition that seems almost unreachable: I would like to do what I want, when I want to do it. Somehow it never seems to work out. I have to keep trying …

You can imagine that the dullness here was just about matched by the dullness of Neuss.