05 April 2011

Facts on a summery Day


Between Brühl, Hürth and Erftstadt there's a massive industrial region with woods, mines and lakes. One of those lakes is called Bleibtreusee, named after Hermann Bleibtreu, a German pioneer for the charcoal industry in the 19th century. It's about 740.000 square meters wide with a diving depth of sixteen meters. In 2007 they built a motorized aquatic sports system on the northern end with a small sand beach attached to it.

So far, the only thing that's named after me is my passport. With my recent change of nationalities my name on paper has changed a bit as well. But as a matter of fact people have always called me by various names. Local authorities, for instance, use my German name, while most overseas friends prefer my Korean one. Friends from uni call me Jin, friends from high school call me Kimi. That's why Tobs sometimes says Jimmy, and K, well, K logically calls me J, but that's another story. 

So about that one sunny day we had last week. It was crazy, in fact it was almost summer-like. What a shame I had to work, I thought, when Tobs called me up and said: “Jimmy to the hop, you don't stop!”, that's what he says, actually raps, when he's in an exceptionally good mood, “What a genius day. We're going to the lake later on, wanna come?” I told him it didn't look too good, because I had to help out at my parents', but I would get back to him after I was done. 

As usual I went downstairs at around twelve. People came and went, but it wasn't really busy. Days like these might not be the best for business, but to me there couldn't be any better. It's on days like these I get to chat with my parents the most. But today I took a different shot. "Strange," I said to my paps, "how come there's so few customers today? Aren't people eating?" Barely looking up from his paper he said: "It's nice outside, people are going to barbeque for dinner a lot".

I was able to lead the conversation into the right direction and got to leave early. I rang Tobs right away, and he picked me up an hour later. When we arrived at the lake there was already a bunch of people lying around, mostly young strangers wearing summer apparel, playing volleyball or reading magazines, but also family and friends. Some kids even brought a boombox and, to my big surprise, played a nice compilation of jazz tunes. A super mellow day, and for dinner we actually had barbeque.

No comments:

Post a Comment