i wanted to write about someone else today, but then i remembered that it is a special person’s birthday. good enough reason to change my mind. and i think it’s nice to start with why i never forget his birthday.
“this will be easy to remember”, thomas said. “your birthday is 12.11., mine is 11.12!”. when he said that to me, we were on the verge of our twelfth birthday. we had met a few months earlier. after completing the 6th grade in the big village of adendorf (with a population of almost 10,000, it is said to be the biggest village in europe… who knows…), i was moving to what germans called gymnasium. basically a new school, this time in the nearby municipal capital lüneburg. oedeme was the choice for the adventist kids – no school on saturday. so the distance to school went from 200 m to 8 km. in germany, that is considered quite far. and in my new class with new people, there was only one student who came from further. by far. almost 26 km from egestorf to oedeme, where thomas scholz came from every single day. we sat beside each other on the very first day, and we became friends almost immediately. there are very few people as pleasant as thomas on this planet. just easy to be around, and loyal as a rock. and one of the few people you can truly say is your friend, although you haven’t seen and hardly talked to him for ten years.
there are some habits i still have today from hanging out with this unique thinker. chocolate bars in rolls, for example. or a unusually high affection towards mentos or even fanta. a twix, two mentos, two rolls and a fanta – that was thomas’ daily bread in breaks at school.
one day, thomas invited me to stay at his place for a few days. there i met his older brother johannes, and we played quite a lot of table tennis tennis (very interesting variation of table tennis). we also played at oedeme’s school big band, both playing the clarinet. well, a year later i switched to saxophone, but still.
thomas and i continued to be good friends throughout my four years at oedeme. one of the best moments was a bike tour we took together with hannes and another special person, oliver. this story (one of my all time favorites!) will be told at a different time, right here.
i’ve seen thomas both in 95 and in 98, but since then, our contact has been reduced to stayfriends.de, a german website. thomas is now married, probably quite successful, and, as i mentioned before, i don’t know too much about his current life. but he does remember my birthday every single year, and i remember his.
“this will be easy to remember”, thomas said. “your birthday is 12.11., mine is 11.12!”. when he said that to me, we were on the verge of our twelfth birthday. we had met a few months earlier. after completing the 6th grade in the big village of adendorf (with a population of almost 10,000, it is said to be the biggest village in europe… who knows…), i was moving to what germans called gymnasium. basically a new school, this time in the nearby municipal capital lüneburg. oedeme was the choice for the adventist kids – no school on saturday. so the distance to school went from 200 m to 8 km. in germany, that is considered quite far. and in my new class with new people, there was only one student who came from further. by far. almost 26 km from egestorf to oedeme, where thomas scholz came from every single day. we sat beside each other on the very first day, and we became friends almost immediately. there are very few people as pleasant as thomas on this planet. just easy to be around, and loyal as a rock. and one of the few people you can truly say is your friend, although you haven’t seen and hardly talked to him for ten years.
there are some habits i still have today from hanging out with this unique thinker. chocolate bars in rolls, for example. or a unusually high affection towards mentos or even fanta. a twix, two mentos, two rolls and a fanta – that was thomas’ daily bread in breaks at school.
one day, thomas invited me to stay at his place for a few days. there i met his older brother johannes, and we played quite a lot of table tennis tennis (very interesting variation of table tennis). we also played at oedeme’s school big band, both playing the clarinet. well, a year later i switched to saxophone, but still.
thomas and i continued to be good friends throughout my four years at oedeme. one of the best moments was a bike tour we took together with hannes and another special person, oliver. this story (one of my all time favorites!) will be told at a different time, right here.
i’ve seen thomas both in 95 and in 98, but since then, our contact has been reduced to stayfriends.de, a german website. thomas is now married, probably quite successful, and, as i mentioned before, i don’t know too much about his current life. but he does remember my birthday every single year, and i remember his.
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