i don’t know how it was with you, but since i broadened by social circle to outside of the family, i’ve basically always had someone that i considered my best friend. i remember that the first in that string of “bf”s (not “bff”s, because it’s just not like that normally, hehe) was tobias tscheuschner, whom i met in the before mentioned French isle summer trip 1986. others to follow were felix jagusch, raphael sanz, marco zücker, thomas scholz, frederico branco, rodrigo streithorst, douglas leal and rafael streithorst.
people say that relationships can end, but friendships shouldn’t. and although i do want to believe this and have known it to be true most of the time, it is exactly my strongest friendship to date that seems to have ended. but let’s start from the beginning.
i arrived in germany (in company of tio ita and tio tania, right after the shaddap episode) for my parents civil wedding. of course, neither me nor any of my brothers talked any german, so we didn’t communicate with the other people who were present at that day. but one of the families present that day was to become important in our lives: a spaniard, his german wife and their son raphael sanz.
over the years, raphael became friends with the gonçalves kids, mostly with andre (the oldest one). i think we were quite fascinated by him, in some way: he was educated following a totally different philosophy than we were, basically much less strict. not that we were brought up in an extremely strict regime, but somehow things seemed much more laissez-faire with him.
in the first semester of 1987, i had been in love with a girl called yvonne dobert for quite some time. as typical for me at that age (9), i hade never spoken to her, nor was she aware of my existence. untypically, though, she was a full 3 years older than me, basically raphael’s age. well, yvonne is worth a post for herself, certainly. anyway, i had this girl well locked up in my secret world, when raphael surprised me twice. first, with a revelation. that was surprising, because we were friends, but not that intimate. he was more my brother andre’s friend at the time, but for some reason he wanted to show me this letter he received from a girl. one of those love letters, much more typical in the eighties than nowadays. and not that a great a letter, by the way. kind of funny. asking him to kiss her on a tuesday afternoon. signed: yvonne dobert. i couldn’t believe my eyes. she seemed to be so much part of my own particular world, known just to me, and thus, somehow kind of mine, in a way. but reality was quite different: she had her eyes on raphael. but strangely i wasn’t disappointed or sad at all, i was actually quite excited about the situation. this was the real yvonne, and she was “in love” with a friend of the family, who was now rapidly becoming my friend. of course, i didn’t tell raphael anything, and of course, he did kiss her on said tuesday afternoon.
anyway, with time passing, i was becoming more and more friends with raphael. in 1990, a great year for me, our friendship peaked for the first time. but i was still more on the receiving side of information than on the giving side. and i was becoming more and more social; marco zücker, newly arrived from the ex-eastern germany, was my best friend then, and lots was going on in the romantic arena. but after a great 1990, a terrible 1991 arrived. and that’s when raphael and me really became friends. and this time, it was totally open.
you see, i’d had really great friends in my life up to that year, people who really made the difference in my day-to-day life. but this was ground-breaking for me, a first. because i always protected my personal life, it was very natural to me to have my own proper world. a place i would go to when i was by myself, very safe and very nice. normally, there was a girl that i liked. a team (bayern münchen). music, lots of music, always very special to me. and, yes, i must admit, my stuffed animals. i really don’t know if this was an indirect result my parents breaking up at early age, no idea. i do know that it was a part of my life for a long time, and to some extent still is. but it was my friendship with raphael that changed things. he was invited, and he did not take the invitation lightly. because, at the end, these were the main topics in our sometimes endless conversations: girls (we had totally different outlooks but learned quickly to respect each others), music (really listening to it), but no sports (raphael was never a big fan). as i mentioned earlier, 1990 had been a great year socially, and 1991 was being horrible. maybe it was the disappointment that led me to open up, although one would think that the opposite would be the consequence. but it was in a way, i went back to being reclusive and shy, but this just seemed to make this old new friendship with raphael more imortant. musicwise, radio music of the time (like shanice’s “i love your smile” or charles & eddie’s “would i lie to you?”) was only shadowed by vangelis’ chariots of fire (my first favorite piece of music, not the title track, but other themes on that album) and michael jackson in general. with the girls, raphael was very, lets say, moody. he would fall in love almost every week, which was kind of funny, and he was not too shy about it. i was still in my old mode, and for some reason it took me a while to tell him who i was in love in at the time: her name was anja beusch, once again a girl who hardly knew who i was, from school. yep, once again, that’s quite a long entry for the future.
people say that relationships can end, but friendships shouldn’t. and although i do want to believe this and have known it to be true most of the time, it is exactly my strongest friendship to date that seems to have ended. but let’s start from the beginning.
i arrived in germany (in company of tio ita and tio tania, right after the shaddap episode) for my parents civil wedding. of course, neither me nor any of my brothers talked any german, so we didn’t communicate with the other people who were present at that day. but one of the families present that day was to become important in our lives: a spaniard, his german wife and their son raphael sanz.
over the years, raphael became friends with the gonçalves kids, mostly with andre (the oldest one). i think we were quite fascinated by him, in some way: he was educated following a totally different philosophy than we were, basically much less strict. not that we were brought up in an extremely strict regime, but somehow things seemed much more laissez-faire with him.
in the first semester of 1987, i had been in love with a girl called yvonne dobert for quite some time. as typical for me at that age (9), i hade never spoken to her, nor was she aware of my existence. untypically, though, she was a full 3 years older than me, basically raphael’s age. well, yvonne is worth a post for herself, certainly. anyway, i had this girl well locked up in my secret world, when raphael surprised me twice. first, with a revelation. that was surprising, because we were friends, but not that intimate. he was more my brother andre’s friend at the time, but for some reason he wanted to show me this letter he received from a girl. one of those love letters, much more typical in the eighties than nowadays. and not that a great a letter, by the way. kind of funny. asking him to kiss her on a tuesday afternoon. signed: yvonne dobert. i couldn’t believe my eyes. she seemed to be so much part of my own particular world, known just to me, and thus, somehow kind of mine, in a way. but reality was quite different: she had her eyes on raphael. but strangely i wasn’t disappointed or sad at all, i was actually quite excited about the situation. this was the real yvonne, and she was “in love” with a friend of the family, who was now rapidly becoming my friend. of course, i didn’t tell raphael anything, and of course, he did kiss her on said tuesday afternoon.
anyway, with time passing, i was becoming more and more friends with raphael. in 1990, a great year for me, our friendship peaked for the first time. but i was still more on the receiving side of information than on the giving side. and i was becoming more and more social; marco zücker, newly arrived from the ex-eastern germany, was my best friend then, and lots was going on in the romantic arena. but after a great 1990, a terrible 1991 arrived. and that’s when raphael and me really became friends. and this time, it was totally open.
you see, i’d had really great friends in my life up to that year, people who really made the difference in my day-to-day life. but this was ground-breaking for me, a first. because i always protected my personal life, it was very natural to me to have my own proper world. a place i would go to when i was by myself, very safe and very nice. normally, there was a girl that i liked. a team (bayern münchen). music, lots of music, always very special to me. and, yes, i must admit, my stuffed animals. i really don’t know if this was an indirect result my parents breaking up at early age, no idea. i do know that it was a part of my life for a long time, and to some extent still is. but it was my friendship with raphael that changed things. he was invited, and he did not take the invitation lightly. because, at the end, these were the main topics in our sometimes endless conversations: girls (we had totally different outlooks but learned quickly to respect each others), music (really listening to it), but no sports (raphael was never a big fan). as i mentioned earlier, 1990 had been a great year socially, and 1991 was being horrible. maybe it was the disappointment that led me to open up, although one would think that the opposite would be the consequence. but it was in a way, i went back to being reclusive and shy, but this just seemed to make this old new friendship with raphael more imortant. musicwise, radio music of the time (like shanice’s “i love your smile” or charles & eddie’s “would i lie to you?”) was only shadowed by vangelis’ chariots of fire (my first favorite piece of music, not the title track, but other themes on that album) and michael jackson in general. with the girls, raphael was very, lets say, moody. he would fall in love almost every week, which was kind of funny, and he was not too shy about it. i was still in my old mode, and for some reason it took me a while to tell him who i was in love in at the time: her name was anja beusch, once again a girl who hardly knew who i was, from school. yep, once again, that’s quite a long entry for the future.
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