Let's take a look behind
and see what we can find.
Last year has gone for everyone,
passed with time.
What happened to us then
can't happen once again.
And what's it now to me?
History.
Herman's Hermits – Years may come, years may go

The luckiest men are those who don't give a shit.
completely made up by the author

Prologue

The reason why the fuck I wrote this in the first place

It's quiet around here at the moment. Really quiet. Which is quite unusual, especially when considering that I'm still in the same flat that had numerous noise complaints and a written warning from the dean during the past year. But that's how it goes, everyone fucked off and left the sinking ship. Oh yeah, before you go on reading, I should warn you that I tend to swear. A lot. So if you're sensitive to things like that, you should give these pages to someone who is not and let him blacken out the certain parts with a big black pen. That's the only advice I could give, well of course there's still the possibility not to read them pages at all but why the fuck should I tell you to do that? However, the reason that my swearing, well, I wouldn't say got worse because that obviously would be a big lie, but hold the level it's got when I swear in my mother tongue, is mainly due to the fact that here, in infamous flat12keynestowerpartytower, swearing was an important part of every conversation if not to say the main one. But I should fill you in a little bit more about my last year. Basically, the facts to know are: I left Germany to spend a year abroad in England and I ended up in Colchester, Essex at University of Essex. Oh, pardon me, that's not even true, I did not leave Germany to do a full year here initially, my plan was to only be here for one term. Didn't happen, for reasons you will find out if you keep on reading.
And therefore I'm sitting here now, the end of June 2009, in a graveyard-like tower flat that once accommodated 13 people, students to keep it straight; students that mostly were as lost as me the first days being here, for different reasons of course. For me it was the fact that I came to that precious island that England is part of for the first time and was about to live there for the next couple of months without knowing anyone; for the others it was the upcoming experience to be at University for the next three years, and, well, for most of them not knowing anyone as well. Oh, one exception there was, but I'm sure she wasn't quite aware of what she signed in for as well. Spending the last year at Uni with a bunch of party-addicted freshers and an insane German on his Erasmus vacation probably isn't the thing you'd ask for or even pick if you had the choice. But I think, no, actually I am almost sure that she did enjoy at least parts of it as much as I, or let's say we all did. And now, facing the approaching day of my departure, I feel the inevitable pressure of putting it down in words. To have an indestructible account of all the things that happened to me during the year that lies behind me. That's the reason for all this. That's the reason why I'm now sitting here in my prison cell-sized room on my one inch bed in between my Tesco-value sheets, smoking cigarettes and thinking about a way to put it all together, struggling because of those many lacking parts due to alcohol abuse, laughing and smiling on my own because I remember things that I probably would have forgotten about if I wouldn't have obey to the pressure I just told you about. So here we go.
You got me, typing word after word to account to an experience I would have never even thought anyone could have, not to mention myself. It is going to be an incredible as well as insane story about broken door locks and tin foiled rooms, chair wars and dubious prank cease-fire, ceiling-raped bus shelters, radiant nights and hangover mornings, reoccurring drunken theft of completely useless objects and the constant and general refusal to keep the shared kitchen clean; but first and foremost: it's about making friends. Making friends with people who will go on to continue the insanity, most of them facing their second year at Uni; making friends with people who, and I am completely sure about that, won't ever forget about this year, because I know I won't. But before I start the recollection of the events that happened over roughly ten months in flat12keynestowerpartytower, I have to let you down already, because I feel that I have to start with the very beginning. Which means that the insanity has to wait in line for a bit, till I get there. But don't worry, I willget there, for sure. Just be patient. Or skip some pages, but again, I wouldn't advise that.