Hummeldumm

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"Row 12 was the last one allowed to choose between tortellini and chicken. I was sitting in row 13. It should have been clear to me on the outbound flight that the annual vacation would turn into a nightmare."

For Matze, it's clear who's to blame: his girlfriend Sina. While he was busy negotiating the new apartment, she was supposed to just book "something." And she did. But did that "something" really have to be a two-week group trip through Namibia, a country where every hip-injured tortoise is faster than the internet? What did he do to deserve being crammed daily into a minibus full of crazies, only to be jolted along African gravel roads to Austrian pop songs? And why is he stumbling through the Kalahari dunes in a silly hiking hat at minus two degrees, instead of sipping a beer in Mallorca? When Matze is reminded that the supposedly secure apartment will go to other buyers if he doesn't transfer the five thousand euro reservation fee immediately, he suddenly has three new problems: the nearest internet café is five hundred kilometers away, his phone battery is dead, and the only charger is firmly in Austrian hands.

"I press my nose against the bus window and look out at the vast land. The Namibians wave at us and laugh. Of course, they laugh; they are free. We are not. We are the tin-packed revenge for the German colonial era.".