NOTHING REMAINS AS IT IS - A WORLD JOURNEY OF LOVE, LOSS AND NEW BEGINNINGS
A true story about fate, change and a new path
2. Volume of the trilogy "Don't ask for Sugar"
After an encounter with a fortune teller, something breaks.
Suzanne leaves.
Without explanation.
Without return.
For Chris, everything collapses. Days pass in which nothing holds anymore. Then he makes a decision: forward. Away from everything that keeps him in place.
He starts hitchhiking.
Outback, heat, endless highways. Freedom and risk lie close together. Encounters appear, disappear, leave traces. But beneath the surface, something begins to grow that can no longer be controlled.
After more than 10,000 kilometres, he reaches Cape Tribulation.
A resort. The last evening of the year. A brief flirt.
Then it escalates.
A punch.
Straight to the face.
When he comes to, he cannot open one eye.
His nose is crooked.
His lip hangs loose.
And still, it goes on.
Back in Cairns, he works on a dive boat. A new beginning as a diving instructor seems possible. But without a visa, without money and without security, that plan quickly falls apart as well.
A call home brings a new direction. His brother is travelling to India again. An idea forms – fast, risky, barely thought through.
With his open return ticket, Chris gets off already in New Delhi.
In Jaipur, he finds his brother in a run-down hotel. From there begins a journey through India that slips beyond all control.
Severe food poisoning.
Three days in a coma.
When he wakes up, nothing is stable anymore.
Shortly after, he is on a train to Nepal with his brother Ralf. With a ruined stomach, crammed in like cattle, travelling for days with no way out. On the third night, he is robbed in his sleep – just before reaching the destination.
He loses everything.
Passport gone.
Money gone.
Bag gone.
With borrowed money, he makes his way back to Delhi. At the German embassy, he waits for new documents – without a plan, without security. Meanwhile, he reads about the gas disaster in Bhopal.
The dark man at the station.
Classical music out of nowhere.
Glances that linger too long.
The world begins to tilt. Quietly, but finally.
Back in Germany, things do not get easier.
The Bundeswehr is after him. To avoid them, he travels along the winter transit route through the GDR to West Berlin. A divided city, raw and unpredictable.
Here, he starts again.
First nights with friends.
A strange search for a place to live.
A cheap old flat in Neukölln.
A poorly paid job at a CNC lathe.
But nothing really holds.
Nothing remains stable.
Nothing remains certain.
Nothing remains as it is.
This second volume tells an autobiographical journey between world travel, collapse and new beginnings – across Australia, India and Berlin. About loss, extreme experiences and the attempt to keep moving, again and again.
For readers interested in true travel stories, world journeys, backpacking, personal crises and unconventional life paths.
An authentic story from the 1980s – about being on the move, about losing and about continuing when everything breaks.
At the end of the book, original photographs from that time are included.
Bernhard Christoph Lichtinger writes books drawn from lived experience, from setbacks, detours, new beginnings and encounters that never needed to be invented. His stories begin where real life leaves its mark.
If you are interested in my novels, you can find the links to the titles here.
ALMOST NORMAL – 16 SHORT STORIES
NOTHING REMAINS AS IT IS – VOLUME 2