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, and for Chris everything seems to collapse with her.
He makes a decision: forward. Preferably somewhere else.
He hitchhikes through Australia, covering more than 10,000 kilometres through the Outback, heat and endless highways. Freedom and risk are never far apart, and neither are encounters that appear briefly, disappear again and sometimes leave rather more behind than expected.
At Cape Tribulation, on the last evening of the year, a brief flirt ends with a punch to the face. When Chris comes round, one eye will not open, his nose is crooked and his lip hangs loose.
Not quite the New Year’s celebration he had in mind.
Back in Cairns, he works on a dive boat and considers becoming a diving instructor. Without a visa, money or much in the way of security, however, the plan has certain practical weaknesses.
Then a call home changes direction again. His brother Ralf is travelling to India. Chris has an open return ticket and gets off in New Delhi.
In Jaipur, he finds Ralf in a run-down hotel. What follows is a journey through India that increasingly slips beyond anyone’s control – until severe food poisoning leaves Chris unconscious for three days.
When he wakes up, nothing feels particularly stable anymore.
Soon afterwards, Chris is travelling with Ralf on an overcrowded train towards Nepal. Still weakened, crammed in among hundreds of passengers and travelling for days, he is robbed in his sleep on the third night.
Passport gone. Money gone. Bag gone.
With money borrowed from his brother, he makes his way back to Delhi and waits at the German embassy for new documents. Around him are reports of the Bhopal gas disaster, strange encounters and moments that begin to make the world feel increasingly uncertain.
Back in Germany, things do not become noticeably simpler. With the Bundeswehr looking for him, Chris takes the winter transit route through the GDR to West Berlin and begins again: first nights with friends, a search for somewhere to live, a cheap old flat in Neukölln and a poorly paid job at a CNC lathe.
Nothing really holds. Nothing remains certain.
NOTHING REMAINS AS IT IS.
This second part of DON’T ASK FOR SUGAR follows a true journey through Australia, India and Berlin – through freedom and collapse, loss and new beginnings, extraordinary encounters and decisions that occasionally make considerably more sense before they are made than afterwards.
It is about continuing when plans disappear, certainty proves temporary and life repeatedly changes direction without bothering to ask first.
At the end of the book, a selection of original photographs brings this period back to life.
Bernhard Christoph Lichtinger writes from lived experience – from setbacks, detours, new beginnings and encounters that never needed to be invented. His texts 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
ANTICYCLICAL THINKING – VOLUME 3
DON’T ASK FOR SUGAR – THE TRILOGY