TRANSIT - THE LAST DAYS OF FREEDOM
A True Story
Volume 3 of the "STATIONS" series
A young man leans with his back against the toilet door of a completely overcrowded Indian night train. Just four weeks ago, he was still in a coma. Now his passport, his money and almost everything he owns have disappeared.
Not exactly the ideal end to a journey around the world.
When Bernhard Christoph Lichtinger finally returns to Germany, he has little more than the clothes on his back. Unfortunately, the army is waiting for him there too. After more than a year on the road, he flees to West Berlin, where he starts again from scratch. A small flat in an old building. A new job. New friends.
Slowly, almost suspiciously, life begins to look normal again. Then, over lunch, a colleague tells him a completely outrageous story. At first, it sounds like one of his usual jokes.
It would probably have been better if it had remained one.
Instead, Christoph cannot get the idea out of his head. A casual remark becomes a possibility, the possibility becomes a plan – and that plan will change his life forever.
Transit – The Last Days of Freedom is the third volume in the autobiographical STATIONS series.
With self-deprecation, dry wit and black humour, Bernhard Christoph Lichtinger tells a true story of new beginnings, freedom, friendship, wanderlust – and those decisions that seem perfectly reasonable. Until the moment they no longer do.
The journey leads from the overcrowded night trains of India, via Nepal, to 1980s West Berlin, where even finding an affordable flat borders on the impossible. Add workshops, back courtyards, eccentric people, a stoned gorilla, the Stasi in the car and an idea so unlikely that it really ought not to work.
Which, of course, only makes it all the more interesting.
It is a story of friendship, freedom, coincidences and decisions – told with the kind of black humour that can still make you laugh long after there is nothing left to laugh about.
And of a transit route through East Germany that was supposed to be nothing more than the way home.
It wasn’t.
Bernhard Christoph Lichtinger writes from lived experience – from setbacks, detours, new beginnings and encounters that need no embellishment. His stories take shape wherever real life leaves its mark.
If you haven’t read any of the books in the STATIONS series yet, you can start with any of the following titles. Each volume tells a self-contained story, but read in order, they reveal a much bigger story together.
Volume 1: WHAT SHE SAW – A TRUE STORY
Volume 2: THE MAN WITH THE CRUTCH
Volume 3: TRANSIT – THE LAST DAYS OF FREEDOM
Volume 4: DEPARTURE INTO THE UNKNOWN
VOLUME 5: IN THE TIGER CAGE – SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN THE BASEMENT OF RUMMELSBURG
Volume 6: FRIDAY THE 13TH (IN PROGRESS)