Simson mopeds are extremely popular today because they are indestructible, fast, and maneuverable. A car license is sufficient for a 49cc engine, allowing you to cruise through tight city traffic at 65 km/h. They are easily recognizable by their single-cylinder rattle and the white smoke that smells strongly of burnt oil. Back in the 1980s GDR, almost every family had at least one Schwalbe, an S51, or a Simson Star, or even the more powerful MZ motorcycles. Even as a toddler, I sat facing backwards between my father and mother on the moped – to daycare and back home. Always without a helmet, but very safe in my mother's arms. When my legs were barely long enough to reach the crooked footrests, I learned to ride on my friend's yellow Schwalbe. Eventually, through some clever bartering, I got my first 2-stroke Simson S51. Nothing worked except the engine. I could ride and brake and was as proud as punch (that's what people said back then). I always hid my moped well in the woods for fear that someone might steal it. At the weekend I had to get some petrol somehow, at least a litre - that would last until Sunday evening. And then out into the fields or the rubble dump. Why? Freedom, movement, making progress, taking risks, feeling things out. But also tinkering, designing, repairing, being MYSELF. Getting it done. Self-determined. Not having to ask if I could go to see a friend in the next village. At some point someone did steal my moped. I was very sad, and couldn't get a new one during the reunification period. But my moped and I had two great summers. So often on Saturdays after morning beer I would look under my hero father's arms to see how to clean a carburetor or fix a broken turn signal. He always drank two or three beers (“Edel-Bräu”) and smoked a lot of cigarettes (“Duett, Format 100”). Back then, mopeds were pushed out of the garage and people met up in the yard to tinker together. More an end in itself than a necessity. Greasy, oily hands were the symbol of a good weekend. Nothing was threatening: a fulfilling childhood spent between gasoline, summer camp, and collecting waste paper in the neighborhood. Looking back, there's no resentment, no “we had nothing” or the remembered feeling of being locked up. Eventually, the 2 or 3 beers turned into 10 or 12 a day (“Radeberger”), and the nice parental Schwalbe turned into a few meager marks for even more beer. German marks. Added to that, a lot of time was wasted due to unemployment. I was the best “beer-fetching son” anyone could have wished for. I did anything for two marks, often running to “die Ratte” (the bar next door) several times a day to get more. At some point, I stopped, when I noticed that my mother cried a lot, and my father increasingly too. There was a lot of arguing and shouting during that time. Her hero status was crumbling. Between now and then lie about three decades of parental attempts at marriage, various withdrawals, moves, separations, making peace, broken promises, and wanting to "get it back on track." Today, my father has been sober for years. That's something to be proud of. But he also suffers from epilepsy and schizophrenia as a result of his drinking history. Drinking out of self-pity, I think. There was no other answer, or even an answer at all, even though I asked so many times. My mother stayed with my father, but also lost her job early on in this codependency. Why did she stay? "That's just how it was back then," she would say. The mother who held the shop together. Overall, it wasn't a particularly special childhood; others had similar experiences. Somehow caught up in the wheels, but somehow not at all. I don't think the fall of the Berlin Wall was to blame, but it didn't help either. It wasn't the overall problem, but it certainly didn't offer a good solution. In the meantime, I finished school, studied in the next larger city, and started a family. I've watched the occasional Trabant and Simson scooter drive by, smiling and appreciatively. In the 2000s, I got my first new moped – a plastic Chinese bomber, ordered from the thick Neckermann catalog because you could pay in installments there, which I liked. On credit, in other words. The little red scooter was okay, but there was no opportunity to tinker with it, hardly any smell, and somehow no fun either. I needed something else. With my first real salary as a manager, I bought a Honda replica scooter, 4-stroke, but with the opportunity to tinker with it. There it was again, that good feeling. I took every opportunity to get outside, to ride, to feel the wind. More mopeds quickly followed. I'm particularly fond of the old 1979 Yamaha 2m4, 2-stroke, 1-cylinder. "Why do you have 7 mopeds, Dad?" one of my daughters asks me. "You can only ride one at a time." Undeniably true. It's all about tinkering, making new things, repairing, and creating. Children watching their father tinkering – that has something nostalgic for me and reminds me of the often wonderful childhood on the farm, next to their heroic father and listening to their mother calling out the window, "Dinner's ready!" I've never drunk a whole beer in my life, and I don't want to. I haven't smoked a single cigarette. Sure, I've tried it once. But not anymore. Certainly because I was able to see what can come of it; that had a significant impact on me. Three people on a moped are no longer possible these days either. But a moped child seat and a tested helmet for the little one. With that, we can go out.
