There is a fleeting memory I recall. Me, looking from a low perspective, standing on ice on the Ise(bek)kanal. Adjacent to our community garden - covered in snow - drove people with ice skates. Our neighbours were serving hot beverages. The colors of the memory are blue and grey.

I asked myself some years ago, remembering suddenly such a moment, if it actually happened. There are this stories you hear about the river called Alster (where the canal is flowing to), where people were skating or used to take a walk when it was frozen some time ago. People sold beverages and food on the ice. I thought I just had heard and read it so many times that I internalized it as a reminder of my childhood.

Talking now to my parents about this imaginations they confirmed them. It must have been a winter around 1996/98. I was four to six years old then. My father told me how he fell on the ice, laughingly because it reminded him of me imitating this. So we started to slide on the ice.

The summers I remember vividly. The neighbours kids and my siblings doing tests of courage by swimming through the canal. The feeling of the slimy plants under my feet. The warm water on the surface, the cold below. A boat and us doing trips along the canals and the river Alster on our own.

This summer I will return.
But the winter, the frozen water, I sense sadly will just remain a remembrance.