The last day of Summer

[Rheinbund]

31 August 2019
Plauen, Rügen, Eiffelland-Retalia

In Eiffelland-Retalia, the first schoolday after the Summer vacation is traditionally the first Monday of September. As a result, the last day of August has a somewhat magical sound. Despite the fact that the astronomic Summer lasts until 22 to 23 September, and despite the fact that especially in the southern third of Eiffelland-Retalia temperatures of 25 degrees Celsius are common in October, people consider 31 August to be the last day of Summer. Especially on the Long Sea Islands, where thanks to tourism there are twice as many people in July and August than in the rest of the year, leading to a much more dynamic athmosphere in July and August than in the rest of the year.
This day has extra magic when it is on a Saturday, because then it not only marks the end of Summer but also the end of the Summer holiday. Saturday is traditionally the day when tourists go home. When it is the last Saturday of the Summer vacations, the only tourists who return are the ones who are not bound to the school, college and university vacations. The students and the families with children go back home, and will not return before Easter.

As one of the Long Sea Islands, Rügen is a destination for tourists looking for sun, sea and beach. Plauen, a city in Rügen with 80,000 inhabitants, has an additional reason for being a tourist attraction than sunseabeach. It is the city where Eiffelland-Retalia’s space centre with rocket launching site is located. Before the 2018 war, a couple of countries, among which Bourgogne, Eiffelland and Retalia, established a space organisation. One of the rocket launching sites established by that space organisation was the one in Plauen. With the fall of Bourgogne, that space organisation fell apart. However, Eiffelland-Retalia continued the space activities in Plauen. One of the reasons was to replace the spy and other military satellites destroyed during the 2018 war. Meanwhile, all satellites lost during the 2018 war had been replaced.

The north coast of Rügen, between Peenemünde and Plauen, is a sand beach with dunes, and forest behind the dunes. The old road Plauen-Peenemünde runs through that forest, connecting those two cities with some small fishermen villages which had managed to escape mass tourism. The area had been lucky that the planners had drawn the line of the so-called Bergener Ring (a motorway on the island forming a ring road about 5 km away from the coast) a bit further to the South, leaving the landscape unharmed.

When you drive over the old road Plauen-Peenemünde, you sometimes notice a dirt road branching off the paved road. Those dirt roads lead to houses built in the forest, sometimes even a kilometer away from the road.

The 49 year old Ingo Scholz lived in one of those houses, permanently accompanied by the cheaper kinds of Gunnish whisky. Five years ago, on exactly the same day, he lost his job due to his drinking problem and won 5 million Eiffelland Mark in a lottery. The money he had won had made him not enormously rich but financially independent. It was enough to buy this house and spend 40,000 Eiffelland mark each year until he would die.

Now it was 31 August. The last day of Summer. So many years ago the last day of his life that he had felt happy.

 

[Rheinbund]

August 1985
Wels, Rügen, Eiffelland

D'où je suis je vois des anges et des tourterelles
Si l'on m'avait dit qu'un jour je vivrais dans le ciel
J'ai fait la rencontre d'un garçon c'est la grande nouvelle
Et je plane je plane je plane et je suis

En amour
Comme on dit du côté de chez nous
J'ai envie de partir avec lui n'importe où
En amour
Comme on va de pays en pays
Sur le dos d'un nuage fou
En amour
Comme en Chagny en Dulwiche ou en Trèves
On a plein de forets de jardins devant nous
En amour
Comme dans un avion qui dessine
Un grand coeur tout autour de nous

Je decouvre des planetes et des horizons
Des etoiles inconnues qui ont toutes le nom
De celui partage avec moi sa route et ses chansons
Et je plane je plane je plane et je suis

En amour
Comme on dit du côté de chez nous
J'ai envie de partir avec lui n'importe où
En amour
Comme on va de pays en pays
Sur le dos d'un nuage fou
En amour
Comme en Chagny en Dulwiche ou en Trèves
On a plein de forets de jardins devant nous
En amour
Comme dans un avion qui dessine
Un grand coeur tout autour de nous


The summer of 1985. The long hot summer of 1985.

Eiffelland has always been a religious country. It was still a religious country in the 1980s, even in the larger cities, where the people combined a belief in God and weekly going to mass with a very liberal stance on sexuality. Homosexual intercourse was still forbidden in Eiffelland, but that prohibition was not enforced in the larger cities in Continental Eiffelland. As a result, a large gay scene emerged on the Continent during the 1970s, to fall victim to AIDS in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s.
Outside the larger cities, as well as in Helgoland and Rügen, the tolerance to homosexuality was low, however.

Ingo Scholz grew up in that athmosphere.

Wels is one of the beach cities along the west coast of Rügen. It has 30,000 inhabitants, and lots of hotels and holiday resorts along the coast. It is a place where mainly families go to, also families with teenagers.
Back in 1985, Ingo Scholz’s parents ran a hotel in Wels. He was 15 years old, and attended the Realschule (the middle level of secondary education in Eiffelland). During Summer, he helped his parents out in the hotel. But that didn’t usurp his time completely. Also for him, there was enough opportunity to enjoy Summer at a Long Sea beach. Beach volleyball and swimming with his friends, flirting with the girls, taking some bottles of beer and wine from the hotel stocks and sharing them with his friends, paddling on air matresses to the beach of the luxury resort to spy on the rich girls … And then that volleyball playing boy with light blonde hair and an extremely light skin entered Ingo’s field of vision. He immediately lost the interest in the girls, and studied the boy. Then he heard somebody scream something like “Locklinn” or “Locklenn”; the second vowel was something in-between an e like in “bet” and an i like in “wit”. Apparently that was the boy’s name, because he reacted on that. Locklinn turned around and walked to his mother to have his back creamed in.

OOC: Song: Celine Dion — En amour:

You must be registered for see medias