When I first met Uli, she was 18 and I was 20 – and we both were somewhat cocksy students high on having done well in our Abitur. So we met at this rather surreal bootcamp held by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes where they choose the future elite of the German nation (such as Gudrun Ensslin or Frauke Petri) – clearly neither of us made the grade, which in the case of Uli was a serious mistake. But what connected us immediately was a feeling for this being surreal and not really us – Uli had not really prepared the presentation they demanded and I was way too shy to sell myself to anybody as particularly special – except to Uli. For a long time I have been saying that I was far happier that I found such a friend than getting that grant – which is still very true …
Back in Tübingen we stayed in touch although I did my damnedest to mess up our first meeting (something she DID naturally bring up again during those last days in Brussels) by being 40 minutes late (she would probably say now that it was closer to 50 😉). And for the next 7 years I did not really need any other university friends… We even contemplated moving into a shared flat at one point because we were constantly on the phone to each other anyway (and yes, this was pre-smartphone and WhatsApp, mine was even still a rotary dial phone).
I know that Uli wrote in her Instagram in 2024 that she regarded her Japanese certificate her biggest achievement in life and I am sure it is but those who know the two of us consider it a close second that she made me go to the outdoor swimming pool in Tübingen before our Greek class (which was at 8am!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and revise ancient Greek vocabulary on our way to the pool and back. There was also the small fact that Uli did not need the ancient Greek certificate (Graecum) for her studies at all. I did, doing theology at the time – which I dropped when Uli asked me some time in 1993 (I think) whether I believed all that stuff with transubstantiation and Jesus being God et al. and I thought for a few seconds and came up with pretty nothing to answer. That was Uli to me – her intellectual honesty was sometimes so brutal that it could make short shrift of 4 semesters of studies and she definitely kept me on my toes. Had I still been religious at the point, she would have definitely respected that too, but she did not respect my kidding myself… And she definitely did not respect false solace – one of her last stories for me was that a bearded guy had put his face through the door at the hospital and she suspected that he was the hospital pastor, so had pretended to sleep. When I said that I had seen a poster with a picture of him and that they catered to all faiths her reply was “Oh God, I don’t need that” – her dry humour kept our banter going till the end…
Of course our lives took different courses – mine was mainly split between England and Swabia as my family ties remained strong and my sense of adventure could never keep up with Uli’s anyway… So what became a core of our friendship was the “Backwahn” shortly before Christmas (a pun on Bhagwan, a prominent figure in Germany in the 80s as well, and going totally mad once a year making cookies). I had started this in all innocence when we were still undergraduates and I gave Uli a tin of homemade Nutella cookies – I had proudly picked them from a cookbook I had bought in England and secretly chosen them because they seemed easy (after all, what could go wrong with Nutella) and they have basically come back to haunt the rest of my life –they are so crumbly that you cannot shape them and Uli has INSISTED that we bake them without her as well and that we continue the Backwahn– and who could ever resist her, especially during those last days when she took command and went away on her terms!?
Circa 1997
2023
One of the last questions I asked her was “What shall I do now? Who will motivate me to do all these crazy things?” And she said “Just think what Uli would do.”
So this is what I am doing now, sitting at a lake in Kärnten and it is another glorious golden October day just like they ALL were when we were learning Greek – we missed the intermediate exam (which was the one I needed) back then because we spent several days sitting outdoors at the Tübinger Schloss in the sun, not revising – so we went on to do the final one (the Graecum) which was a very Uli solution to the problem.
I think she would have loved it here and my one great regret is that all this positive energy has gone from my and everybody else’s life. And she also would have insisted that we walk round the lake in two days when the official leaflet says four!!!! But then they say that one isn’t gone as long as one is remembered and Uli is certainly remembered (even if I don’t do the walk 😉). In a way it feels like you are here right now, bella!
