«At the age of three I was already swimming in one of the arms of the Danube, more in the mud than in the water, but I kept going and was always admired for getting further. I had been given a nickname by my older friends: Mudbiter. Mudbiter is a not very well developed fish that moves around in the mud. A mudbiter at the age of three. I don’t remember that I was also washed as a baby.»
«We didn’t have a bath in our house, but on Saturday the mother filled a tub with water and she washed or bathed the little ones inside the tub. And the older ones washed themselves. For Sunday everybody had to be tiptop clean, hair washed and everything. And once one of the little ones … there was an overweight, then the tub fell over and it fell off the … I can’t remember where it was standing. On a table or a chair upstairs, I don’t remember. It must have been high up, maybe on a small table. Anyway, this tub emptied out and the child emptied out with it and that was a big deal, of course. But nobody suffered any permanent damage. One child was crying and the floor was wet.»
«When I was nine or ten, I was in a holiday camp next to the Danube and we slept in tipis that were open at the top and then the flood came and it rained all night, but so much that the Danube had already risen above its banks. And four of us lay there in these stupid tipis that are open at the top and it rains in. But the counsellors said we had to stay in our tents because there were so many of us and if all the children had run out, it would have been chaos. They organised cars to pick us up in the middle of the night. But until the cars arrived, we were supposed to stay in our stupid tents. It was so shitty because there were two or three counsellors and I don’t know how many tents and it must have looked so funny from the outside because there were four girls in each tent and everyone was always shouting for some counsellor. And the counsellors were running around between the tents and everyone was afraid because we realised that cars were coming because the Danube was going to flood everything and we were on the bank and everything was already so wet and we should stay in our sleeping bags. And water sheets have already formed on the sleeping bags because it was raining in from above. That was shit. And I think we were scared, but we laughed so much. That’s what happens when you get into an extreme situation and you just laugh. I remember it as extremely funny, but I don’t think it was funny at all. But then you make it funny so that you don’t piss yourself out of fear. And at some point these stupid cars finally came and took us somewhere and then they called all our parents in the middle of the night and they had to come and pick us up. That was very exciting. The next day I had a fever.»
«I was 19 and travelling with a friend. We were still quite naive and went to a nature reserve in Zimbabwe without a proper map or anything. We simply followed the directions we were given at the park entrance. And then we came to a wide plain and there was a bush fire coming towards us. A wide wall of flames. And there was no way out except for the river. We went into the river and onto a rock and spent the whole night there and the fire passed us left and right. The river saved us. And it was absurd because all around us was this fire and at the same time it was extremely cold that night. We were so cold that we had to hold on to each other and that was a strange feeling.» because we were never physically as close as we were at that moment.»
«Water is for washing, Holleri and wallera
You can also use it to brush your teeth
Water is what the cattle drink, Holler and hollerii
The fire brigade also needs water a lot»
