For their annual vacation, Werner and Walter planned a trip to Italy. Madeleine had left with her parents and sister for one of the Greek islands, Rhodes. Thus, one warm summer morning, the two young men headed on foot for the Autobahn entrance ramp outside town, starting off on the holiday. They were extremely lucky that day, getting rides in cars heading south and toward the Alps. For the last tunnel, in Switzerland, they took a train.
Before midnight of the same day, as they stepped out of the train station in Italy, a man with a small Alfa Romeo stopped at the roadside and asked, “Where do you want to go?”
Werner replied, “Alassio.”
“Well, why don’t you guys hop in? You are very lucky today, I am going all the way.”
Early next morning, arriving in the little seaside town of Alassio at the Ligurian Sea, across from the islands of Corsica and Elba, they rented a room in a small hotel on the beach. Walter and Werner stayed happy for a whole week, not moving a lot except at night. During the day, they sat under large umbrellas, next to many other umbrellas. At night, they went into the open-air disco or some other bar to have a few drinks.
French-Italian love songs, supported by bombastic sounds, stirred the emotions. Listening and dancing to this passionate music under the stars and the moon sparkling in the Ligurian Sea, a person could get close to another when lucky enough to find a like-minded partner. For Walter, just listening to the music was enough; he missed Madeleine and thought about her a lot. One night two girls from England went with the boys to their room. Werner had arranged this event; he was not in love with a girlfriend at home. Feeling extremely sexy under the circumstances, he had no intention of missing out, and he got lucky that night. Walter, with Madeleine on his mind, was unable to perform with the shy girl next to him in one hotel bed, while Werner and the other British girl were in the other double bed.
Their money ran out after a week. It was not really the kind of trip they had planned, but what the hell—it had been fun and comfortable. Walter actually welcomed going back home to Bad Homburg, back to Madeleine, who was to arrive from Athens any day.
Because the friends had spent less than two weeks on the road, Walter looked forward to one more week of vacation at home alone. With his parents on a trip to Austria and the bakery closed, he could enjoy the apartment without any disruption.
Madeleine called on a Sunday morning, saying, “I missed you so much. Hello, how are you doing? We had a lot of fun.”
He said, “I thought about you all the time. Would you like to come over? My parents are still on their vacation.”
She said yes, and two hours later, he was holding her in his arms and kissing the one he loved so much. She returned these feelings and wanted to demonstrate them whenever possible. It was a sweet and delightful situation—finally together again, alone with each other and nobody to interfere. This time they used his parents’ bed. Immediately very randy, they spent hours in the bed. Then Madeleine caught a bus back home because she could not stay away from home overnight.
The couple had one more opportunity like that, and then events began to transform the situation around them. Walter’s parents closed down the bakery in Bad Homburg; Lisa Herzog had never liked it anyway. Friedrich Herzog took a position as a warehouse manager in one of the domestic harbors in Frankfurt. Walter moved with his parents into a three-bedroom apartment in the Bockenheim district. Since he worked at the airport, his commute was shorter, and he could see Madeleine after work much faster and more often.