After a short 2 or 3 year stint in Denmark, Patrik/Michael came back to Brussels at the end of the 70’s. This period and the beginning of the 80’s coincided musically with the New Wave, Punk and Reggae period. Although I would not have called Patrik a trendsetter or trend-follower, he immediately adopted all those music styles and also the Mods movement with the release of the Quadrophenia film of The Who in 1979. And everything which came with it, the haircut, look, pins and all. His preferred music was now The Clash, The Cure, The Specials, The Who, The Jam, XTC, The Police, Bob Marley, UB40, Max Romeo, Fred Perry and many others.

At the beginning of the 80’s our scholastic paths separated, he left the German School to join the ISB, I went to boarding school in Germany. But we saw each other during school vacation. That was when I met his ISB friends, first mainly girls, Libby Halstead, the Burnett and the Carter sisters, and later Andrew, Axel, Fred, …. I remember some great New Years parties.

Those years of the beginning 80’s were also the years when we started to go to Alicante together. Going to Alicante at the time meant a long trip from Brussels – almost 24 hours – by train (no TGV, at the time, plane too expensive). This trip by train, however, was part of the excitement as the train was completely packed. We slept in the corridors, other passengers were trying to pass and we still remembered until recently the train guard having a nervous breakdown and bursting into tears because of all this mess and his incapacity to get through the corridors and control the tickets.

Although Patrik/Michael loved Spain and latin, warm countries in general, he didn’t really like the sun and the sea. And since he loved the night, we spend most of our time there at Picapiedra (the bar) and Paradiso (the discotheque) or playing cards on the terrace and drinking cuba libre. One was not allowed to go to bed before early morning and after having bought some churros downtown. The result of this meant that we always came back as white and pale as we had arrived at the beginning of the journey.

The first time in Alicante was probably with a friend from the German school, Martin Elsner. To have our journey look a little bit more productive (than the activities explained above), we played tennis in the middle of the afternoon (at the neighbours´house of Carlos and Peque) coming back red like tomatoes. And also built a barbecue (out of concrete) with Ulf, a « memorial » so solid that it is still in the garden with our signatures on it.

The following years we came back to Alicante with Anne (Jonglez), Andrew and Axel. Again the same procedure as described above. On another occasion, I went to Alicante with a good friend of mine from boarding school in Germany, Dirk. He is another good exemple of how Michael/Patrik rapidly made friends with people he met and his friends brought along. Dirk was later also present at Patrik’s wedding with Florence.

Then, between 1983 and 1986, the period of studies in Bonn has already been described in length in some other posts. From those stories one can imagine that the time left for studies was limited.

After the Bonn period, and until the end of the 80’s, Patrik spent his time mostly between Canterbury and Paris where he continued to study law. Since I also continued to study in Paris and Oxford at that time, our paths regularly crossed for shorter or longer periods. This period between France and the UK continued in the beginning of the 90’s ….. (to be continued)