Winter was back, and our school allowed us a class trip to the Harz (mountain area in Germany). Our class leader – a teacher I didn’t know at all – was quite lazy, but his credo included physical exercise. And that was asking for trouble with a troop of mostly absolutely nonathletic teenagers. This year, we also had a lot of snow, which was more than knee-high. There was a hike of several hours on the first day. It started right after breakfast and with – “Get up, gentlemen, for a walk. Praise be to what makes you stronger.” – he made that idea very clear that day! He was a tall, strong guy with huge feet, and he kept marching ahead of us. For better or worse, we had to keep up with him in the deep snow. Clearly, most of us were exhausted after a half-day march.
Only another classmate and I had taken skis with us, and we were allowed to ski our way back through the snowy landscape during one of the next marches. We only guessed the direction that led us along the “zone border area” to the Russian zone, which was already heavily guarded at the time. We stood in front of the fence a few times, since we had gotten thoroughly lost. Our fun ski tour turned into an ordeal. We only made it back to the youth hostel in the evening in the dark and went straight to bed without dinner.
But even then, feeling exhausted or not, the class trip didn’t end without jokes, …this time without my involvement. I remember only one of these jokes since I was the target. My friend and I were still in a deep sleep after our horrific ski tour when one of my classmates used the moment to play a less-than-clever prank on us. He smeared jam and honey in our gloves. When we got dressed the next day, we had all the gluey stuff on our hands, and the gloves were ready for the bin. The culprit was quickly found by his grin. There were no immediate consequences, but revenge followed on the heels – we just waited for the right opportunity. We had just completed one of these endless marches with our teacher and fell tired onto our bunk beds. I’d been waiting for this…
I had mixed a mash of all kinds of sticky stuff – shoe polish, toothpaste, etc. – and prepared a bowl of lukewarm water. First, I carefully smeared the sticky stuff into his hair with devotion, without waking him up. Then, I slowly let his hand slide into the warm water. The success was phenomenal – not only was his hand wet, he had also peed his pants. With smelly pants and sticky hair, intensive cleaning attempts followed. much to the delight of all classmates. Of course, he was really angry, but he didn’t dare to mess with me because I was already very active in sports at that time, and our teacher preferred to leave the scene with a grin.