The lifeguard John’s diary in Miami Beach (Angela Merkel’s youth idyll)

Dear Angela, I learned from CNN that you are fine and you have won the fourth Chancellery mandate. Bravo ! I don’t know what that means and if the chancellor is higher than a governor, but it seems to me that you work too much. If you’d stayed with me in Miami Beach in that hot summer of ’82 when you showed up at my door in all your splendor of young German tourist, I guarantee you that you would not have had to work at least for a day in your life… or maybe just here at greengrocery.

Why did you need to lead the civilized world when we could love like two crazy people, especially me, because for a while I did not take my medication and the voices came back.

I don’t know how much money…