Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Travel does broaden the mind, especially if during the flight one is fortunate enough to have a copy of the Lufthansa magazine at hand. The October issue featured a very amusing interview with that shooting star of German letters, Vladimir Kaminer. Born in Moscow in 1967, Kaminer moved to Berlin in 1990 and became a sensation two years ago with his endearingly odd book about immigrants in the German capital, Russian Disco. His latest volume, Die Reise nach Trulala (Journey to Trulala), describes a place in the south Russian steppe, where top agents of the KGB, the Soviet secret service, go for their holidays. In sunny spring, the location serves as Paris and in misty autumn it acts as London.

With his German, Russian and Jewish identities, Kaminer is kept busy these days explaining his worldview. He does it with surreal wit as this exchange from the magazine shows:

Lufthansa Magazine: "You once said that alcohol consumption in Russia was a part of life in the same way that back pain was something everyone suffers from in Germany. Wouldn't you agree that that's a bizarre comparison?"

Vladimir Kaminer: "The Russians are more anarchistic, the Germans are more dissatisfied, although they have less reason to be so. Yet the reason they don't complain is not because they're in such a bad mood, but because they identify with the state. The Russians, on the other hand, would never expect honesty from their politicians. If you ask a Russian politician if he meant what he said at a personal level, he wouldn't even understand the question."