fighting the "widening gap between demand and supply of living ground". The law was nicknamed "Number three goes free" and it stated that every third-born child was to be abandoned in the North Sea. Needless to say wild protests arose. Parents who had yet only been gifted with girls hoped for their third child to be a boy. They saw these hopes endangered by the new law and thus complained fiercely. After many discussions, hefty arguments and under the influence of the glass industry, the city council finally presented an amendment to the law simply called "the bottleneck".

So following the law and its amendment the newborn baby, that this story is concerned with, was wrapped into white cloth and put into a wooden basket. The baby's parents wrote his name together with their own names on a piece of paper and put it into a vine bottle. Before sealing the bottle the baby was allowed to smell the cork for a little while. That little while was defined by law as: "...long enough to give the baby a lasting impression how-ever short enough not to allow the alcoholic vapors to develop their mind-twisting influence..." However these parents did not stick to the definition too closely while the envoy of the city coun-cil, who was supposed to oversee the procedure, was too con-cerned thinking about the upcoming supper to notice anything. So by the time the bottle was finally sealed, the baby was fast asleep in its basket. A brown envelope was placed in the basket contain-ing a letter written by the city council to anyone who happened to find the baby. When everything was ready baby and bottle were taken on a boat and it sailed out just to where the North Sea and the Baltic Sea meet. The bottle was thrown eastwards into the Bal-tic Sea, whereas the baby in its basket was placed westwards in the North Sea. "If our son is lucky he will travel westwards until he meets the bottle coming from the East." remarked the father, no-tably proud of his knowledge of the spherical nature of the earth. These words being spoken the boat turned around and sailed back to Hamburg leaving the baby and the bottle on their own.
Luckily the sea was calm. So the basket with the sleeping baby floated slowly westwards. Had the baby been screaming, he might have been heard by passing ships. Yet the baby only woke up when the basket finally hit a little Island called "Helgoland". Alerted by his crying a local fisherman passing by picked up the baby. The fisherman having found already three babies in the last two months passed him on to the guard of the local lighthouse. Being lonely in his lighthouse, the guard was happy to get some company and accepted to keep the baby.
With years passing the baby grew quickly into a tall boy. Al-though surpassing the other boys of his age in strength and height, he was always picked on because he could not swim. He had no other name but "Nichtschwimmer", meaning someone who can't swim.
No one on the isle of Helgoland could read or write. That is why the lighthouse guard couldn't make any sense of the city council's letter. Nevertheless he had kept it safely over the years. One day, while looking at it once more an idea came to his mind. To en-courage his boy to learn swimming he promised to reward him with a letter, revealing all about his parents and his name. The boy had always been wondering about his mysterious origin, yet no on had ever given him answers. Therefore on the guard's offer he doubled, tripled and even quadrupled his efforts to learn how to swim.
Finally one afternoon, he managed to swim all the way out to the big, red buoy in front of the lighthouse. The guard was on duty and watched him. Being an honest man, he went straight to fetch the letter. He awaited the boy on the beach and congratulated him. Not hesitating a second the boy took the letter, put it into a sea shell, gave his guardian a wet hug and swam out back to the buoy. Soon a big ship passed by and took the boy along to a coun-try with literate people.
These were the days of the great Erasmus. So on the boy's arri-val in Rotterdam he was told to be in the city with the highest lit-eracy rate in the entire world. Still he was reluctant to simply ask any passing peasant to read out the letter to him. Such an impor-tant matter required a great mind he thought and applied for an audience with Erasmus himself.
Always on the search for excuses to avoid serious work Eras-mus admitted him after a short while. "I don't like to give out sin-ister prophecies but I can sense you're going to have a difficult life", Erasmus told the boy after having read his letter quietly. Then he went on to explain that the city council would only allow him to return to Hamburg once had found the bottle containing his and his parents' names. "Apparently you should be able to rec-ognize the concerned bottle from a specific smell, you're familiar with." added Erasmus. Despair overcame the boy. Finding one lit-tle bottle amidst the vastness of the entire world. That was just as hard as finding one's first drop of tears in the entire North Sea. Understandably Eramus was not fond of dealing with such a tedi-ous matter. So he murmured something like "no name - no game" and left.
The boy did not spend much time quarreling with his fate. In-stead he left Rotterdam instantly heading eastwards. The bottle probably went westwards from Hamburg just like I did, he thought. With all the years having passed by, it has probably made it almost round the globe. So if I head eastwards I shall find it very soon.
During the next years the boys came through many different countries. In every country he strolled through markets, searched on beaches and river shores; he looked in vineyards and bottle factories; in auction houses and antiquity shops. Most importantly though he smelled at hundreds of vine bottles in the hope to dis-cover that one scent, he was supposed to remember. Living in such proximity to vine he could not but to start drinking of it. Whenever he was drunk he started imagining what his family was like. Depending on the scent and taste of the vine he'd drunk his mother would be a very beautiful, thin, pale skinned and dark-haired woman or a big, strong matriarch, beating his father when he came home late. His father would either be a rich tradesman, smoking thick cigars or a warehouse worker, smelling of the dry tobacco he had carried around all day.
Through these imaginations he developed a very fine and sensi-tive taste and scent for vine. In fact it was so unique that kings and lords invited him to pick their vines. Ladies pledged him to choose their fragrance. When asked for his name though he couldn't give any answer. So they simply called him "Namenloser" - the one that has no name or "Elternloser" - the one that has no parents. It was strange to hear kings say "Get that nameless guy to pick my vine" but no one seemed to care as long as the vine was well cho-sen.
Through the years of travel, the boy had become a man and one day he arrived in a new country far out in the East. Some people called it India others America. A country without any true name and a nameless man. Chances are high that I find the bottle here he thought to himself, as he was always easily influenced by any available symbolism. There weren't many vineyards or people so he went along the shore on beaches and cliffs round the vast country. Finally he came to the mouth of a giant river. It was far too large to be crossed swimming. He decided to follow it into the country, hoping to find some sort of a fiord. Unfortunately it was springtime and the river grew larger and larger no matter how far he walked. Much debris, plunder and dead wood was spilled down from the mountains into the river. The nameless man watched everything carefully as it passed by. Suddenly he recognized the typical shape of a vine box. Quickly he reached for a big branch and waded into the water. Although surprised by the strong cur-rent he finally managed to bring the box safely to the shore. He ripped off the top of the box and took out one of the bottles. As soon as he had opened it he knew something was special. Some-where deep in his memories it began to spark. "I recognize the smell. This is it!" he cried out. Greedily he started to drink. When he'd reached the bottle's ground though he could still not see any message. Without thinking he went on to the next bottle. Again he could scent the familiar smell. Alas again, no message! After a while he'd drunk himself through all six bottles yet he had not found any message. He was too drunk to feel disappointment. He was too drunk to remember to despair. So he started running around aimlessly not even conscious of having lost all orientation. Finally he dropped to the ground like he'd been shot. Instantly he fell asleep somewhere already far off the great river.
In his dream he walked through red clouds of the vine's smell. Slowly the clouds parted and he saw what he thought to be his real family. His mother's vivacious laughter sounded in his ears while he watched his father striving towards him with a strong and honest smile on his face. Their house stood out of all the other houses. It seemed smaller, simpler yet unobtrusively welcoming. As he was still gazing at it, everybody turned towards him, greet-ing him loudly. He couldn't understand what they said though. Was that his name?
The next moment he woke up and was surprised to look straight into his father's eyes, who was leaning over him. Joyfully he wanted to shout out his name. Yet he didn't know it so he just said "Da bin ich!". However the man who he thought to be his fa-ther did not speak any German. As he was an open man he merely assumed that "Dabeni" was the stranger's name. "Welcome Da-beni, I'm Nohje" he greeted him. "Do you need any help?" "I don't know, I'm very confused. It feels like living in a dream", he an-swered while thinking to himself: If that was his father; why did he not speak any German. After all German was a beautiful lan-guage, nothing to be ashamed of. He seems like a kind man though. So he agreed to follow Nohje to his house.
Nohje lived on a small farm, in a small valley, right in the mid-dle of a vast space filled with nothing but nature. Dabeni found almost everything as he'd seen it in his dream. Nohje's family wel-comed him cordially. Everybody liked his red nose and his German accent. Whenever he failed to make himself understood he rubbed his nose in embarrassment. That made it turn even more red, causing everybody to laugh out loudly. It wasn't a mean or hu-miliating laugh so Dabeni did not hesitate to join in. He felt good.
After a few days of living on the farm though, he remembered his quest. He dared to tell his hosts about it and even asked them for advice. Rimannah, Nohje's wife said "Mmmhh, you know, we only drink out of cans in this country so there's little chance for you to find the bottle here." To underline her point she opened a large can of beer and downed it in one go. "You can find other things here though", Nohje began "gold for instance". Dabeni sighed. "Or bison and rattlesnakes, even some bears" Nohje con-tinued. Dabeni shook his head. "Also many birds; Hamming birds, Guinees, Robins, Geese, Swallows, ducks" added Lati, Nohje's and Rimannah's daughter. "You can find wonderful tracks to run on, caves to hide in, grass to lie on, rivers to swim in and tree to climb on." Rimannah enumerated.
"There are native Americans you can learn from, there's us to laugh at, to talk to, to yell at..."
"You can find people you like, people you hate, people you under-stand people you don't have a clue of." Everybody was trying to come up with as many things as possible. Dabeni found himself in a veritable bombardment of opportunities.
"Stars to look at, clouds to follow, to interpret..."
"You can find hunters, farmers, clowns, artists, homosexuals, ho-mophobics, sodomites, lesbians, feminists, machos..."
"There are big words and small words, tall houses and small houses, lovely dogs, smelly dogs, tasty food, rotten apples, good soil and dead soil, years that bring you ten years ahead others that set you back by twenty"
"Christmas and thanksgiving are waiting for you, Easter and the Memorial Day. Maybe weddings, funerals, resurrections..."
"You can hunt for hidden treasures, explore the greatest wonders of this world, find little surprises like a ladybird in your pocket"
"We have paintings to look at, beautiful people, weird people to look at. You can even see yourself in a lake clearer than the clear-est mirror in the world."
"Ok" shouted Dabeni "Ok.". He paused. "I'll stay. "Thank you."
Dabeni lived on the farm for many years. He sowed, he harvested; he left and returned; he met people, forgot others; he laughed, sometimes he cried. Yet he'd found something like peace in his mind. The restlessness had gone.

One day he was working on the fields, plowing the grounds with a hack. Suddenly he heard a "pling" as the hack hit a hard object. He bent down to look what it was. To his amazement he discovered an old vine bottle covered in mud and soil. After having cleaned the bottle he looked at the tag. One could hardly read it but it seemed strangely familiar. Very excited he rushed home and locked himself into his room. He opened the bottle and slowly lifted it to his nose. No doubt! He scent this smell for the third time in his life. He hesitated for a moment then guided the bottle to his lips. Quickly he gulped down the vine. It was good. Strangely though the bottle seemed to be only half-full. Instead there was an old leather envelope in the middle of it. With some difficulties he managed to take it out and opened it. He did not dare to look while he was feeling a piece of old paper in his hands. Quickly he tore the paper to pierces, threw the bits into his mouth, chewed on them for some time and swallowed. He then hastily grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. "Da bin ich", he wrote and put the paper in the empty bottle. After having sealed the bottle with the cork he took it and ran out of the house. Running straight for hours and hours he finally arrived at the Great River. Step by step he moved slowly to the edge of the water. He reached back as far as he could with his arm and threw the bottle far out into the river. Without looking he turned around and headed back to the farm.