Romeo Kaltenbrunner: Homesickness

Romeo has to go home, from Vienna to Upper Austria. Grandma is dying. Again.

The journey to his hometown is also a time travel back to his own childhood and youth. He meets his old teenage love again, whom he unfortunately wasn’t allowed to kiss back in school. Her family had forbidden it. Partly because Romeo had the wrong skin color. But mainly because he had too few hectares (Note: none). Romeo visits a tent festival in his village, where the same band that played 15 years ago is still performing, and where the same Nazis from 15 years ago still want to beat him up. Surrounded by the smell of grilled chicken and slightly drunk from a whole box of Jägermeister, Romeo becomes nostalgic.

Should he not return to Vienna at all, where people are more liberal – but unfortunately also more bland?