There was a report in the public youth radio about the internet. I read something in a free city magazine, too. The report was about a internet cafe. So I go to this cafe and payed without any clue what to do. It was a hip shop with clothes and CD selling, trendy young people, and I was a 16 years old greenhorn, without any interest in hip things… I went there few times and then bought a month card (I was allowed to use the computers for one month for 30DM or so). The most time I didn’t surfed, I just chat in the IRC. Once there was not a PC with Win95 free and I sit down on a computer with a “strange, ugly” system. I played a while with it and then complained I want a real PC (Windows). This system must be an early Linux, years later I recognized the penguin on the “Start”-Button and the “Eyes”-panel-applet. This was 1996/1997

Two years later I bought my first modem and go online with one of this AOL-100h-Free-Internet-CDs which flood the (snail-)mailboxes these days. I tried to compete with a friend who as ISDN (64k, me 56k), who can download more songs from napster…

In 2001 I shared with a friend a DSL. He had DSL and a Flatrate in his flat, I just ordered DSL and we shared the Flatrate and had a special phone-ringing-code (one time ringing: I will go online. two time ringing: No, I need the Internet now)

Flatrates: I screw up my first phone contracts with up to my ears in debt, because of phoning hours with friends. My telephone behavior didn’t changed, but thanks to this flatrates and discount mobile providers…