three

Day 03 - Your parents

My parents met at university. According to my mother she first noticed my father in a lecture room because he was handsome. They got together in their early 20s. Both studied Latin; my mother also studied German literature, my father Ancient Greek. Here are some things they have in common: Both have a very strange sense of humour. They write the funniest text messages. They love to read and it is hard to imagine where they put all of their books when they still lived together. It's hardly surprising that they both ended up working with books, my mother as an editor, my father as a professor at university.
My dad always used to listen to The Beatles and David Bowie when I was little. He likes the same old-fashioned novels as I do, his favorite is probably "Tender Is The Night" by F. Scott FItzgerald about which he can talk for ages. When I was fourteen, he told me that I reminded him of Emma, the self-obsessed, clever Jane Austen character. His true passion is Homer and I shall never understand how it is possible to feel so passionate about one work of literature. He is a bit old-fashioned at heart - he's incredibly polite and it always makes him sad to see how mean people can be. He's also a bit of a romantic when it comes to Vienna. I took his picture in his favourite coffee house where he has drunk espresso since the tender age of 16. We hadn't seen each other for eight weeks because of our summer holidays and he told funny stories about Greece.
My mother is the only person I know who I'd say is wise. I don't know how she learned to do that, but she always has the best advice, she's super emphatic and quite shrewd as well. It's possible to talk about almost anything with her because she's interested in and aware of so many things. She laughs a lot. She's pretty tough as well. I remember she called the TV station and complained once when they showed a female runner and played "Sex Bomb". She's spontaneous and self-sufficient which is why she's on a road trip in Germany right now. My brothers and I discovered only recently that she actually speaks dialect and we always giggle when she's talking to her siblings on the phone. My mum has taught me many things, especially that you can be really happy when you're doing your own thing. And that a young Hugh Grant is no bad thing. I took her picture after we had voted, I liked that she looked just as vivid as the autumn leaves. A few hours later, she cursed when she saw the election results on TV and I wholeheartedly agreed.