The only time Father and I seem to get on OK is when he’s explaining history or politics to me. I’m interested in that sort of thing, and he is too. He was trying to explain to me what’s happening in Germany now. Someone called Hitler’s in charge. Not everyone’s sure that’s a good thing. Dad says there’s good discipline here in Germany. They don’t suffer fools gladly. That’s his favourite phrase. I’m a bit scared though. I’ve never really understood why he didn’t fight in the Great War, like lots of my friends’ dads did. But I don’t blame him. The Great War sounded like a terrible time. And Germany started it. The Germans seem like bad people to me. I don’t know why we’re paying good money to visit their country. Well, I do really. It’s so he can attempt to climb something called ‘The Devil’s Tower’. He’s been going on and on about it, as though I should be interested. He keeps on showing me photos – how the valley side of this bit of rock has never been climbed unaided before, and he’s going to do it. I can tell Mum thinks he’s mad, and is a bit frightened by it all. To me, it all looks pointless. Why would someone want to risk their life to get to the top of a piece of rock that looks like a man’s willy?

*

Just outside our hotel, though, there is something that interests me. It looks like a giant skeleton on stilts, wearing a strange foreign pointy hat. A bit like the pictures of the Tin Man in that American book some distant relative got for me one Christmas.

‘What is it, Mum?’ I ask after we get out of the taxi which collects us from the station.

She looks it up in her guide book.

‘It’s just a cliff lift. Like the ones in Scarborough.’

‘Wow! It looks more exciting than that. Can we go up it?’

Mum looks over at Dad. ‘Perhaps later. It’s been a long journey. Your mother and I want to have a bath first, and then we’ll go for a walk and something to eat. You need a bath too, Arnold.’

The hotel looks posher than the bed and breakfasts in Scarborough. My mother and father’s room has a balcony looking over the big river, the Elbe. I open the doors and stand outside, taking in the view. What looks like the village green one way, the river the other. Then I’m hoiked away by my father. The owner wants to show us my room too. We climb another two flights of stairs.

‘Will he be all right so far away from us?’ my mum asks.

‘He’ll be fine. He’s a growing lad. Too big to share his parents’ room now.’