A multimedia reading with Markus Möller.
"Don't you want to do something together again?" "What, me with you?"
"I don't like asking you. But who else would I go with?"
"Hm, you could try it. Get together on the road. Where should we go?" "I was thinking of Siberia, the Lena." "Yes, with kayaks, that would be something."
"Okay, we'll do it."
In July 2000, the men strap two double kayaks onto the roof of an old VW bus, take Gina and Condor - Ronald's sheepdogs - with them and head east for a third time after the round-the-world trip and the breakneck journey to the Sultan of Brunei.
But this time it's different. The men are no longer friends. For the first few days, they ride alongside each other in silence. What can you say after so much has been broken? Broken by one and the same woman. It would be easier to travel with a stranger.
But perhaps there is also hope of growing together again, there, on the road, beyond everyday life, far from civilization. The opposite is also possible, they know that.
Via Moscow, the Urals, Novosibirsk and Irkutsk, they reach the upper reaches of the Lena near the village of Birjulka. There they park their minibus in the yard of the local mayor and paddle off. The men sit in the back of the kayaks, the dogs in the front.
On the first day on the river - the current is strong and the water is freezing cold - Markus capsizes with the fully loaded boat. The men lose all their camera equipment.
On the way through the taiga, the adventurers feel a loneliness that chokes their throats. In order not to despair, they are condemned to talk to each other.
In Ust-Kut, they end up at the table of the Russian mafia. Instead of robbing the new arrivals, the crooks show them hospitality and host Markus' birthday party - they don't tolerate any arguments.
Between Ust-Kut and Lensk, the Rostockians make a gruesome discovery of a corpse. Stuck in this place, surrounded only by the dark woods that seem to want to reach out and grab them, they experience the eeriest night of their lives and thank the heavens that they have the dogs with them.
But time and again they are surprised by the selfless warmth of the locals, who seem to be used to living together rather than side by side, far away from civilization. The globetrotters are given bread, fish and shelter, and because the two speak Russian, the people also open their hearts.
Some of them have never met a foreigner before, others seem to be foreigners themselves, or at least feel that way and long to return to their homeland, which is Ukraine or Belarus.
There are fishermen who wish they were back in the days of Brezhnev because there is no more work in their villages; there are gold diggers, guarded by guards with Kalashnikovs, who mine Russia's riches and travel in a thirty-year-old Moskvich.
Beyond the roads, time seems to have stood still. The rippling of the water and the rustling of the wind in the treetops caress the silence. Markus and Ronald grow back into a team in this wilderness.
At the beginning of September, after more than 3,000 kilometers, they reach Yakutsk, the capital of the Yakut Republic. They are the first foreigners to travel this distance on the Lena. The autumn sun is reflected in the facades of the glass towers that tell of the country's wealth.
From here, they set off on the return journey on freighters and passenger ships until they are once again standing in front of the friendly mayor in Birjulka on the upper reaches of the Lena, getting into the car, letting the eight thousand kilometer distance between distance and home melt away and realizing in the process: They are two friends again.
