Question: what was your favourite thing to do when you were younger? :) xxx.

Daniel Mietchen answered on 16 Jun 2010:

Well, some years ago, it was science, along with music and language. Records of much of this are available online.

A decade ago, it was science, along with medicine, travel, language and music. For this period, I actually wrote a brief summary (in German, starting on p. 210), mainly focusing on my time in Paris and how I ended up there.

Two decades ago, my home country (the German Democratic Republic, better known as Eastern Germany) collapsed, so many of my favourites revolved around things that had not (or rarely) been possible for me to do in the past (mainly traveling abroad and playing with computers, but also using “capitalist” languages outside school, e.g. watching MTV in English, or meeting French students in person). I was also very engaged with sports (e.g. basketball, handball, table tennis, judo, cycling, swimming), and my interest in science was already there. Although my preference at the time was for a combination of mathematics and electrical engineering, I had started taking courses (and doing experiments) in biophysics and biochemistry as well. I don’t have electronic records from that period or before.

Three decades ago, I had only a very vague idea of what science is, how reading works or what a foreign language might be like (didn’t know anyone – or any TV channel or movie theatre – for whom or which I would need anything other than German), and my favourite activity was strolling around in the neighbourhood, especially in those parts where I could get a glimpse of nature instead of the abundant concrete.