I have one, but a rather sad one. So I better keep in the box under my bed and do not open it until 2025. Well, I shared it f2f, but this is not blogmaterial...

It does not involve girls. Unfortunately.

But it's still a great album. Haven't listen to it in a while, I am not sure it can still do the magic it did to me when I was 16.

That was a haunting story. Who could ever imagine a connection between that incident and the Dire Straits?

As my other readers don't know yet I will tell them about my favourite encounter with the music of the Dire Straits. My best friend F. had taped me a cassette copy of Brothers in Arms. For a week or two I used to fall asleep to it and let it play all night long. I think the tape reversed sides automatically, it probably was a C60. The next morning I woke up to Romeo and Julia Money for Nothing or to Brothers in Arms or another song from this pretty impeccable album. In Easter 1986, I think it was Good Friday, my girl-friend sister and a friend of hers visited me in Munich-Moosach. Of course I had a crush on D. who had a rough kind of charm which was not so surprising as she was a North German girl from Niebüll near the Danish border. And of course she did not return my affection. Whatever. The three of us went out in Munich-Schwabing where we met two guys in a pub. At one o'clock (or was it three?) the pub closed and one of the guys invited us to his home where he had some more booze. We didn't refuse the invitation and discussed and drank until 5 or 6. Suddenly the guy had the idea to take the car and drive southwards to the lakes. We thought why not and I gave him my Dire Straits tape which he put into his tape deck and we started listening to Romeo and Julia it when descending the Ludwigstraße towards the Odeonplatz. The sun was about to rise and it was a beautiful spring day. We arrived at the Starnberger See in full sunshine. Of course we had another Weißbier there and probably some Weißwürste. The guy was walking with my sister whereas I was strolling with D. But somehow no-one of us scored that morning. So we went back to the car and he drove us back to Munich. We were all dozing off as the alcohol and the lack of sleep were taking their toll. On the tape deck Mark Knopfler was doing his best to keep us awake but it wasn't enough. Our driver was going too fast which didn't prevent him of going into microsleep in a bend. He lost the control of the vehicle and the car slid off the road. D. told us later that at that precise moment she was thinking of our poor parents who she thought were just losing their two only children at the same time. The car went into a field and stopped. Nothing happened. We survived without a scratch. I don't want to imagine what would have happened if that tape had not played. So if you wish the Dire Straits saved our lives.