»Come on, let's get the old mill grinding!« Adriano turns up the thumping music and presses a few buttons. About thirty kids start screaming simultaneously when the hydraulics hiss, making the seats rotate backwards as »Take Off - The Family Spinner« whirls into action.
It's about 8 p.m. and Adriano Rasch has been glued to his mike for five hours: He has three more hours to go before he can switch off the massive piece of machinery and leave behind the brightly painted figures - ranging from wrestlers in bizarre outfits to skimpily clad girls - that decorate the ride. All afternoon, Adriano has been crammed into the ticket box, standing back-to-back with his dad, who is collecting the cash for the rides. The 19-year-old's job consists of operating the ride, choosing the music and trying to entice people by making jokes through his microphone.
»I started doing this when I was five,« Adriano says. »My dad put me behind the mike and I simply started blabbering.« Fourteen years later, Adriano is definitely not the blabbering type. Working on fun fairs all his life has made him mature faster than most of his peers, who shriek their heads off on the Rasch's ride after a day at school.
Adriano's family has been in the fair business for at least five generations. Various carousels, bumper cars and sweet stalls have been run by countless relatives. »My uncle owns a haunted house,« Adriano says, unimpressed, »but I think that's really cheesy.« When the family is not on their eight-month-long tour around Germany, Austria and Switzerland, they park the machinery and their trailers on the grounds of their house in Heide. During the winter, metal parts have to be re-painted and technical check-ups have to be made, but there is also some free time left for Adriano to hone his boxing skills.
On the door of his caravan he keeps a signed photograph of boxing champ-ion Dariusz Michalczewski, hanging opposite the fake oak panels he's adorned with a picture of his pet pit-bull Clisto and a poster of Alicia Keyes. Despite the poster, Adriano doesn't like listening to music in his spare time. »When you hear beats eight hours a day, you really have enough,« he says. »Some of our staff have to stuff their ears with cotton, but I'm used to it.«
Paola Zinnt, who works directly opposite the »Take Off« in her father's mini-bowling stall, has not yet become inured to the deafening noise. »Sometimes I have to pop over and tell Adriano to turn it down a little,« the pretty 19-year old says. Making such a request is not a problem; the two have known each other since kindergarten. The younger children of people working at the »Dom« - the name of the Hamburg fair - attend playschool together; later, the kids attend school wherever the fair takes them. The traveling carnival never stays in a town for more than four weeks, though - and sometimes just for a few days - so it's normal for the kids to change schools 20 to 30 times a year. »Normally, our new school mates are really keen to have a look around and ask for free tickets,« Paola says, but in general fair kids stick with each other.
Growing up in a fun fair seems like a child's dream come true. The kids try out each others' families' rides, taste the sweets and sausages from neighbouring stalls and hang out in tight-knit groups of friends. During the off-season, the fairground youth even throw special parties and hold their own discos. Mementoes of such events can be seen around Paola's pristine trailer, where she proudly displays photographs of herself in a beautiful gown, posing next to her boyfriend, a hand-some young man whose parents own a ride called »Top Spin.«
Such romantic relationship among the workers is not uncommon. »Fair people marry fair people,« Paola explains, »because they are the only ones who understand this way of life.« That way of life is mostly about work, seven days a week. And it's not easy work: »You always have to be polite,« says Paola. »Even if the customers throw their ball directly at you instead of the target.« And after the third man in one evening asks, »Are you a prize I can win, too?«, even Paola feels like dropping her sweet smile. But neither she nor Adriano would trade their life for anything else. »Sitting at a desk from nine to five? Not for me!« Paola says. Then her dad pokes his head through the trailer door: »Enough chit-chat. It's time to get the stall ready!«
