how the Caboose disappeared

Posted on July 17, 2023 by Christoph Rehage

Tags

By loading the map, you agree to Google's privacy policy.
Learn more

Always unblock Google Maps

This post is about how the Caboose disappeared in Munich. Apparently a janitor decided to take her to a recycling yard.

I had gone on a little vacation. There was a direct train from Munich to Rimini. Rimini was the place where I had lost all my stuff once, when someone had stolen my backpack while I was sleeping on the beach. But that was in the past. The train there took a bit over seven hours.

I was on my hotel balcony in Rimini, having a drink while looking at the pastel colors of the evening sky and the sea, when I got a call from my friend Lilu in Munich. I had been staying at her apartment in the district of Schwabing.

“I don’t know how to tell you,” Lilu said, “but the Caboose is gone.”

the yard in Schwabing and the contingent

One day later I was back in Munich. I had not screamed this time (unlike that time when the Caboose had died in a traffic accident back in 2016). I had not shaken my fists in anger, and I had not said many mean things. Well, almost.

Immediately after receiving Lilu’s call I had found myself contemplating whom I would want to evacuate from Munich before pressing the button. Most people valued their friends and family, so I decided to give everyone a contingent of 20 people they could take with them. We would all wear protective goggle when I pressed the button.

the low down

Anyway, the Caboose was gone, or at least her frame with the two wheels. I had stored it in the backyard of Lilu’s apartment building after putting the white box in the basement.

As it turned out the building management had received complaints about the Caboose in the yard, so they had told the janitor to put her somewhere else. The janitor had apparently taken this somewhere else to mean away and dropped her off at the recycling yard. When the building management called the recycling yard to inquire they said that they turned on the scrap press every evening.

So the Caboose was likely dead.

(social) media

I decided to go public on social media: Twitter (the fuck I’m calling it x), Facebook, Instagram. I wrote my posts in German, so as to reach as many people as possible in the area, and it worked. A thousand likes, shares, and comments later several people had gone to the recycling yard to ask for the Caboose. The central waste management company of Munich, AWM, had asked their workers to keep an eye open. And several newspapers had picked up the story.

But the Caboose, or at least her frame, was still gone and presumed dead.

And amid the feeling of grief, I found myself thinking about ways to make a new one.