When we were 17...
Our protagonists took us with them on a journey back to the days when they were young. It was an intense, moving and personal experience for the entire team. And it made us reminisce about our own lives, when we were 17.
In love with the world
"At 17, I was in love with everything around me: my boyfriend, especially, and also Ethan Hawke and all his films. I was in love with theater plays and with the idea of leaving the Ruhr area after high school to become an actress." -Rebecca Madita Hundt, video narrator
On the way to Paris with Radiohead
"At 17, I started exploring the world. Two friends of mine had gone to Paris for a year. I got on the train from Cologne to visit them, and I listened to Radiohead and U2 on the way. A chocolate ice cream was waiting for me when I arrived - I wasn’t lactose intolerant back then! Those were the days..." -Jan Bruck, editor
Piercing in Prag
"This is me in Prague. I had just had my upper ear pierced - boy, was I proud. In Germany, I would have had to take my parents in with me, but in Prague I wasn't even asked my age. A short while later, at 17, I went to the US as an exchange student. And for the first time in my life, I fell head over heels in love …" -Sarah Judith Hofmann, editor
Doomsday basketball
"It was 1999. Everybody was talking about the end of the world coming up at the end of the year. But I managed to stay in the present. My life was all about music, girls, and basketball." -Cem Springer, camera and editing
Train journey, hair cut included
"At 17, I travelled across England and fell in love hopelessly with Franzl from Erlangen. On the way back to Germany, I cut off his long hair because Franzl was about to do his civil service in a Catholic hospital. I never saw him again. But the memories of that journey come back to me every time I hear ‘Down under’ by Men at Work - the song of our train ride." -Susanne Spröer, producer
MTV in Ukraine
"I was 17 in 1992. Ukraine had been independent for one year. For the first time, we watched music videos on MTV: Guns’n’Roses, U2, Annie Lennox... For a long time, Russian bands didn’t have good videos. So I decided I would make videos for bands from the East, in black and white and with lots of tracking shots."-Evgenyi Dubnov, camera and editing
Skiing with camera
"There are only a few photos of me when I was 17. That’s because I was usually the one taking pictures - like when we went skiing in Austria. It was my first holiday with friends. Great! And very chaotic. I would always have my camera with me in my pocket. It even survived all the falls. This is a rare shoot of me on the chairlift." -Laura Döing, reporter
Writing poems smoking a pipe
"My best friend Julian and I were on our way to the forest. We wanted to spend one week living in the woods over Easter. We built a little hide-out, made a fire, wrote poems and went swimming in a little stream nearby. And of course we smoked our pipes and thought about the girls we loved." -Jonas Baeck, video narrator
Lost in the English woods
"Interpol was searching for me when I was 17 - in England! I was saving plants and building bridges in a nature reserve together with hardcore activists…and I had forgotten to let my parents know that I’d arrived safely. I’d planned to call them only when I had something really exciting to report." -Miriam Klaussner, reporter
Al Jarreau, the environment, and peace
"When I was 17, I listened to Al Jarreau and Level 42. This was back in 1984. Helmut Kohl was Chancellor. Acid rain and ‘deforestation were that year’s hot topics. I was deeply influenced by the peace and environmentalist movements of the 1980s." -Carsten Günter, reporter
Cycling for music and love
"I had the time of my life when I was 17. I grew up on the Dutch border. On a spring holiday, we took our bikes and fietsed over the border to the Pinkpop open air festival in Geleen. The Cure, The Cult, and The Waterboys were some of the headliners. It was sooo big. I kissed Stephan for the first time during the grand firework finale. He would become my first big love." -Birgit Görtz, reporter