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It was an evening like any other when my parents de-cided to buy a whole apartment building. My parents and a group of their friends – all former students in their early thirties, sitting together, having dinner and enjoying good conversations. They lived in a very cheap area of West Berlin, in a street with a lot of twenty-four-seven bars. My parents and their friends were living on the 4thfloor of the apartment building, right beneath the roof of a typical Berliner “Mietshaus”.On this particular evening it was raining through the roof, just like all the other times whenever there was a cloudburst. Since the property manager had not reacted to any of their complaints, they had to help themselves with buckets placed underneath the holes in the roof. Annoyed by the fact that the condition of the house was getting worse with every rain shower, they had a discussion about the bad circumstances they were living in. They were upset about how the property management company was collecting rent but not fixing anything.Karsten all of a sudden suggested that they should buy the whole building and do things better. All of them agreed that it was a wonderful approach. The next day they started to gather information. The name and address of the owner were in the leases. The owner lived in Paris. They sat together and wrote a letter saying they were interested in buying the building. Weeks later, the letter came back – return to sender.As luck would have it, a friend of Karsten’s was studying in Paris. Karsten called him and asked him to check in the Paris phonebooks for the owner’s address. The friend finally found the right address and they sent the letter again. A few days later the owners’ son called. They talked about the price, negotiated and agreed on a price both parties could live with, and the transaction was done in 1982.The present owner’s father was Jewish. He had fled to Paris in 1940 with his son and his wife and died there in 1967. He had not been expropriated during the Nazi years, most likely because he was a foreigner with a Latvian passport and also had high mortgage debts on the building. When my parents and their friends made their offer, his wife and son were still living in Paris. My parents bought the house jointly with three other couples. Two years later they applied for a restorationproject supported by the city of Berlin. The financialsupport came with certain requirements. One of therequirements was to have more owners and keep rents stable for 16 years. So in the end they increased their number from eight to sixteen and renovated the house with a little help from immigrant workers. It took three years, and it was a difficult time with a lot of work for everyone.A great community was formed. We lived in a commune with open doors. We children grew up together, and we are still as close as brothers and sisters. We left the ground level apartment free for guests and parties. We celebrated every Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Easter and birthdays together, always having a wonderful time. Nowadays, seven of the ten children live in their own apartment in the building and have their own children.The area has become one of the most popular districts of Berlin, and the value of the building has skyrocketed. Cozy coffee shops, small restaurants and label boutiques line our street today. For the 20th anniversary of the reunification of Berlin, the artist and advertising agency owner Jean-Remy von Matt had the entire façade of Brunnen-strasse 10 covered with huge lettering saying: “DiesesHaus stand früher in einem anderen Land. / This building used to be in another country”. I feel the same with our building and the street I grew up in. It is now not only in another country, but in another world entirely.