Roland Limacher
Meines Vaters Haus

English Title: My Father's House

Having earned some money through the invention of spaghetti tongs, the father of the family decides to move to the country, together with wife, son and small daughter. Against the initial resistance of his family, the man, who had always had unusual tastes, purchases a former orphanage that lies on a river. The twelve-year-old son is magically drawn to this river. The orphanage, which according to the inventory must have once housed forty children, is in reality much too large for the family of four. But it won’t stay that way for long: little by little, it fills up with colourful personalities: there’s Uncle Alfred, the bullfighter who has returned home from Spain, the belligerent geology student Hanna Hahn, who is just as interested in the river as the boy, although for other reasons – and, very soon, the boy becomes very interested in her; there is Oregano, the stray tramp, who speaks in a language that nobody understands; the grandmother in a wheel-chair who gets on very well with little sister Gilli, and whose wit and temperament would be a sheer waste in an old peoples’ home; and finally a young man called Hans who knocks on the door one day and introduces himself as a former boarder at the orphanage, and who has a strange request.