BERLIN - TWO childhood sweethearts, aged six and seven, eloped from Hanover in northern Germany on New Year’s Eve, determined to tie the knot under the African sun, police said on Monday.The pair identified as Mika and Anna-Lena ‘are very much in love and decided to get married in Africa where it is warm, taking with them as a witness Anna-Lena’s little sister, aged five’, police spokesman Holger Jureczko told AFP.

The idea for the romantic trip began when Mika told the two girls about his recent holiday in Italy, while their families celebrated New Year’s Eve together. ‘From this, the children began to make plans for the future,’ Mr Jureczko said.

As the first dawn of 2009 broke, the trio started to put these plans into action, packing all the essentials for the journey, including ’sunglasses, swimming trunks, a lilo, summer clothes and provisions’.

While their parents slept, they left their house in the suburbs of Hanover, walked a kilometre up the road to a tram stop from where they took a tram for the central station.

Waiting for a train to the airport, they aroused the attention of a guard who contacted police.

Two officers managed to convince the young lovers that they would struggle to get to Africa without money or a plane ticket.

As a consolation, the children were given a special tour of the police headquarters at Hanover station where they were especially taken with the detention cells.

Their relieved parents picked them up from the station, the spokesman said, adding: ‘They can still put their plan into action at a later date.’ — AFP

there was a really good article in the forum today – ‘without architecture, we cannot remember.’ i’m glad someone pointed that out. now, all that remains is for the relevant authorities to sit up and take notice.

our little island cannot seem to strike a balance between the new and the old; modernity and history; progress and heritage. what i cannot quite understand, is preservation of the old by tearing down the original, and then building something else in its place – something that tries to look authentic (what irony) or worse, asian.

case in point: chinatown. it was never really a ‘chinatown’ to begin with, but we have destroyed and created repeatedly over the years, attempting to recreate something that was never there. how does that work?

then there are the schools, which seem to have a migratory issue. some years back, returning from japan for holidays, i decided to have a good, old sentimental moment… but there was nothing but rubble where my primary school stood. turns out the place had been torn down and rebuilt. never mind about that – i suppose that is progress. but my secondary school, which boasted a location in ‘katong’ (it’s in the school anthem, i kid you not!) is now in some strange part of singapore that i cannot even place. i feel as if i have been displaced along with the school.

they are cutting away the ties that bind the ‘runaways’ to home. coming back from a seven-year long sojourn in japan, there was so little left of the land that i remembered, it was scary. yes, it was a little awe-inspiring, but when the awe faded off, i wanted to run away again.

we do not give memories enough credit – they are more powerful than we realize. i should know, but that is another story altogether.