This is an anecdote I'm telling to my friends. Here in Southtirol I started to feel that my German is not good enough, so I chose to read some German book as a mean to keep it up.

Normally, I'm not reading regular books, because I'm too slow in reading and it takes me a lot of time. If the book is really interesting (usually, some fantasy) it is even worse, because I stick to it ignoring the rest of the world until I finish it.

The only excuses are if I'm on the journey and if the book is in German. Just before going to Croatia I went to the local book shop to find some fantasy book in German. Additional criteria for the book were: it shouldn't be too heavy and I shouldn't have read it before in some other language.

The choice of the books of my kind didn't surprise me at all. There were only two books. The first one had a nice description, but was the second part of a trilogy. The second was written by a female writer and looked like a romance in fairy tale style. So, I decided to give up with fantasy and to ask for anything that could match the remaining criteria. After looking at the prices I understood that they also do meter for me - I was not ready to spend 25EUR for a small book.

I tried to explain the lady that I need a small interesting book, written in simple German. It looked like she found in me an excited reader and she started to offer me everything in a row. I'm not very intelligent, but some names like Franz Kafka's gave me an impression of the books she was offering.

Finally, I decided to stop her. The book in my hands was small, looked nice and was only for 7EUR. I decided to confirm if it is interesting and easy to read. She said, that it is a wonderful book, written in very easy language and she reread it several times.

How you can guess, it was a book "Siddhartha" from Hermann Hesse. The book was written in the beginning of XX century. The story line goes in parallel with Buddism history, exploring the meaning of our life in this world. When my friends had explained me what kind of writer Hermann Hesse actually is, I expected to stop on the second page. Nevertheless, I have finished the book and I would suggest it to everyone, who is looking for his own way in this life.

P.S. I found the English version of this book available in the internet. Although I always thought that my English is better than my German, but after trying to read the first chapter I believe that it is an equal challenge.