This is a collection of footnotes added to the book “Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F.” The original title – “Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo”– has been translated into many languages with slightly different variations.

We developed this project with the purpose of giving a visual reference to all those parts of the book that mention places, persons and things of iconographic interest. But sometimes you will also find video references or audio tracks and some blah-blah-blah.

The website is a companion to the book and you can use it in three different ways, reflected by the three main sections:

  • Footnotes. The reading order of the book determines the order in which the quotes are arranged. The number on the left is the number of the page. Tags and Categories help to navigate through the quotes. When you click on a quote you get into the related post or “footnote”.
  • Space. The quotes are scattered throughout the map of Germany, each one in the (more or less) precise location where the places mentioned are/were or where the event took place.
  • Time. This section is not yet ready. The chronological order of the events described will be used to organize the quotes.

In every quote, we highlight a keyword (bold) to point out what its matched footnote is about. Diagrams and maps are interactive: mouse over or tap on touch screens.

This is an open project.

First, it’s still a work in progress:

  • At the moment only a small part of the book in covered, about 60 pages including the first block narrated by Christiane and the first block narrated by her mother. (The entire book is going to be covered, of course.)
  • There are only three languages to choose — German, English and Italian — but we hope to add more languages soon.

But Open Project doesn’t mean only that there is still much to be done…

More importantly, it means that we wish that with time, more and more people will jump on board sharing their pictures, their videos and their stories about everything mentioned in this book.

Especially those people who were there, in the Berlin of the 70s, in order to give each one of us the chance to have a unique experience reading the book; a kind of experience that had never been possible before.

Feedback.

What you find here has been done sitting at a desk, in a small town on the shores of a lake, forty years later after the publication of the book. Very far indeed, both in time and in space, from the facts and places narrated.

So errors and mistakes in the notes are possible, just point them out with supporting evidence, and we’ll be happy to correct them. If you think some notes are missing or other notes could be improved, your suggestions are welcome as well. And finally, if you click somewhere on the website and nothing happens, don’t worry, it’s not you… It’s just work in progress or bugs to fix.

That’s all, folks!