Once upon a time ... This typical opening to the world of fairy tales is used by Jochen Jung at the beginning of each story. However, he lets the stories take their own quirky paths, like a flock of migratory birds. But these are migratory birds of all kinds: colorful, meaningful, heartfelt, wise, and blissfully foolish. It happens that the stories are not fairy tales at all, but parables, small narratives, prose miniatures that pose riddles or trace origins. They draw inspiration from the ordinary things of everyday life just as much as from the seas, the winds of the sky, or the trees, for example. Sometimes poetic, sometimes humorous and ironic, Jochen Jung's "fairy tales" are characterized by a contagious joy of storytelling that often reveals the bitterly malicious hidden behind seemingly harmless things, while always managing to portray things and people in their often concealed reality.