He is unredeemed, unredeemed like the Tristan chord, the young doctoral student from Berlin, and he suffers from a longing for Italy, a yearning that only Goethe could have known before him. On his way back from the Philharmonic, where he works as a door closer, he curiously enters an Italian bar on Schöneberger Hauptstrasse, and even though he does not find the South here, not Italy, where the mandolins played and the lemons bloomed, he at least finds Cristina, a Southern Sardinian with an impenetrable gaze, who earns her living at the aluminum counter under neon lights. Weeks later, he dares a shy declaration of love, and to his own surprise, the two become a couple. When Cristina decides to return to Sardinia, to her hometown of Sant'Antioco in the south of the island, he also packs his bags, as he cannot imagine a separation. And is it n.