What happens when you grow up in the firm belief that cockroaches are Stasi informants? And how does it feel to go to school as a child with a "swords to plowshares" patch? Claudia Rusch, who grew up in the environment of the East German civil rights movement, recounts in her memoirs, with wit, heart, and humor, how she experienced a happy childhood under circumstances that can hardly be called fortunate, even though bitter experiences were not absent: her grandfather died in Stasi investigative custody, the family lived under constant surveillance, and a close friend of her mother turned out to be an informant known as "Buche." Yet what remains are mostly beautiful memories of an almost normal childhood.