When growing up in my little Swabian village I loved sneaking out to the neighbouring house of my auntie, She had a subscription of the weekly celebrity gossip magazine BUNTE. On her living room side table there was always a pile of BUNTE editions. Regularly I browsed the magazines, delving into a so far unknown world, in a world where beautiful woman married rich men or where rich men cheated on beautiful women. All the vices happened on beautiful places. I read about the fate of Soraya and her successor Farah Diba as Empresses of Persia, about the sad wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di, and I was following the jetset life of the gloríous Grimaldis of Monaco. I knew everything about the parties of Princesses Caroline and Stéphanie and her changing boyfriends. Every year I watched the Grand Prix of Monaco where Formula One cars were crazily racing through dangerously narrow streets. In 1982 I felt sad when Caroline’s mother, Hollywood star Grace Kelly turned Princess Gracia Patria, died in a car accident after she had lost control of her car in a hairpin bend on her way back from the Grimaldi’s posh summer residence to Monte Carlo, having her daughter Stéphanie next to her, who survived.

10 years later I drove with a friend from Nizza to Monaco, mastering the thrilling hairpin turns of the legendary Grand Corniche. The winding road, graced by rows of immaculate cypresses and elegant villas, offered stunning views on the Mediterranean Sea deep below, As we finally arrived at the second-smallest country in the world, I did not need a guidebook. Everything was there where BUNTE had described it. The luxurious yachts and the yacht club, the beautiful people and their paparazzi, the palace of the Grimaldis, the Hotel de Paris and the casino of Monte Carlo. Just Grace Kelly was missing. After counting all the red Ferraris and Lamborghinis, we thought – let’s do as the Romans do, so better to play rich! Instead of setting sail on a luxury yacht, we went to the casino. Unfortunately we were considered obviously too young or too poor to be considered as serious gamblers by the poker-faced croupier. What Monaco lacks in size it compensates with arrogance.