The Bibi Blocksberg Solution

Twenty years old, studying textile management in Münster, and her friends call her "cassette girl"—which they mean as affection. Lari is a Capricorn, goes weak for dark hair and a beard, and when she’s in love, stays disturbingly realistic about it. Good at listening. Bad at small talk. The correct ratio.

Her secret passion is dunking pretzel sticks in soft drinks and eating them once they’re soaked through. People already find her strange because she won’t drink coffee and only eats cheese when it’s melted—they don’t even know about the pretzels. She hates calling strangers on the phone and is sincerely grateful to any pizza place with online ordering.

She eats badly and counts no calories—until she stepped on a scale after months away from it, cried, panic-signed up for a gym, and went two weeks on nothing but salad and fruit. The two weeks were torture. The gym she visited exactly once. She tells this without apparent shame, which is the right attitude.

She chews in a way that, by her own account, makes the bottom half of her face look like a carnival ride. She makes undefined sounds at dogs. She burps without ceremony, dances hard to abrasive music, goes out without makeup, and laughs loudest at her own dirty jokes—which, she notes, makes her exactly the kind of person she is.

For a partner she wants humor and overlap: indie music, electro, some care about how you dress, and the ability to finish a book. Pseudo-intellectuals make her irritable. She’d rather openly admit she doesn’t follow politics than pretend otherwise. Every night, a Bibi Blocksberg cassette—the German children’s radio witch—carries her to sleep. She’s holding out hope that Bibi might eventually hex the right person into existence.