3 ideas
Maik Klingenberg is a wealthy but invisible fourteen-year-old from Berlin-Marzahn. His mother is in rehab for alcoholism and his father has left for the summer with his young assistant. Maik and Andrej 'Tschick' Tschichatschow, a Russian-German classmate, steal a battered blue Lada Niva, drive aimlessly through Brandenburg and beyond, and meet a garbage-dump girl named Isa and an armed old veteran before a crash lands them in court.
Adults and the news teach Maik that the world is bad and strangers are threats. The book argues that the fear-based picture of other people comes from secondhand information, and firsthand contact overturns it.
After the crash, Maik's father tells him to blame everything on the Russian immigrant kid so that he himself escapes consequences. Maik refuses and tells the truth in court, sharing responsibility. The act that marks his growing up is rejecting the self-protective, class- and ethnicity-based logic his parent hands him, and choosing loyalty to his friend instead.