At heart, Mathias is a tourist, never content to stay anywhere for very long. Had he not died on that hill, he expects he would have spent much of his time traveling for the rest of his life, and died somewhere else, somewhere far from Germany. "Selfishness, I suppose," he says after a moment. "I could never stay in one place for long."

And he can't imagine leaving a child behind or dragging one all over the world, forcing them to never settle, never have a home or friends.