On July 11, 1992, Young Germany editor Alex Handcock was picked as one of several children to sing “Heal the World” on stage with Michael Jackson in Cologne. With Jackson’s untimely death, he remembers the day he took to stage with the King of Pop.

The anticipation had been building all week. Our teacher had told us we were going to Cologne to sing at a Michael Jackson concert. Our class talked of nothing else – we were going to sing “Heal the World” with the King of Pop.

The word Gleisersatzverkehr is an important word to know in German.  It means “hahahaha, your train’s not coming sucker.”  It also means “there’s construction on the tracks,” “your trip is now going to involve switching between several (slow) buses and trains,” and, literally, “track replacement traffic.” 

I was on my way to Esslingen, a little town (by little I mean approx. 90,000 inhabitants) on the Neckar.  But I was going there via Mannheim, where I could trade in my train seat for a seat in a beat up old police van (no longer owned by the police).  I took the train to Worms, did some transferring and bus riding to circumvent the construction on the tracks, and landed in Mannheim two and a half hours later.