When I was little, they always got in my way.

In the two serving trolleys in our apartment, some alcoholic beverages had accumulated that I couldn't get much out of at the time: Filipino rum, which can be processed well into marble cakes, the jenever from my vacation in the Netherlands and this one bottle of Baileys that my father bought much to his chagrin and which was now used for decorative purposes.

The household helpers on a total of eight wheels became objects of hatred: Because on the flokati at home they blocked an area that looked extremely attractive for the planned track expansion of my Lego train.

Johanna Christner

Editor in the section “Germany and the World”.

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20 years later I moved into my first apartment of my own, without a Lego train, without my parents' flokati - and without a bar cart.

21 years later, my best friend was sitting in my kitchen with a skeptical look and studying my cheese grater designed by Zaha Hadid, the steel nutcracker in the shape of a squirrel and the Pinocchio funnel on the wall.

As we cooked together, we noticed that there was still a lot missing here.

A few days later she drove me to a furniture store and threw a wooden spoon set and other useful kitchen items into the shopping cart.

I also need a serving trolley like this

The corona pandemic came again 22 years later - and my still sparsely equipped kitchen should now be used as a replacement canteen. In real life I only met a few people, Zoom and Skype were now the communication tools of the hour: for virtual wine evenings, interviews and conferences. In addition, I made it my hobby to observe the apartments of the people I talk to. I saw children waving friendly hands, cats and one day a serving trolley. At that moment I thought of my best friend and his magnificent gin collection, of this one bottle with the drawn monkey on the label and the adult coolness with which he pulled it off his shelf. And I knew: I also need a serving trolley like this.

I actually saw a model on Instagram that I liked a lot.

Usually there were pretty incense holders and jukeboxes in the 80s style, but best of all: the serving trolley could be folded in the middle of its shelves.

However, it was a rolling helper from Korea, the price of which I could not determine - so I started researching.

The newly found favorite came from a German designer, but at more than 1000 euros it was, in my opinion, a bit too expensive for a piece of furniture that was not essential for survival.

I quickly found an alternative, which later turned out to be a replica of the German star designer piece that was perceived as extremely cheeky in designer circles.

With the copy over the "Roll of Shame"

I thought about how my friends and product design students got angry with a cold beer on the couch before the pandemic about such design imitators, calculating how expensive the design process from design to actual product is, and I thought that the German star designers around the corner from me ran his studio and it would be a “roll of shame” if I rolled past it with the copy.

Afterwards, I put the serving trolley operation on hold. My odyssey started rolling again when I told a friend about it a few weeks ago. “Dinett,” she said, fished her cell phone out of her pocket and a few seconds later held a photo of the bar cart called Dinett under my nose. And there it was again: the car from Korea that I wanted from the start, whose name I didn't know and whose acquisition I had given up pretty quickly. “Leipzig, flea market, design classic”, my friend had said, and lo and behold: the bar cart of my dreams is very popular in Korea, but it was designed in Germany and manufactured by the Bremshey company in Solingen from 1955 onwards.

And in fact the Internet is full of old dinettos, which are now experiencing a new hype and with it a price increase here and there.

The solution to my problem was called Hansi, lives in Krefeld and has a whole shop on eBay full of curiosities from the sixties.

I negotiated a good price with him, as if I hadn't been looking for a serving trolley for a whole year, we switched from “you” to “you”, the “dear Mrs. Christner” changed to “Johanna”.

I would take good care of his trolley.

Hansi sent it to me padded with newspapers to my parents' place of residence in Frankfurt.

There I organized a little test drive with my new toy.

Past the serving trolleys I hated so much as a kid.