It's Monday evening, just before 6 p.m.

Olaf Gries sits in his kiosk "Orange Beach" in Gutleutviertel and eats.

He mumbles something about a late breakfast, he got up a few hours ago, he worked at the kiosk until 6:30 a.m. for an event.

That doesn't sound healthy.

"So far I've survived quite well," says Gries, sitting down on a Warsteiner box and lighting a cigarette.

Martin Ochman

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Gries, 62 years old, with a gray Mecki haircut and a three-day stubble, fits in well with the shop, which he has been running for 16 years, with his brash, cool manner.

A kiosk in which crates of drinks are stacked and you can choose from more than 40 types of beer, complete with an inventory that looks wildly thrown together.

Model boats stand on the shelves and elephant figures, a total of 28 pieces, souvenirs from Gambia, the home of his partner, or from guests with whom Gries sometimes speaks the way it looks in his kiosk – not necessarily considering etiquette.

Bottled beer in a deckchair

Anyone who drives to "Orange Beach" likes it that way.

He sits down in a deck chair on the banks of the Main with his bottle of beer and doesn't let the noise of the trains that go back and forth on the railway bridge above him irritate him during the conversation.

The "Orange Beach" is so called because the steel doors on the inside were painted orange when Gries took over the shop, and the river bank is right in front of it.

It sounds a bit like an oversight when Gries, a trained merchant in wholesale and foreign trade, talks about what it was like when he took over the kiosk, which has blossomed into a popular meeting place.

The building where workers from surrounding companies drank their beer many years ago was run down and run down.

He was asked who should come there.

"But I'm an incorrigible optimist," says Gries.

"First open the door and see what happens."

If you can believe Gries, he approaches many things in life in this way - don't be intimidated, just do it.

"You shouldn't be afraid of things, but respect." That's why he's already done quite a bit professionally, office work, a restaurant that he ran with an acquaintance, and the father of three children was also for a trucking company with its own 40-ton truck.

Gries, who came to Frankfurt in 1974 and lives in Griesheim, is just as relaxed about travelling.

He traveled Asia and America while still a teenager, met Siegfried and Roy in Las Vegas and rode his motorbike through Thailand, even though he didn't have a driver's license.

Even without much planning, Gries came to Gambia, home of his partner, with whom he has been together for 14 years.

Already seen a lot and yet sometimes speechless

"Zack, close the door, I was gone" - this is how Gries remembers his first trip to the African country.

Once there, he first drank a coffee and then looked for a place to stay.

In the meantime, Gries has often been to Gambia, he supports a school there, does repair work on the school building or buys what is needed.

"I can't just sit around and look at the sun."

So Gries is not easily ruffled, but some things leave him speechless.

He recently drove through the station district, via Taunusstrasse, and experienced the misery of drug addicts.

"Jesus and Maria, I was a bit shocked, even though I saw a lot." Gries finds it much nicer there in his kiosk under the noise of the railway bridge.

"It's the nicest job I've had in my life."