Ingolf Bernhardt grew up in the GDR. After graduating from high school, he studied physics at the Lomonosov University in Moscow, specialised in the field of biophysics and, after successfully completing his studies, began his professional career in the same subject at the Humboldt University in Berlin. As early as the 1980s, as well as in the following decades, numerous trips, often based on personal invitations, took him to both Eastern and Western countries. Particularly intensive connections developed with Oxford University in the UK. In 2000, Ingolf Bernhardt moved to Saarland University, where he held a professorship in biophysics until his [...] this booklet, the author is primarily looking back. Admittedly, this is not done in the style of a classic memoir, but with a mostly cheerful view of his very different experiences, which nevertheless provide the reader with many illuminating insights and findings, especially into the academic life of our recent past and present. Ingolf Bernhardt complies with the oft-cited suggestion that one should first tell one's own story to better understand one another.