Adrian Plitzco

My parents were of Romanian descent (therefor my "un-Swiss" name) but I suppose I still grew up as a typical and average Swiss boy. My professional career started with an apprenticeship at the local council in Neuenhof (probably one of the uglier townships in the Midwest of Switzerland). However, office work became very boring to me, so shortly after I started working as a builder in a very small company and built a family home from A to Z. That was a fantastic experience. Creating a home (if not for myself but for anyone else), starting from excavation, pouring concrete for the basement, stacking bricks for the walls and lining up the beams for the roof gave me a pretty good idea what it needs to actually pursue an idea from the beginning right to the end.

Still, after that I was as a confused young man as I ever was before. In order to find my destiny, or my way, or myself, or whatever I tried myself in all sorts of professions. To list them all up would be too boring, worth mentioning though might be my time as a bookkeeper for the Catholic church (which will, I hope, give me the right to go through Heaven's gate - if there is such a thing), as a smelly rubbish collector or as a forest worker. The latter by the way inspired me and gave me lots of ideas for my second novel which is still in progress. In between I worked with children, taught them to perform, dance and play music. Then I had fun myself and performed, danced and played music for quite a few years in small theatre productions in Switzerland and Germany. After that I became really serious (after all I had to pay off all the debts that accumulated during my frivolous at the same time detached life as an actor-musician-dancer) and began work in an art auction house in Zurich. I advised collectors what paintings to buy or which to sell, had enough after 7 years (paid off all my debts), followed my heart and migrated to Australia. That was in 1992.

Until a few years ago I worked as a freelance foreign correspondent for several newspapers and magazines in Germany and Switzerland, wrote my first adult fiction in German (Der harte Engel) and my first children's novel (Lancelot - The one-armed Kangaroo, both in German and English). And . . . I have great fun being a producer at SBS Radio in Melbourne for the German language program. My favourite show is without a doubt the kids program "Pfiffikus!" every 1st Saturday of the month.