Vendor Spotlight: Karl-Heinz Wendicke (Munich, Germany)

Karl-Heinz Wendicke. Photo courtesy of BISS

"I have been around for a long time. In fact, I have sold BISS ever since it started. A lot has changed since then. The differences are clear to see on the streets. In the last couple of years I have noticed more and more poor people, mainly older women. There are five or six people here who eat out of rubbish bins. That really upsets me as it does not have to be this way; scavenging for food in rubbish bins is not a life! These people should to go to one of the soup kitchens in the area, but they don't always know.

I became homeless over 30 years ago. Thankfully, I had work most of the time.  My employers knew that I was homeless as well as some of my colleagues. I once worked behind the counter in the department store at Marienplatz, which now is the Galeria Kaufhof.  You always had to look representable behind the country, which meant that you had to be clean and freshly shaven every day. I used to shave at the train station where I also had a locker.

I moved into my first ever-flat at the age of 51. I made it nice and comfortable.  I even had flowers on the balcony and then I brought my dog to stay. Up until then, I only saw my dog at weekends as he lived with his foster-mother in the countryside. After all, a dog needs a home.

As a homeless person, I often wished for a house, mainly at the weekend if I was squatting in some solitary construction site, lying in my sleeping bag, and I could see in the windows of other people's houses. I thought about everything then. Even now as I'm getting older, I often ask myself: 'What on earth have you lived for? You have no children…'

At the end of 2008, 3 days before Christmas, my leg had to be amputated as a result of an infection. I learned to live with it. I still do everything by myself."

Translated from German into English by Hayley Anne Ross