Clean and orderly -- not words that anyone would have associated with the Gaby that still lived in Berlin, spending her days under cars, face smudged with oil, dresses pushed aside in favour of ragged overalls, hanging loose around her slight frame.

But she hadn't been that Gaby for a long while, now.

"I think I will, thank you," she says, voice somehow aloof and light at once, like making conversation over a pile of trash with a wayward teenager (for the girl certainly looks like one) is an everyday thing for her.

"What have they done, to offend you?" She indicates the papers on the ground with her now free hand, the paper star dropped on top of her half-open bag.