In the gloom of a carpark near Munich’s central station, I held my breath and peered into the shadows. To my right, closer than I’d expected, I heard the metallic click of a cigarette lighter. In the sudden flare appeared the pallid, theatrically downcast face of my German contact. Through a cloud of smoke, he shuffled forward, his eyes shaded by a dark trilby, a well-worn trench coat pulled tight. He had the air of a man trying his hardest to look sick. He drew an envelope from an inside pocket, leaned down, and slid it across the oil-stained concrete. “It’s all there,” he said, and then coughed pathetically. “Sorry about last night. I’m very sick. As you can see.”
I checked the money, and looked up to say thanks, but he was gone, just a sorrowful sniff echoing back through the dark…
Five days earlier, 9am at Milan’s Central station, and it was like I’d never left. The previous night’s adventures were like a fever dream– all that remained were garbled blurry impressions, a clinking wine glass, a roaring tiny car. I could still taste the Osso buco so I knew it happened. I slid my sunglasses on and tried to ignore the roaring din of hundreds of travelers going about their business, every voice amplified by the station’s arched stone ceiling. Dodging smelly backpackers and impatient suits, I shouldered my horn and wheeled my suitcase over the smooth marble floor and into Bar Centrale– it’s not the world’s greatest bar, but it’s got a certain rumpled, old-world charm, and it’s the go-to around here for morning sustenance. I stood at the bar, cigarette butts at my feet noticeable in their absence, and quickly downed two short coffees and a long shot of Fernet Branca, the bitter, sweet, tummy-soothing liqueur. At 9 in the morning, none of my fellow travelers raised an eyebrow– most of them were doing the same.
On the 10:05 Trenitalia to Munich via Verona, I nabbed a window seat and stared dully out at the passing suburbs, until we were released into the countryside, the same field flitting past over and over, like the repeating backgrounds in a Road Runner cartoon. Irritations floated down the car like pollen, but you can’t let them land. Idiots talking on their phones, uncontrollable sneezing (the wet kind), a fucking dog on a train… gotta let them float past, let someone in the car behind deal with it. Around Brescia it started getting hilly out the left window as we skirted the first cautious slopes of the mighty alps. I was deep in Graham Greene’s “The Third Man” at this point, mentally wandering the streets of Vienna as I scooted past on my way to Germany.
My first time here was in 2021 when I was in every way a passenger. A sideman in a traditional jazz group dubiously named “The Jazz Kangaroos,” I sat in the back of a touring van as we hopped around Bavaria, watching ancient cobbled towns and startled locals rush by. (It was the same story onstage- I sat up the back and watched historical chord changes fly past.) It’s not always up to me how deeply I penetrate a new place– often I’m in and out on the same day, or a night is lopped off at both ends by a late gig and an early train. Mostly I’m aware that I barely break the surface, skimming along above, just pausing long enough to pluck the occasional sausage or glass of local beer before disappearing. But this time at least I was alone, and free to make my own bad decisions…
I confess I chose the Ibis hotel near Munich’s Central train station largely due to its proximity to Augustiner Keller, one of Germany’s largest beer gardens. I checked in, dumped my bags and headed straight back out, snorting derisively at the lobby’s 24 hour snack bar as I passed. I was definitely not going to end up back there later tonight, having found nothing else to eat. Ha! A seasoned road dog like me? As if! The Ibis’s sliding doors hissed closed behind me, and immediately the sky, in what was in no way a blindingly obvious omen, turned black as night, and with a catastrophic crash, opened its mouth and spewed a metric shitload of freezing rain and hail across Munich. Pedestrians ducked under cars, cars ducked under houses, ducks just laughed. Hunger clouding my judgment, I threw myself on the hood of a passing taxi…
Minutes later I slid out of the cab and hunched my shoulders against the onslaught, torrents running down the brewery’s ancient crumbling cobblestone entryway. In the dense gloom I could make out dripping gargoyles glaring down from imposing stone pillars, as the water soaked through my boots. Laughing shadows moved around in the murk, and at the top of the steep drive, warm lamplight and the clinking of beer glasses floated out from a doorway. I pushed through the wind and rain and squeezed into a vestibule crowded with damp shivering bodies. Beery porky salvation was close at hand. I edged through the crowd and peeked through the beerhall doors, and was instantly transported to a Western Sydney pub on Grand Final day. Hundreds and hundreds of glassy eyed soccer bros formed a heaving mass, horribly drunk beefy men grabbing at each other, drooling and puking; mean cackling laughter mingled with breaking glass, as bawling voices sang tunelessly, all echoing around the cavernous stone hall. I cowered behind the thick wooden door and watched in disbelief as gurgling Cro-Magnons poured beer into their blotched puffy faces with single minded desperation, foam overflowing from mouths and noses. Shaken, I backed out into the rain and retreated, tripping and slipping down the hill. Anything would be better than this. Anything…
I dove into a waiting cab and tried a few other spots, all closing up, but I knew where this night was headed as well as you do. Huddled around the all night snack bar back at the Ibis, silently commiserating with a grim, dripping troupe of similarly defeated travelers, I tried not to see another omen in a thin, mealy-mouthed insult of a toasted sandwich, tauntingly named “The New Yorker.” You can’t win em all.
Next day my contact met me at the hotel. “I’ve got a great spot for us to have lunch,” he said proudly. “A traditional Bavarian beerhall- you’ll love it!” And indeed, at lunchtime on a sunny weekday, the 5000-seat beer garden full of families, businessmen, and travelers, and the previous night’s revellers presumably all dead or in hospital, the Augustiner Keller was brilliant. An appropriately buxom, dirndl-clad waitress brought me a massive stein of beer and a roasted ham hock the size of my head, and balance was once again restored.
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