Germany, part 2: The Wurst Is Yet To Come

As I recall, you left me in a Munich beer garden, making short work of a litre of beer and a head-sized hunk of roast pork. Well, eventually I was carried to a car where I spent an hour, like a cat with butter on its paws, licking the grease from my face. And by the time we arrived in the next town I was asleep on the back seat, purring contentedly.

 On a warm drowsy afternoon in the town of Rosenheim, we played loud intense modern jazz music in a quiet old farmhouse surrounded by rolling meadows, while rabbits and deer gambolled through the wildflowers… and in a dark sooty old jazz club called “Le Pirate” where an audience of half-mad, one-eyed ruffians couldn’t believe their buccaneers. In between I wandered the stone streets, and tried to make sense of the place. They’re built wide in Bavaria, the men stocky, round-shouldered, and slightly lumbering, with a taste for shaved heads and tight T-shirts. I felt like they were all eying me suspiciously, but by this time paranoia was starting to creep up my spine, and maybe it was just curiosity… At a sausage truck I leaned on the counter and apologised for my lack of German. “Then we speak English,” the cook said brightly. “What would you like? We have only weisswurst.” I said that would be fine, and he draped a long fat white sausage on the grill, pricking it with a fork, while whistling the fairly obscure Miles Davis tune, Nardis. While my wurst worsened we talked jazz, and as he presented me with my paper plate piled with sliced sausage, sauerkraut and a pretzel, delivered the news that he’d sung with both Miles and Oscar Peterson. I had no comeback for this unlikely claim, so I stuffed my mouth full of pretzel and backed away slowly.

 For the 6 hour train ride to Cologne, my contact and I sat across from one another on the hard benches of the cafe car, having not spent the extra five bucks on reserved seats. Conversation had dried up back around Stuttgart, and we kept our heads down as passengers balancing plates of food glared at us as they passed. This was my own fault. A long train ride can be a wonderful dreamlike experience, if you can cocoon yourself in a window seat, and aren’t obliged to make conversation. The hours drift by with the landscape, and your mind is free to wander slowly wherever it pleases. Riding in the bar car is a hard slog, despite the proximity to drink. The hours creep by sullenly, the seats get harder, the same eyes avert from yours as they sweep the car looking for diversion… There’s no romance here. Cologne couldn’t get to us fast enough.

 Across from King Georg Jazz club is the musicians’ hotel, the Coellner Hof. A strange, eerie, formerly grand hotel, its shadowy lobby is dominated by dusty chandeliers and a tank of wheezing fish. A faint puff of dust rises as you sink into the collapsing armchair to read an issue of the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger from 1987. In the “period” rooms are single beds with stiff starchy white sheets, worn carpets and sagging soft furniture in faded olive and maroon. If you squeeze out through the glass doors, you can stand on a narrow balcony by the birdshit- flecked neon sign, look out over the grey street at the squat functional architecture, and have a quiet existential freak out. At least I think that’s what the balcony is for… I didn’t have time to hunt down any local delicacies, but the thing to drink in Cologne is Kölsch. Light refreshing beer served in small glasses, to be drained in one slug and refilled. Stand at the bar with the Colognics, and your bartender will keep filling you up, marking each beer with a pencil stroke on your coaster, until you ask him to stop, or slide to the floor. 

Back in Munich, things started to unravel. We had two nights booked at the wonderful Jazzbar Vogler, but there was not a hotel room to be found in the city, so accommodation was arranged in the town of Haimhausen, really Munich’s suburban outskirts. My contact’s father showed up after the first gig to drive me home, presumably straight to bed with no dinner, like the naughty boy I was. He was a nice fellow but square, with very limited English. In the car we talked slowly and awkwardly of the weather, and it occurred to me how demeaning it is for two intelligent adults to have to have such an imbecilic conversation just to be understood. The poor man tried, but is anything gained in such an inane exchange? Wouldn’t we have learned more about each other by singing nonsense songs, or making hilarious fart noises? 

 At 2am in one of those unstaffed, code-entered apartment blocks miles from civilisation, the fear and paranoia started to take hold. Where the fuck am I? Who are these people and can they be trusted? Trapped in a box in a field, the walls started edging closer…  I took a bottle out to a patio behind my room and drank while looking out over a flat, featureless paddock; not a birdcall, not a cricket, just a blanket of suffocating suburban silence. Suddenly I sat up as a figure appeared on the far side of the field, walking slowly with a dog on a leash. At my 12 o’clock he stopped and turned towards me, gradually leaning forward to peer at me through the murk. We stared at each other, frozen, for an eternity, too distant to make out features, just two ghostly figures, eyes locked, breath stopped. I stood up, tipping over my plastic chair, breaking the spell, and he turned and moved on into shadow. I looked down at the path which led from the hotel gates, through a stand of low scrubby trees, right to my feet, and in my rabid fever knew he was doubling back to come at me. That within seconds this figure and his savage dog would be on me, bashing me and tearing me to pieces. Muscles taut, ears buzzing, I gripped the bottle by the neck and crouched in the shadows waiting…

 Sometime the next afternoon hunger dragged me awake. I peeled myself off the sheets, dressed, and set out to face whatever horrible fate awaited me. A threatening black sky hung close overhead, and the quiet gathered around me. I walked in the direction of town, past open fields, tall grasses rustling; a street sign: Dachau, 5 miles. Occasionally a tiny car crept past with an electric whir, drivers turning their heads to watch me as long as they could. My footsteps and thudding blood seemed to be the only sounds…

 Il Fagiano Italian restaurant looked deserted from the end of its stone driveway, but then I saw two large men with beers in hand scowling at me from the front door, and went in. A more Bavarian Italian restaurant surely cannot exist anywhere: underlit, domed ceiling, dark wood paneling and maroon accents, the place almost empty in the dusty afternoon. I ate a limp pizza in the corner, mournful 80’s German pop music leaked in from somewhere, barely audible; an old grey couple with thousand yard stares sat silently, listening to me chew. In the far corner two hulking men spoke Russian in undertones while a girlfriend stared intently at the table. Catching me looking, one of the chaps, kitted out in a military style outfit, glared back and started to stand up. I very quickly followed the girl’s lead and began studying my napkin and eating very fast.

 Back at the hotel, word came that my fearless contact/drummer was sick and wouldn’t be making the gig that night. I sighed and smiled, remembering the good times when he was in robust health. It seemed like, and indeed was, just the night before. I sat at the desk, took out a sheet of notepaper, and opened my heart to him, thoughts and prayers gushing from my pen. I tied the note to a nearby pigeon, shooing it with a broom until it flew away, trusting fate to do the rest. Back at Vogler Jazz Club, I took the stage with an expat drummer from Detroit, who belted the cymbals like a beautiful madman, and together we tore great holes in the atmosphere; beer steins shattered, ancient cobblestones jolted from the roadway, quavering ghosts of unswinging music shrieked maniacally as they turned to dust; and as the air hummed and reverberated with the final note, we collapsed on barstools, the slavering demons conquered for another night. 

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