Well, I’ve been back in the states for three days now and already feel like I never left. The entire life I had in Germany is already starting to feel like one big dream that I just woke up from.
After finishing my last blog entry from Hannover, I spent the next several hours packing up, throwing stuff away, and taking care of a few last-minute tasks like closing my bank account. I had to leave a lot of stuff in my apartment that my landlord is going to have to deal with, but it’s his fault for never getting back to me all those times I called to let his receptionist know I was moving out. I was always told he’d contact me shortly but he never did, and on the last week I sent him a fax just letting him know the situation and that he’d probably have to throw some of my stuff away because I didn’t have time to dispose of it properly. In any case, he has most of my security deposit money and the number where I can be reached here in case it costs him more than that, so as weird as it feels to leave all that there I feel like I did all I could do.
Oliver came by while I was doing that and helped me finish up, then I bid a fond farewell to the flat and we drove to his friend Peda’s apartment in a town called Witten, which is on the outskirts of Dortmund and only a 40-minute drive to the Düsseldorf airport. There we had a pleasant evening, staying up late reminiscing and joking around like old times, and in the morning he drove me to the airport and we said our final farewell.
About 10 hours later I was landing in JFK and my Dad picked me up and drove me back here. The first evening was quite enjoyable, drinking and talking to my parents and my brother Billy, who is now 18 years old and on his way to college at the end of next month.
Saturday was mostly uneventful, but Sunday we all drove into the city (that’s what “New York City” is called around here) to see Blue Man Group, which I’ve been wanting to see for many years and was not disappointed. The music was as great as I knew it would be from the albums I have, but the show was also much more comedic than I’d expected. One of the coolest things was that before the show, one of the stage-hands asked Billy if he’d like to be a part of the show, then took him to the back and told him what to expect. At the end of the show the blue men brought him up on stage, put a little blue mark on his face, then put him in a costume and a helmet and brought him backstage. On the screen it showed him getting splashed with blue paint, tied up by the heals and then smashed against a canvas to make an imprint of his body in blue paint, then the blue men came out on stage rolling a box with some gelatin on the top and it was revealed that his head was actually inside the gelatin. We found out later that it wasn’t actually him getting smashed against the canvas.
After the show we walked to a nearby tavern called McSorley’s, which my Dad says is the oldest continuously-operating tavern in NYC, which didn’t used to allow women up until a couple decades ago, and when they were finally forced to they just didn’t put in a ladies’ room. We each drank some beer there but it wasn’t that great and the place smelled pretty funky so we left after just fifteen minutes or so.
We then drove most of the way back home and stopped at an Irish bar/restaurant for dinner and more drinks, and had a very pleasant evening there before finally coming home.
I contacted a bunch of people when I got back to try and figure out who I can visit and when, but most of them haven’t gotten back to me yet. I’ll almost definitely be going to Brooklyn this weekend and possibly up to Red Hook to see my grandparents next weekend, but it all depends on a lot of things.
As for my overall feelings, it’s actually hard to say. I’m simultaneously glad to be back and sad to be away from Germany, but thanks to Skype I’m able to keep in touch with my closest Germany friends (I’m actually chatting with Oliver as I write this) but it’s still weird to think I won’t be seeing them in person for many years. I’m also extremely excited to be going to Japan next month, but a little nervous that I still haven’t gotten any definite information from them regarding my city-placement or date of arrival. I just sent them an e-mail to inform them of my change of address and phone number, as well as a little “wtf?” (though much more professional) to express my concern over it being only a month before I’m expected to go there and I still don’t have any of the details.
But overall, I really don’t have anything to complain about. My life right now is actually pretty frickin’ awesome when you think about it. I’ve got at least a month of little more to do than hang around, visit people I love, and kick my Japanese-studying into overdrive. I might also do a little driving for Domino’s like old times, as one of Billy’s friends works there now and he said he might be able to get something worked out for me whereby I’m not actually a full-time employee but just on-call for busy evenings. And then next month (assuming all goes smoothly) I’ll actually be starting a new life in JAPAN!!! It’s quite a major crossroads I’m at now, and it’s impossible not to appreciate how monumental it is.
I don’t know how frequently I’ll be posting over the next few weeks, but I assume it’ll remain about as frequent as before. If you’re one of my American friends and you’re reading this and I haven’t contacted you, feel free to contact me if you want to meet up sometime and I’d be happy to. I only contacted the people I saw last time but there are plenty of others I’d like to see that I’m just not sure would be interested.
This will be my last journal entry from Hannover. In a few minutes, Lena will swing by to say goodbye to me, and at around 2:00 Oliver will come to help me put the finishing touches on my packing and throwing stuff away. When that’s done we’ll be driving to Dortmund where Oliver knows a guy who knows of a good place to camp, and we’ll either spend the night camping outside or in the apartment of Oliver’s friend. The next morning we’ll head from there to nearby Düsseldorf, from where my plane will take me back to America and the next chapter of my life.
I’ve spent the last few days living pretty much like I always have, spending lots of time in my box but heading out frequently for errands, jogging, or cycling. On Tuesday evening I went out for a little farewell dinner with Amanda, Tom (the guy from Atlanta), and Lena. We’d thought that would be the last time I’d see Lena but when we finished eating she said she didn’t want to say goodbye that night and would make sure to see me on Thursday. That goodbye will probably happen before I finish this entry [it did, and was very sad].
Once Lena and Tom had gone, Amanda kept buying us rounds of beer and we ended up staying there until extremely late at night, getting drunk to the point where I was loose-lipped enough to get into a discussion of my sexual issues, and she was insisting that we go to a sex-worker and get my virginity taken that night so it wouldn’t be such a big deal to me anymore. In a normal state of mind I wouldn’t even consider it, but it was kind of tempting at that level of drunkenness. Still, no amount of drunkenness would be enough to get me to throw my virginity away on a prostitute—sex with someone who’s only doing it for business has no appeal to me whatsoever, and since I’m perfectly content in my long-term virginity (except for a few highly unfortunate side-effects), that’s just not something I was willing to do.
But I had to give Amanda credit for at least trying to help me out, and coming closer than anyone else has. It was a bittersweet farewell when I hugged her goodbye and she rode her bike away, then I stumbled back towards my apartment just as the rain began to fall heavily. I waited in a doorway of a building for it to let up, dozed off for awhile, then got back up and headed home as the sun began to rise.
I had to suffer through the after-effects for most of yesterday, so unfortunately I didn’t squeeze as much appreciation out of Hannover on my last full day here than I would have liked, but the weather was terrible anyway so all I did was go for one last bike ride in the morning.
But after the sun had gone down last night, the power went off in the whole city. One of the things I always found interesting about Germany was that in all the years I’ve spent here (almost 4 if you include my exchange-student year) was that I’d never experienced a single power-blackout. I’m not sure if this one was weather-related or simply the result of an overloaded grid due to the fact that those nuclear reactors aren’t running anymore (that would make my E.ON students very happy) but the fact that the very first blackout I’ve experienced in Germany came on my very last night in Hannover was a bit of a noteworthy coincidence. Of course I went outside and walked around to get a feel for it, heading through the train station (my last time there) and to the Raschplatz on the other side, which is the first place I had to go when I first arrived in Hannover about three years ago. That feels simultaneously like yesterday and a million years ago.
And this morning I went for one final jog down along the river and for a brief time next to the Maschsee, fully aware the whole time that I wouldn’t be seeing any of these lovely, familiar areas again for quite some time. I can hardly believe that my life here is over.
I’ll leave reflecting on my time here as a whole for another day, as right now I’m focused on the logistical nightmare of getting me and all my stuff back across the ocean. For now I’ll just leave you with some pictures of Hannover I took recently, most from the top of the Rathaus and a few from just walking or cycling around.
In less than a week my life here will be over, I’ll be back in America and the entire 3-year-long experience will be nothing more than a memory (and nearly a thousand pages’ worth of journal entries). I’ve been going about my life as though diagnosed with a terminal illness, thinking “is this the last time I’ll ever…?” for just about everything I do. I knew that this past Friday night was officially my last Friday night in Germany, and now every single day is the last [x]day I’ll have here.
Thankfully, my last Friday and last Saturday were excellent, full of experiences perfectly appropriate to be among my last in Germany. On Friday afternoon, Lena picked me up and drove me to Celle where she, Oliver, and I spent the evening in the backyard, playing with the dog, making a bonfire, and, naturally, drinking lots of beer. It was the first time I’d hung out with both of them together in at least a month and it was a lovely time as usual, made a little more emotional by knowing it would be my last night there in Celle. We talked about lots of things, none of which are as important as the fact that we had nice conversations in the first place. I remember them asking me what I’ll miss most about Germany, and while they said “other than the people” the honest answer is that it will be the two of them.
I may never spend the night in Celle again (when I come back to visit they might have moved on by then), but I’ll at least see Oliver and Lena one more time each. Oliver will be taking me to the airport on Friday (we’ll be leaving Hannover on Thursday to get closer to Düsseldorf to be there in the morning of the flight) and Lena will come too unless she has to do something for her studies. If she can’t join us though, she said she’d meet me one afternoon in Hannover to say goodbye. I don’t even want to think about that right now.
On Saturday we had to get up relatively early (9:00) to get ready to go on a climbing-trip that Lena’s friend Simone had organized over a month before. Simone is the same woman who organized the two “Grünkohlwanderung”s I went on, but this time she wanted to try something different and set up a time-slot for us to go to one of these giant climbing things that look like oversized jungle-gyms. It’s where a lot of businesses send their employees to have these “team-building exercises” and that’s what our group of about 12 people would be doing in spite of the fact that we’re not a “team” of any kind and all that binds us together is that we all know Simone or someone who knows Simone.
Honestly, I wasn’t looking forward to it all that much. When I got up at 9:00 after a night of many beers, I went out to walk Oliver’s dog (also very sad to think that was the last time I’d do that) and all I could think was how the last thing I felt like doing was climbing up a giant wall with a big group of people.
We drove into Hannover to pick up a couple of other girls who decided to join, and then another half-hour or so to the southwest of Hannover in a region called the “Deister” which in comparison to the extreme flatness Hannover could be called “mountainous” but really it’s just a lot of hills. It was a very nice area though, and we were hoping for good weather. The morning was nice and sunny but the clouds had rolled in by the time we got there and the forecast called for a chance of rain or even thunderstorms.
Some navigational difficulties made us the last to arrive, but when we got there I immediately recognized a few faces from the Grünkohlwanderungs. In addition to Simone were the lovely Inge and her boyfriend-recently-turned-husband Matthias, and four or five others whose faces I remember but whose names I’ve forgotten. There was going to be a BBQ at Simone’s place after the climbing, and I was looking forward to that more than the climbing itself, so my attitude at the very beginning was very much along the lines of “let’s just get this over with.”
Before we did any actual climbing, there was about an hour of team-building exercises. There was one girl who worked there named Sybille who was in charge of our group (there were a few other people there but no other big groups) and she led us to a big wooden log on the grass and told us to line up on it. She then instructed us to rearrange ourselves in alphabetical order by first name, but we couldn’t get off the log because the grass was water in the Amazon, infested with crocodiles and other nasty things that would eat you if you fell in.
We managed to rearrange ourselves without too much trouble, but as we did she kept moving a pair of ropes on the edge of the log closer to each other (the log was sinking, you see) so we had to squeeze in closer and closer to each other. I’m sure this is highly effective team-building psychology: forcing the people to stand in uncomfortably close proximity to one another must help to create synergy.
Next we had to cross the treacherous Amazon waters to a wooden platform several meters away using only plastic beer crates, but Sybille kept kicking the crates away from us if we used them and then let go. Inge was the first to step out on the crates, and she brought one back over to the log. I’d been standing next to her on the log so I stepped out onto the one she brought, but I lost my balance and “fell in the water”. Sybille didn’t see, and while I was perfectly willing to be “dead” and just watch the rest of the exercise from the side-lines, there was another girl there to assist and she told me to just get back on the crate and pretend it didn’t happen. Then Sybille decided to make things even more difficult and she tied a bandana around Simone’s legs and around mine. “Are you kidding me?” I thought, figuring there was no way I could possibly get across now, but Inge figured out that by keeping two crates right next to each other and both of us moving to one at the same time, she could slowly but surely get me to the platform before going back to help the others.
Eventually we all got to the platform, which was teetering on another wooden log, our objective being to shift our balance of weight so that the platform wouldn’t hit the ground on either side for fifteen seconds. We had a very difficult time with this until I suggested we all stand as close to the middle as possible, at which point we made it for about twelve seconds but apparently that was enough.
Then we had to get across the crates again to a patch of dirt which was also safe-ground, and there was a wall of ropes resembling a spider’s web. Our next task was to get everyone through the ropes without touching them or re-using any of the openings. The group just kind of stood there dumbfounded for a moment, not having any idea how this could be done, but I think I’ve done something like this before (I can’t for the life of me remember where—possibly a Boy Scout trip when I was young) but I seemed to intuitively know what to do. We first had to get a couple of people through the ropes at the bottom with them crawling on their hands and some of us lifting the rest of their bodies up from the back, at which point they could then help others by lifting them from the front. We did this quite successfully, but of course the last two people through had to be blind-folded to make it more interesting.
With that finished I was finally able to un-bind my legs, but now all of us except for Oliver had to be blind-folded and standing in a line with our hands on the person’s shoulders in front of us, and Oliver had to lead us from behind only by tapping on the person’s shoulders in front of him to signal which way we had to turn, and that person would tap the person in front of them and so on until the signal reached the front and the whole group turned accordingly. That was a rather annoying task, but we eventually got to where we were going: a solid wooden wall that we all had to get over.
Once again, I knew exactly what to do because I’d done this sort of thing before, either in Boy Scouts or for high school gym class. I asked someone else to help me lift a guy up by the legs so he could get over the wall, and then he could help raise everyone else up while we continued lifting them by the legs. We got over in an extremely short amount of time, the girl who was in charge seemed quite impressed, and then it was finally time for the last exercise which involved getting us all across a couple of tightropes arranged in the shape of a triangle. I’d done this before as well so I went first to show others what to do (you just hold the hands of a person on the other rope and the next people hold onto you and so on) and we again finished in a very short amount of time.
By then I was already enjoying myself more than I thought I’d be, and after a fifteen-minute break I was ready for the actual climbing. Sybille equipped us all with the proper gear, showed us how to put it on and checked that we had it right, then brought us over and gave a little run-down of the proper safety procedures. She knew I spoke English so she’d occasionally translate for me, but during that part Inge translated for me, revealing for the first time to me that her English is actually quite superb.
Everyone needs a partner for the climbing, so Oliver and I paired up. We first had to climb a fifteen-meter wall with little color-coded climbing-nubs arranged in three rows: yellow was easy, blue was moderate and red was difficult. With me spotting him from the ground, Oliver first attempted the red path but it proved too difficult (you have to actually lift yourself up by the fingertips) so he switched to the blue wall and went the rest of the way up that path. Oliver mentioned before we went that he’s a little afraid of heights, so I was quite impressed by him for making it up there, as well as everything he did at the top. Another girl spotted me while I climbed up the blue path, and while I’ve never climbed up one of these sorts of walls before it all came perfectly naturally. I used to love climbing trees and monkey-bars when I was a kid, and this whole apparatus was like a mega-sized monkey-bars for adults.
But on those jungle-gyms as a kid you’d play by using your imagination. Up on this beast you didn’t need your imagination. It was enough of an adrenaline rush to be up so high and walking across various sorts of obstacles. We all had ropes with hooks that we had to carefully attach to the wires that ran above every obstacle, so there was no danger of falling to your death but it was still a rather nerve-wracking experience.
There were enough obstacles so that our whole group could be up there at once and still not have to wait too often for others to finish, but watching others get across was almost as fun as getting across yourself. Describing what these obstacles were like would be tedious and pointless.
The most nerve-wracking obstacle though was simply a gap of about one meter between one little platform and another. Sybille kept egging me on to do the most difficult challenges, and when I got to that one she insisted I jump across without relying on my safety ropes (which people could easily cheat by holding on to while making the jump). “Just imagine there’s a beautiful woman on the other side” she said. I had no choice but not to chicken-out, and I figured if these platforms were a meter apart but right on the ground I wouldn’t think twice about it. The only different between them being one meter above the ground and fifteen meters was psychological. I hopped across successfully, and even convinced Oliver to do the same.
We spent maybe an hour and a half up there altogether, and the weather was very weird the whole time. The sun shined for a few minutes, then the clouds came back, sometimes it started raining a little, then the sun would come out again, and on and on. It was actually quite cool for being up there, to have wind, sun, and a little rain all mixed together. Though there were thunderstorms happening in the distance, luckily none of them hit us directly.
The final thing to do was climb a post up to a platform 25 meters high and slide down a long rope to the bottom. Sybille was waiting for us up there to get us connected right and send us on our way. Leaping off that platform and just letting gravity take you down was quite a thrill, and I’m glad one of Lena’s friends was there with her camera to take pictures of the people sliding down. I ended up being the last one off, and then Sybille slid down after me.
We still had about an hour left by the time we were all on the ground, and we used it to give everyone a turn on this big swing-thing where your friends pull on a rope to lift you up, then the rope detaches when you’re at the top and sends you swinging back-and-forth. A big thrill for the first few seconds, and then surprisingly relaxing as you rock gently back and forth.
Eventually it was time to go, and all of us were clearly in great spirits after that experience. Oliver also remarked that it had been way more enjoyable than he expected. I certainly had a much better time than I thought I would, which looking back I think is rather silly. Of course it was going to be a great time—it’s just a bunch of frequent doses of adrenaline pumped you’re your brain over and over again. The thrill of conquering fear, of making it across the obstacle, of jumping off the super-tall platform, and so on. When it’s over, you feel like you can conquer anything.
Sybille told us when it was over that we were one of the best groups she’s had. And just as we were all thinking, “she probably says that to every group” she insisted that she really meant it with this group and then explained how we were different than most groups. I could imagine if most of the groups she does are business-teams, this loose collection of friends and acquaintances who were only there for a good time might have been better.
So after that great experience it was time to go to the BBQ at Simone’s which after a bit of a round-about trip to drop off the girls from Hannover at the train station and check out a nearby location from Oliver’s past, we got there and found everyone from the climbing-trip as well as a few others at Simone’s place. I’d expected to enjoy the BBQ more than the climbing, but I was so dehydrated and so sick of beer from the night before that I just started off drinking water and only had two beers the whole evening. As such I didn’t get as outgoing as I’m capable of and mostly talked only to Oliver and Lena. But being in a big group they were mostly talking to others, always in German, and I found my mind wandering quite often.
During dinner I was sitting next to a couple of guys whom I eventually realized were gay once they started kissing each other in front of everyone. I thought that was fantastic—not so much for them but for the group. It’s my understanding that most Germans are pretty intolerant about that sort of thing, but here was a group of about fifteen Germans and the gay guys could be openly gay in front of everyone without anyone seeming to have a problem with it.
At one point, one of the guys there got us all in a circle for a little game he invented (or stole from somebody else) to test our “social competence”. He handed us all a piece of paper with a number that had to be kept secret. When he called out our number we’d have to fall and the people standing next to us would have to catch us—typical trust-building exercise. He called 6 and Simone went down and I and the person to the other side of her had to catch her. Then he called 5 and Oliver went down. Then he called 8 and everyone else went down, because everyone else had the number 8. That was pretty clever and we all had a good laugh.
After that Oliver and Lena decided it was time to go. I said goodbye to a few people there including Simone, making sure to thank her for the great time. She said the next time we see each other will probably be the next Grünkohlwanderung, but alas it’s highly unlikely I’ll be around for any more of those.
Oliver and Lena were heading back to Celle but they didn’t want to drop me off at my flat because you need a special ticket to drive in the city of Hannover and they were worried about getting caught without one. We had to drive by the E.ON building in Mühlenberg so I said they could drop me off there and I’d take the same tram home that I used to take several times a week.
They pulled into the parking lot near the station and got out to wish me goodbye. I wasn’t sure if this was the last time I’d see Lena, but she assured me that if she can’t help take me to the airport this week she’ll definitely meet up with me before then. Still, we hugged each other tightly and even got a little teary. The real goodbye is going to be very difficult.
So I said goodbye and took the tram back from Mühlenberg to Waterloo station near my flat, which was weird because I’d thought the previous Thursday—my last day of work—would be the last time I’d see that E.ON building or ride that tram. But I knew last night that it really would be the last time I rode the tram in Hannover.
Not wanting to sink straight back into my couch after such a big day, I did a little cycling as twilight turned to night, and went to bed relatively early to recharge more of the energy I’ve been expending. Now it’s my last Sunday in Germany, and once I get this blog entry done I intend to enjoy it to the fullest.
I always try to live for the moment, but in these “final-stretch” periods of my life it becomes downright necessary to appreciate every last second to the fullest, and knowing the end is near makes it easier.
It occurred to me yesterday that it was the second-to-last Friday I’d be in Germany, so perhaps I ought to behave like a normal human being in his youth and go out. I checked the internet to see what was going on at all the clubs around and it looked like my best bet was a “Nuller Party” at the Faust, a music club about a 15-minute walk from my flat and right along the river where I go jogging. This is apparently the new thing now—in the last decade, 90s parties—where the DJ plays only music from the 90s—became very popular, and now they’re already doing the same thing with music from the 00s, a decade which somehow went by without ever getting an official name in English, but in Germany I suppose they settled on the “Nulls” and hence the “Nuller Party”.
After spending a few hours working up a buzz, I left my flat shortly before 11:00 when the website said this thing was supposed to start. The sun had only gone down about an hour earlier and the sky hadn’t completely darkened yet, so it felt much earlier than it was. But when I got to the club there was nobody inside. I don’t know why I hadn’t realized that if the entry started at 11:00 most people would actually get there later, but because I’d aimed to be there at 11:00 exact I ended up being the very first person to arrive.
A couple of hot German girls came in shortly after me, and though I stood next to them at the bar while ordering myself a beer, they neither spoke to or even made eye-contact with me. Of course I considered approaching them but there was this über-bitch aura radiating from them which is sadly quite typical of young German girls. These were the quintessence of young German bitches, and I felt like I could sense the cruelness of their hearts through the thin layer of surface beauty they possessed, so I didn’t try to talk to them.
I went up to the coat-check counter and asked the girl there when things usually got started at this place, and she said between 1:00 and 2:00. Ah, I thought, now I remember why I never go out. It was already past my normal bed-time of 11:00 and the party wasn’t even going to really get started for another couple hours.
I went outside and walked over to the Gretchen, a beer garden next to the Faust, and asked a woman working there the same thing I’d asked the coat-check girl, and she confirmed what was said. She was nice and she spoke English to me when it was apparent my German was bad, and when I ran out of things to say and walked away she said it was “a pleasure to meet me.” This woman was like the polar opposite of the girls in the club—clearly a wonderful human being on the inside but utterly unremarkable in terms of physical appearance. Why does it always have to be like that?
Anyway, I went to one of the tables outside near where others were sitting (the beer-garden was not as empty as the club) and sat down to roll up a cigarette. A young kid sat down on the other side of the table from me and asked if he could bum a smoke, so I happily obliged his request as his friend came with a freshly-ordered pizza from the food-stand there and sat down on the other side of the table. We got to talking and I ended up spending the next hour with them, and while it’s a fun little anecdote I’m afraid it’ll have to be edited out of the public part of this entry. If you’ve got access to private entries you might want to scroll down now and read the unabridged version.
They were young German boys all of 16 years old, the kind of kids I normally look at with reflexive disdain because they just seem like dumb little punks. But I was in good spirits and they seemed friendly enough so I engaged them in some conversation and told them about how I’ve been teaching English here for a few years and would be going back to America in two weeks. I guess they don’t meet people with quite as interesting a story very often so they quickly warmed up to me and wanted to hear more, particularly about the way things are in America. Ever since Cristiano suggested it in Rome I’ve been telling everyone I’m from New York, so they thought this was extra-awesome because New York City is one of the places they’ve always dreamed of going. The kid who bummed the smoke from me was even wearing a Yankee cap.
I liked these kids, and talking to them reminded me of talking to my younger brother and his friends whenever I’m back home in NJ. They also got major points in my book by attempting as much as they could to speak English to me, even though I was doing my best to speak German. The whole conversation was a weird mixture of English and German, often with words from both languages in the same sentence.
They learned a lot about America from me and I learned a little about what teenage boys in Hannover are like, and when we were finished talking they went home and I went back to the club. They said they were lucky to have met me, so I felt pretty good on my way back in, now feeling like anybody I might meet would indeed be lucky to meet me.
Back in the club it was now about half-past midnight and there were more people there but still no one dancing. I ordered a ridiculously over-priced water to get myself hydrated, then migrated to the back of the dance floor to do a little subtle dancing to the decent-but-far-from-great music that was playing. I was pretty buzzed at this point and seriously considered just letting loose on the empty dance-floor without caring at all how silly I’d look to everyone, but I apparently wasn’t quite buzzed enough for that.
So I went back to the bar and ordered a whiskey on the rocks (my current favorite drink) and the guy said it would have to be in a plastic cup, but if I wanted a glass I could just go to the bar at the smoking lounge in the back. I decided to check out the smoking lounge and discovered that there were even more people in there than out in the main area of the club. It was—as you might expect—pretty smoky in there, but not too bad.
I ordered my whiskey on the rocks (amused to see it served in a plastic cup anyway) and took the only empty barstool there between a couple of guys who were also there alone. I sipped from my drink and scanned the room, trying to determine which of these small groups of Germans sitting in the couches in the back looked to be the most promising to approach. As is usually the case with crowds of Germans, none of the groups seemed very approachable at all, which was another reminder of why I don’t go out very often.
I didn’t really want a cigarette, but in the spirit of “when in Rome” I figured I might as well smoke since I was here in the smoking lounge. I took out my tobacco and started to roll one up, and that’s when the guy sitting to my right spoke to me. He asked me if I had any filters, as apparently he had tobacco and papers but no filters. So once again smoking was the cause of my meeting someone. I wonder how non-smokers ever meet people. Seriously—I might give up the habit if it wasn’t so damned useful.
So this guy—who looked exactly like Ron Livingston, star of the movie Office Space and Nixon from Band of Brothers—quickly realized my German wasn’t native and asked me where I was from, and seemed just as pleasantly surprised as the kids from earlier that I was from America (and New York in particular). It turned out he wasn’t a native German either but was actually a Russian, born in St. Petersburg and whose family migrated to Germany as soon as the Berlin wall came down. He said that the fall of the Berlin wall was the most significant historical event of his lifetime and that if that hadn’t happened he would still be in Russia right now. He’d moved here when he was 9, and was now 26. His family is scattered around Germany but apparently he also has an aunt and uncle in Brooklyn, thus providing even more evidence of my friend Mike’s theory that Brooklyn is the center of the universe.
The guy’s name was Jevgeny, and he struggled to speak English to me throughout our whole conversation and while he kept apologizing for how shitty his English was, I thought he was doing just fine. He was deeply curious about America because he never gets to speak to actual Americans. That’s one of the great things about Hannover—it’s not a tourist city so Americans are a rare commodity, and people treat a conversation with you like a rare opportunity. He said that he had a perception of Americans as very stupid and closed-minded, and while he made sure to explain that he wasn’t talking about me, I took no offense because as I explained, most Americans are stupid and closed-minded. He told me a story about someone he knew who was an exchange student in Kentucky, and the family he stayed with kept asking him about Nazis and whether Hitler was secretly still alive. I had to admit that it’s true—when most Americans hear “Germany” they immediately think of Nazis and Hitler—but people on the coasts and in the cities tend to be more sophisticated than these hicks in places like Kentucky.
I was happy to disabuse him of the notion that all Americans are morons, and he complimented me more than once on my intelligence. That’s one great thing about being an American abroad—people judge you by extremely low standards so they’re impressed by you simply for not being a drooling idiot. He had a lot of questions about America and I was happy to explain things to him, particularly about the political situation because most Europeans have no idea that Obama is really just a puppet dangling from the same strings as Bush and Clinton before him.
But I also learned some very interesting things from Jevgeny. He works at a small grocery store in the south of Hannover, and while he didn’t say so explicitly he basically implied that he’s got connections. Apparently all Russians in Germany have some kind of ties to organized crime, and he said that it comes with positives and negatives. The downside is that when Germans find out he’s a Russian, they immediately back away and don’t want to talk to him. On the plus side, nobody fucks with him. He told me that if anyone came up and started shit with me while we were sitting there, he’d punch him in the face without fear of retaliation.
He also seemed concerned that he might be intimidating me, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. And he kept saying that I could go any time and he didn’t want to keep me there, but I explained that this was the whole reason I came out—to meet and talk to interesting people. Jevgeny was a very interesting guy. One of the most fascinating things I learned from him is that with his German passport he’s free to go anywhere in Europe except his home country of Russia. When he goes back, they stop him at the airport because apparently all Russians are supposed to serve in the military and he hasn’t, so he has to bribe them every single time to keep from being sent to the army.
Eventually, Jevgeny went home and just like the kids from earlier told me that he felt lucky to have met me, which never stops feeling nice.
Now it was finally time to go to the club area and do some dancing, as the dance-floor was now full of people. I downed another expensive mineral water, then proceeded to weave my way through the crowd and dance to a bunch of unrecognizable songs (I didn’t do mush listening to the radio during the 00s) and see if any of the groups of Germans might be approachable, or better yet if there were any attractive girls I could attempt to flirt with. I was at maximum-confidence, truly believing that any woman I approached would be lucky for the chance to meet me, but things didn’t work out that way.
None of girls so much as made eye-contact with me, and all the attractive ones were dancing with their boyfriends anyway. It’s the same story whenever I go to a dance club—the girls are either taken or totally not into me—and it was one final reminder of why I never go out. Even when I’m smiling, having a good time, and radiating confidence, I just can’t seem to attract anyone. But fuck German girls anyway. There are of course many many exceptions, but generally speaking they’re almost all a bunch of stuck-up bitches. I think I’ve been better off during my three years here for having not had my life complicated by one.
After giving up on meeting anyone new, and quite satisfied at the socialization I’d already had, I went to the coat-check counter to retrieve my jacket and go home. There was a slight problem—the little token they gave me had apparently fallen out of my pocket, and the girl there (typical stuck-up German bitch) gave me this whole, “sucks to be you” attitude like there was absolutely nothing she could do to help me. She told me to wait an hour for people to start going home. Right, like I’m really going to wait until everyone else has gotten their coat before I can get mine and go. I obstinately stayed at the counter and she finally relented. I described my jacket to her and told her that I could prove it was mine because there was a camera in my pocket with some pictures of me in it. She found the coat, found the camera, and handed it to me. Luckily I still had some pictures of me from the last time I was in Celle, and I showed her one of me with Oliver’s dog and she laughed and gave me my coat back.
It was now past 4 a.m. and during my walk home the sky began to get brighter as the sun was already rising. I’d literally been out from dusk until dawn, but in Germany during the summer that’s not a very long time at all.
So that was my nice little night out. I’m quite glad I did that, and while I’ve got no desire to drink or go out again tonight, I’m sure I’ll have myself a few more nights like that before I leave.
I just returned from my last day of work as an English teacher for Planeo in Hannover. It’s been a week of goodbyes, and now the reality that my time here is coming to an end has really begun to hit home. I’ll never teach an English lesson for E.ON employees again. I’ll never even go into those buildings again. After nearly three years of going and coming, it hardly feels real that I’ll never go there again.
The goodbyes began last Friday with my last trip to Helmstedt and my last lesson with the chatty secretaries who were the students I had the longest, and they were definitely the most sad to see me go. On the way back I stopped in Braunschweig to pay a second visit to my Grandfather’s cousin Elisabeth, which also ended with a farewell although we’ve only met twice.
Monday I said goodbye to two classes, the second of which was full of a bunch of guys I really loved teaching, both because of their sense of humor and the fact that they loved hearing me go on at length about American politics. I gave them one final rant, this time about the Obama budget talks and how I now think he has no chance of winning re-election.
Tuesday I had only one lesson, this one with two guys, one of them was Holger—the guy I went to the Coppelius show with many months ago—but our goodbye wasn’t too official as we’re now friends on Facebook and I’m sure we’ll stay in touch.
My last Wednesday lesson was last week but nobody showed up, so I didn’t need to say any goodbyes there.
And today I had my last three lessons back-to-back. The first was the lesson with Mandy, my most beautiful student whom I’ve contemplated asking out many times but never did because I always got vibes of a complete lack-of-interest in me from her. I’d contemplated saying something like, “Now that you’re not my student anymore, it wouldn’t be awkward for me to ask you out. How would you like a boyfriend for two weeks?” I wouldn’t have actually done that but I was spared the annoyance of having chickened-out by finally confirming after all this time that she does in fact have a boyfriend. She’s never directly mentioned him before but when I asked her about her plans for the summer and she said she wanted to go somewhere with her “friend” I asked “your boyfriend?” and she said yes. So now I can feel just fine about never having pursued anything there.
Then it was my last lesson with one of my favorite students, Katja, with whom I spent most of the time talking about politics and making jokes. My sense of humor always seemed to appeal to her so I always enjoyed those lessons. I’m definitely sad about never seeing her again.
And finally, my last lesson was cut mercifully short as the two women who take part had a meeting to go to only a half-hour later. They brought me down to the cafeteria and treated me to a drink as we exchanged farewells and best-wishes.
The last person I bid farewell to was the very nice receptionist at the E.ON building, whom I told it was my last day and I’d be off to Japan now, and of course the first thing she brought up was Fukushima. But she and the other receptionist wished me a very fond farewell and then I left the building, taking a deep breath of the fresh jobless air.
This is the beginning of the end of my time in Germany, but the end of the beginning of my English teaching career. It’s been a fantastic experience, one I think was a great way to start out doing this. It’s going to be extremely different in Japan, but I’ve grown enough both as a teacher and a person to feel ready for it now.
All that remains is to get my affairs in order, enjoy the hell out of these last two weeks, and then head back to the U.S.A. for a month before finally going to Japan. I’ll be in three countries in the next two months. Another one of my life’s major turning points is under way.
I might not be the world’s biggest Pink Floyd fan, but I’m fairly confident I’d make the Top 20. And while I don’t listen to their albums as frequently as I used to and when I do it’s usually their earlier stuff, the album that started it all for me was The Wall. After discovering that as a teenager I’d lay in bed in the dark and listen to it almost every night, deriving not just pleasure from the music but deep emotional catharsis from the meaning (or at least the meaning I perceived) behind it. By that time, Pink Floyd had been broken up for over two decades and it was an absolute certainty that a full-scale live production of The Wall would never happen again, and I lamented being born too late to have seen it. But when I learned to my astonishment last year that Roger Waters was going on tour with The Wall again, I knew I had to go.
Because I’m living in Germany I had to wait for the European leg of the tour, which just came to Germany this month. I bought tickets and saw the show in Mannheim, and last week went to both shows in Berlin. My blog entry for the Mannheim show was written more or less like a typical personal blog entry, focused primarily on my experience, but I’ll try to make this entry a bit more universal and write about the experience. While no experience of a show can be completely divorced from my subjective opinions of the songs, the seats I was in, and the people I was surrounded by—which I’ll describe at the forefront—I will write this as though for any fellow Floyd fans who saw the show and want to re-live the experience, or who missed the show but are curious as to how it was done. Normal readers who are not familiar with The Wall won’t find anything of interest here.
The Circumstances:
I’d bought a ticket for the Mannheim show as soon as I heard The Wall would be touring again because that was the first show in Germany. Just a day later it occurred to me how awesome it would be to see it in Berlin—what with the whole significance of “the wall” idea for that city, as well as the fact that the last time Roger did The Wall was in Potzdamer Platz shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall, which at the time was the largest concert event ever staged. I bought a ticket for the first night in Berlin, and assumed those two shows would be the only shows I’d see.
But when I looked at the seating chart and saw that my seats for the first show, Wednesday night, were far off to the side of the stage just like they were at the Mannheim show (only on the opposite side of the arena), I wished I’d get to see the wall from straight on at least once. It’s a very visual show and when your view is drastically askew it’s a different experience. I’d also be at the mercy of whomever was seated next to me, and if like the first show it was near people who weren’t all that into it, I’d feel a little self-conscious about getting into it as much as I could. So to remedy both problems I called my friend Oliver and asked if he’d want to join me—he was also into Floyd as a kid, though his childhood was a decade before mine—and I got us two tickets on the lower level of the stadium, directly stage-center.
On Wednesday night I went to Berlin equipped with my camera, got a few nice shots of the actual Berlin Wall, the largest remaining section coincidentally right across the street from the O2 Arena where the metaphorical wall was being built, and eventually found my way inside and up to my seat.
On the first night I hadn’t spoken to any of my neighbors and it made me feel self-conscious throughout, so I made it a point to talk to the friendly-seeming guy to my right before the show started. I learned he was from a nearby village and was seeing the show because he’d wanted to go to the Potzdamer Platz show back in 1990 but didn’t have the time, and this would make up for it. He said he never goes to live concerts so this would be a real treat for him. The people to my left I spoke to at intermission, and while they said they’d driven 200 km to see the show, they “weren’t really big Pink Floyd fans” and they sucked some of the enjoyment out of my experience by basically sitting on their hands the whole time and never getting into it at all. For some reason, that seemed to be the case for the whole audience Wednesday night, who were noticeably less enthusiastic than the audience in Mannheim had been. The audience then were always rising to their feet to dance and clap along, and the applause after the show lasted a solid five minutes until the lights finally came up. On Wednesday in Berlin, only the people in the floor seats ever stood up, there was much less clapping along, and the applause ended the moment Roger left the stage.
The circumstances for the Thursday show could not have been more different, both in terms of my own experience and of the audience at large. I of course had my friend Oliver to my left who was just as psyched about seeing the show for the first time as I was about seeing it again (and finally from the right perspective), and to my left was a middle-aged American couple who were obviously fans. Before the show started I heard the man explaining some of the meaning of the album to the woman, and I would have tried to talk to him but the show started just a minute or two after we sat down. He turned out to be a mega-fan, more enthusiastic than anyone I’ve ever seen at a Floyd show, and his presence was a hugely significant factor in my experience of the Thursday show for good and for ill. Ill because he couldn’t be ignored—he was obviously a little drunk and kept singing along and making loud comments about how “fucking great” everything was—but good because there could be no doubt that this guy appreciated the music. He was carrying on so loudly that the woman in front of me kept turning around with her camera to take pictures of him, which he thought was hilarious. At first it was quite a mental struggle to not let it ruin the show but I eventually figured out how to go with it, which was much easier once I actually spoke to him at the intermission.
I said “I have to talk to you because you’re obviously a fan,” and he immediately apologized and said “I’m sorry, brother, I just can’t help myself. My wife and I came all the way from Colorado for this tour. What do you think of the show?” I told him it was incredible and this was actually the third time I’ve seen it, and he grinned widely and said, “Yeah brother, I’ve seen it like five times!” and he immediately gave me a big hug of Floyd-fanatic solidarity. During the second half of the show, he switched seats with his wife and sat directly next to me, and took my hand to say, “It’s nice to be able to share this experience with you, brother.” So during the second half it was easier not to get frustrated by him. I just figured that’s how I would be if I were just as drunk. He was loudly singing along so I didn’t have to. I could sing along and dance in my chair as well, and I wouldn’t have to feel self-conscious at all because he was way more over-the-top, and my own visible enjoyment of the show would only add to his.
Strangely enough, just like on Wednesday my own immediate seating-surroundings were like a microcosm of the entire audience, and just as my neighbors on Wednesday hadn’t been too into it and the audience as a whole was relatively lame, my neighbors on Thursday were as enthusiastic as you can imagine and the audience as a whole was noticeably more into it as well. It wasn’t just my perception—I’d paid attention to the section I knew I’d be sitting in on Thursday from my seats on Wednesday and that section was seated throughout the whole show. But on Thursday night, when I was in that section, we were up on our feet and clapping along whenever the music was conducive to it. And when the show was over, the applause maintained its intensity right up until the house lights came up. It was strange but fascinating how different the audience-dynamics were for the same show in the same city, just one night apart.
So now I’ll go song by song and describe what the experience was like, mentioning my own personal experience only when relevant, and include any photos I took that came out half-way decent enough to include.
In the Flesh?
The lights go down and the crowd starts cheering. A couple of men dressed in the fascist-uniforms used later in the show drag a man-sized puppet to the center of the stage, and you hear the most famous lines from the film Spartacus as the Roman soldiers demand that the defeated rebel slaves hand over “the living flesh of the slave called Spartacus”. A spotlight shines down on one of the audience-members. “I’m Spartacus!” you hear. Another spotlight on another audience-member: “I’m Spartacus!” Again and again: “I’m Spartacus…I’m Spartacus…I am Spartacus!”
Then all the lights turn off and it gets very quiet. Suddenly you hear a lone trumpet player standing somewhere in the middle of the left side of the arena playing “Outside the Wall”. You’re probably getting chills at this point, especially if you know what’s coming. It goes on for a short while, longer than it does on the album, and just when you’re about to slip into a more relaxed state—BANG!!! Off goes the first round of fireworks along with the first notes of “In the Flesh?” blaring across the arena at top-volume. The crowd erupts as the band behind the not-yet-built wall plays.
Then the man himself, Roger Waters, walks out on stage and the crowd erupts with applause again. He waves hello to those sitting stage left—they go wild. He crosses to stage-right and they go wild (I rise to my feet and wave when I’m up there, just in case he might take notice). He turns to the rest of the crowd and everyone is thunderously applauding until some stage-hands put him in uniform and he starts to sing: “So you thought you might like to go to the show?” After the verse is sung the special effects really kick into gear: a fireworks display that you’d have to see to believe, and finally a model airplane flying and crashing into the top of the right side of the wall, knocking off a few bricks and bursting into flames beyond.
The Thin Ice
On the screen there’s a picture of a soldier, which fades to a picture of a notebook page with some information about that soldier typed up on it: Eric Fletcher Waters, 2nd Lieutenant in the 8th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers of the British Army in World War II, who died at Anzio on 18 February 1944 and left his son Roger to grow up without a father. The first brick in the wall.
Then there’s a picture of a Muslim woman who might look a little familiar to some. The picture fades to a notebook page of information about her: Neda Agha-Soltan, January 23, 1983 – June 20, 2009. I hadn’t seen this at the first show because my view of the screen was blocked, but I’d noticed her picture on the wall during intermission without knowing she had already made an earlier appearance. For those who don’t know, she was the woman whose gruesome death from a bullet-wound was caught on tape during the 2009 Iranian uprising after the stolen elections. Her death really made that whole event hit home and I was personally moved by it enough to write several blog entries about it, and I found it very moving that Roger would feature her so prominently in the show.
As the song is sung the screen cycles through several more pictures of dead soldiers and political activists along with their names and basic information. It’s half rock-song, half-memorial, and unless you’ve got a drunk American singing along at the top of his lungs next to you, it’s impossible not to be moved by it.
Another Brick in the Wall, Part I
Everybody knows “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II” so the music at the beginning of Part I sounds familiar enough to everybody to get them excited and cheering for what they know is coming next. I personally love Part I and find the words much more moving than Part II: “Daddy’s flown across the ocean, leaving just a memory. A snap-shot in the family album. Daddy, what else did you leave for me?” While my biological father didn’t die in a war, I did have to grow up without him and it undoubtedly had a similar effect on me as it did on Roger, which is a huge part of the reason the album spoke to me so deeply when I discovered it. “Daddy, what’d you leave behind for me? All in all it was just a brick in the wall. All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.”
It’s a very dark number, with nothing but a bit of red light like waves projected across the stage as Roger plays bass alone in front of the wall. I’m getting chills on all three nights. On the third night Oliver turns to me and points out the goose-bumps he’s getting. The drunk American guy to my left says, “I’m in heaven,” which I can’t help but smile at. So am I.
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
The sound of a helicopter can be heard and a spotlight emerges from behind the left side of the unfinished wall and finally lands on a single audience member. “You! Yes, you! Stand still, laddy!” Then…BUM. Ba-BUM! Bum, bada bum, bada bum, bada bum, ba-BUM!
This is what everyone recognizes from the radio and they all go nuts. Even the third time around I’m still getting chills from knowing what’s coming and knowing just how much the audience is going to love it. “When we grew up and went to school, there were certain teachers who would hurt the children any way they could…”
I’m not exactly sure, but it’s either now or during the next song that the stage-hands bring out and place the first few bricks on the stage to start the construction of the wall. It definitely happens very subtly and unceremoniously, and on the first two nights I’d been so into the music that I hadn’t even noticed they’d started building the wall until it was under way.
In any case, the anticipation in the air is palpable, some hands are already clapping, and everyone braces themselves for what they know is coming next. “…but in the town it was well-known when they got home at night their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives!”
Another Brick in the Wall, Part II
Then come the most famous (and most mis-interpreted) lines of any Pink Floyd song of all time: “We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought-control. No dark sarcasm in the class-room. Teacher, leave them kids alone. Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone! All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.”
Everybody is singing along, lots of loud cheers and “woo-woo”s are erupting from the audience (especially from drunk Americans) and I’m remembering how this was the very first song by Pink Floyd I ever heard that got me to take notice of Pink Floyd, and eventually to buy the whole The Wall album (once I realized “Comfortably Numb” was also on it).
The second verse is even more memorable as it’s where the kids sing the lines, and Roger’s got a troupe of kids who come out on the stage and sing the verse before breaking into an awesome dance-session during the always-excellent instrumental section. The giant-inflatable teacher is lowered and the kids do a bit with that before leaving the stage.
Then the music changes to an unfamiliar piece of music at the end of the song, presumably to give the stage-hands some time to get things prepared for the next piece.
But on the second night in Berlin, this unfamiliar piece of music goes on for a bit longer. Roger steps back out center-stage and…what’s this? He’s singing new lyrics! For a moment the significance of what’s happening doesn’t register in my mind, but then I suddenly realize that this didn’t happen the other two nights. I tell Oliver as much, then take out my camera and start a video, only to capture the last couple of lines of the song.
Mother
This is when Roger pauses for a moment to welcome the audience and say a few words specific to where he is. In Mannheim he’d mentioned a few dates and places and asked if anyone in the audience remembered them—which I believe were dates and locations of previous shows he’d done in Germany. In Berlin, on both nights, he mentioned the Potzdamer Platz show and how that was a night he’d never forget. On the second night, he started by confirming that the extra lyrics to “Another Brick in the Wall” he’d just sung were indeed new—that it was the first time he’d ever done that. So I got to witness just a minor little bit of Pink Floyd history!
But whatever minor variations he makes to it based on where he is, the speech apparently always ends the same way. Back when they did The Wall the first time, they recorded a video in England of Roger playing “Mother” at Earl’s Court, so “as an experiment in time-travel, and at the risk of seeming somewhat narcissistic” Roger shall now “endeavor to sing a double-track vocal and play acoustic guitar along with a younger, miserable, fucked-up Roger from all those years ago.”
And so the projection on the wall during “Mother” is just Roger Waters from 1980 playing “Mother” at Earl’s Court. There are also a few little extra goodies, most notably what happens when he sings “Mother, should I trust the government?” On the right side of the wall the words, “No Fucking Way” appear, and on the left the words, “Auf Keinen Fall”. I assume the words on the left are some version of “under no circumstances” in whatever the native language of the country he’s in happens to be. The crowd, of course, loves it.
In the new version of the show, “Mother” is apparently a metaphor for the government, and there’s an animated security camera on the screen the whole time, the Big Brother who always keeps its eye on you, that “will always find out where you’ve been”.
Goodbye Blue Sky
One of my favorites in terms of the wall-projections is the new take on “Goodbye Blue Sky”. The Gerald Scarfe animation for the film is probably the best of all the animations in the film (it’s certainly his favorite) and while it may be somewhat disappointing that they go with a different animation, it’s reminiscent enough of the original to stay true to its spirit only with a meaning much more relevant to the world today.
“Did you see the frightened ones? Did you hear the falling bombs? Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath the clear blue sky?” These lyrics and the original animation for them were clearly inspired by the memories of English children during the war as the Germans repeatedly bombed London.
The updated animation for the show, while still featuring war-planes dropping bombs, puts a different twist on it as the bombs are all in the shapes of various symbols. First the Christian cross, then the hammer-and-sickle of communism, and several other political and religious symbols including the dollar sign. But then the bombs start taking the shape of corporate logos, first Shell then Mercedes and McDonalds so on. For some reason, the crowd in Germany started applauding wildly when the Shell and Mercedes logos were dropped. Are they applauding because they like those companies or because they hate them? I could never quite figure that out.
But the meaning is clear enough for any idiot to understand. Whereas the fascist-dictator types of yester-year made their attempts at world-domination with bombs, today’s fascist-dictators are in the form of corporations or religions, whose attempts to spread their ideologies and/or products are just as much an act of violence as the bombings of London in WWII.
It’s absolutely brilliant, and Oliver remarked as much on Thursday night. But for me, at least on that night, the experience was somewhat ruined by the drunk American and his wife who had left before “Mother” and returned now with fresh beer and pretzels. Irony.
Empty Spaces
I fucking love this piece of music, but most people find the animation far more memorable. Even before I saw the film I always found this part of the album particularly intense and moving, but of course Gerald Scarfe’s animation of the two flowers that look like they’re fucking is an incredibly powerful image. The real treat of seeing it live is that while you can watch the original animation on the screen, it’s extended down to the wall—which at this point is really coming along. You see the flowers on the screen but their stems on the wall, so it’s like you’re finally getting to see the whole image of something you’ve only partially seen before.
What Shall We Do Now?
I always hated how they cut this from the studio album, as it’s one of my favorite pieces of music of the whole show due to its power and intensity. Seeing it live is really something else because the intensity is at its maximum potential and you can really feel the music blasting through your body.
It’s the same animation from the film after the female flower devours the male and flies away, only it’s much bigger because it’s being projected across the entire wall. “What shall we use to fill the empty spaces where waves of hunger gnaw? Shall we set out across this sea of faces in search of more and more applause?”
The banging of the drums, the iconic image of the face emerging from the wall and screaming (I bought a T-Shirt with that image on Wednesday night and wore it on Thursday), and then the powerful litany of lyrics which I couldn’t resist but loudly sing along to (accompanied by my drunk American friend, of course) while making sure to really derive as much appreciation of those lyrics as I could because this would be the last time.
“What shall we do now?” is a song about the wall itself, about the things we do from behind our walls and some of the things we use to help build them. It’s one of the most angry pieces of music Pink Floyd ever did, and I’ve listened to it many many times while furious about the bullshit circumstances of modern life that we’re trapped in. “Shall we buy a new guitar? Shall we drive a more powerful car? Shall we work straight through the night? Shall we get into fights, leave the lights on, drop bombs, do tours of the east, contract diseases, bury bones, break up homes, send flowers by phone, take to drink, go to shrinks, keep people as pets, train dogs, race rats, fill the attic with cash, bury treasure, store up leisure, but never relax at all…with our backs to the wall?”
My heart is racing a mile a minute when it’s finally over.
Young Lust
This is one of the only three songs from The Wall that David Gilmour has a writing credit for, and it’s the least good one by far. In fact it’s one of my least favorite songs on the album and one that if I hear out-of-context on the radio I barely even enjoy. It doesn’t really work too well on its own, but heard in context it’s still a perfect part of a perfect album.
The projections on the wall during this song get a little X-rated, and I’d be surprised if Roger didn’t get some complaints from parents in the United States who were dumb enough to take their kids to see Pink Floyd’s The Wall and expect it to be family-friendly. There’s a very long section with a topless woman dancing, which I’m sure doesn’t phase a European audience at all and the few parents with kids their probably didn’t care.
On the radio the song can sometimes sound like garbage, but live before your eyes it sounds fantastic and it’s even hard not to dance to. Not a highlight, really, but not a lowlight by any means.
One of My Turns
The next couple of songs are a bit strange for a rock concert due to the subject matter. “One of My Turns” opens with a film-projection of Pink’s girlfriend coming into the hotel room and doing her whole, “Oh my god, what a fabulous room!” monologue.
The song itself is very dark and melancholy at first, and while most of the audience seems to fade out at this point there are always a few cheers at the opening line: “Day after day, love turns gray, like the skin of a dying man.” I was surprised-but-not-all-that-shocked to hear the drunk American singing along to that, as he did…after all…have his wife right next to him.
I like the song for its sudden switch from melancholy to rage as the music picks up speed and Roger sings the angry lyrics: “Run to the bedroom, in the suitcase on the left you’ll find my favorite axe…” and runs around the stage. On Wednesday night when I was up in the stands he sang most of the song right in my direction, and I put my hands up and waved a lot in case he might notice. I think he might have because I was the only person in the section who appeared to be getting into it, and I’m pretty sure he pointed right at me when he sang, “Would you like to learn to fly?”
Don’t Leave Me Now
This is the darkest, most subdued song on the album and it’s almost hard to listen to, so it’s very strange and even a little uncomfortable to see it live. He’s singing about how desperately he wants his woman back in spite of how badly he treated her. There’s a picture of a woman’s face projected on the right side of the wall and as he sings lines like, “I need you, babe, to put through the shredder in front of my friends” or “to beat to a pulp on a Saturday night” blood starts pouring from her nose and eyes.
I shouldn’t have been surprised at all, but when the American guy started singing along to this song I could hardly believe it. He even told his wife that it was his favorite part. On the other two nights the audience was a little disturbed by this, but here was a guy who was loving it. So on the one hand while it totally ruined the mood to have someone singing along enthusiastically to such a dark and disturbing piece of music, it was at least nice to know that someone was appreciating it.
But once he sings, “Why are you running away?” and the music picks up, the piece becomes extremely impressive visually as the inflatable wife drops down on the left and green slime appears to drip down the wall in a projection. It’s actually one of the most powerful visual moments of the first half of the show.
Another Brick in the Wall, Part III
Suddenly you hear the sound of a TV station switching, there’s a projection of a French guy on the TV apparently selling something, and this goes on long enough for you to get really annoyed by his face and voice. Then there’s the famous scream and the sound of something smashing against the screen. The channel switches to a brief clip of Barack Obama saying something about national security, something smashes the screen again, and it keeps dividing into smaller and smaller fragments with more and more stations blasting at once until one final smash gets the lyrics going:
“I don’t need no arms around me. And I don’t need no drugs to calm me.” Because they reprise the most famous song of the album and because they capture the entire meaning of the first half, I’ve always considered these to be among the most powerful lyrics on the whole album, and I sang along with them while making sure to appreciate their meaning. “I have seen the writing on the wall. Don’t think I need anything at all. No, don’t think I need anything at all! All in all it was all just bricks in the wall. All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.”
The Last Few Bricks
The climax of the first half of the show gets under way as this piece of music not-on-the-album blares forth. It’s a completely instrumental number reprising “The Happiest Days of our Lives”, “Young Lust”, and “Empty Spaces” which as the title suggests provides enough time for the stage-hands to insert the last few bricks into the now almost-finished wall.
It’s a rousing piece of music that gets everyone going again after the last few more-subdued numbers, and visually it’s also one of the most remarkable. It looks as though some of the bricks are flying away even as they put more bricks in, and it was enough to make Oliver go “what the fuck?” before he realized it was just a projection.
Goodbye, Cruel World
I didn’t have a clear view of this iconic moment from the show on my first two nights because the angle was wrong, but from straight ahead I could see Roger singing the last few lines of the first half of the show through the last remaining hole in the wall. It’s a pretty powerful moment and would be even moreso if there wasn’t a bunch of “woo-woo”ing going on the whole time, and my drunk friend sucked up most of the potential for appreciating it by singing along loudly, but once Roger sings, “Goodbye all you people, there’s nothing you can say to make me change my mind…goodbye” and they put that last brick into place…you can’t help but feel chills.
Intermission
On Wednesday night, the guy on my right who had come because he’d missed the Potzdamer Platz show twenty years earlier was clearly impressed by the first half of the show. When it was over he turned to me and said, “finish?” and I laughed because I thought he was joking. But when he didn’t come back during the second half, I realized that he’d probably thought that was the whole show. The poor guy had paid for the ticket and gone to all the trouble of coming there just to see a show he’d missed twenty years ago and now he missed the entire second half! It’s possible he found a better seat somewhere but he didn’t strike me as the type to go looking for one. I’m almost positive he left half-way through and while I feel bad for him, apparently he felt like he’d gotten his money’s worth anyway.
I can just picture him describing the show to his friends: “You’ll never believe it. They built an entire wall across the stage! It was incredible!” And if his friends know anything more about it, they’ll ask, “And how about when they knocked it down at the end of the show?” And he’ll say, “No, they didn’t knock it down,” to which they’ll respond, “Are you sure?” and he’ll say, “No, they just built the wall and it was over,” and they’ll say, “Um…we’re pretty sure the wall comes down at the end of the show…did you only stay for the first half?” And he’ll say, “There was a second half?” and then he’ll either break into tears or hysterical laughter.
Funnily enough, on Thursday night the people to Oliver’s right turned to ask him if that was the end of the show, so apparently people thought the first half was impressive enough to stand on its own as a complete show in its own right.
Intermission on Thursday was also when I talked to the American couple and made peace with the drunk guy, right before I embarked on a long and treacherous journey to the restroom.
During intermission the projections on the wall are all of pictures of people who died and sent in pictures and information about their lost loved ones to Roger who includes them in the show. It’s a really lovely thing to do, and I made sure to read about at least a few of them.
On Thursday I also took some time before the second half started to explain to Oliver how the whole concept of The Wall stage-show came to Roger, how after the success of Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd started playing bigger and bigger gigs and the audience was composed less and less of true Pink Floyd fans and more of just generic rock-and-roll fans who were there for the spectacle and not really to listen to the music. Feeling increasingly cut off from the audience, Roger came up with the idea of actually building a wall between the band and the audience, and in the music made a more universally-appealing story by including different themes of isolation that work on a personal as well as a political level.
Oliver commented on how ironic it was that they were playing at this big corporate arena and all this capitalist-bullshit was going on when the show itself had a message that was very much against that sort of thing. Exactly.
Hey You
I feel like I’m writing this about almost every song, but “Hey You” really is one of my favorite songs from The Wall (it’s David Gilmour’s favorite, incidentally) so of course hearing it live is great. The only problem is that it starts before much of the audience has finished going to the bathroom and buying more beer, so people are continuing to flood back in throughout half the song.
There’s not much going on visually during this song either, as the entire band is behind the wall and there’s nothing but a still and solid projection of stone bricks across the wall to give it more texture. But there is a little animation going on during the awesome guitar solo in the middle, culminating with the famous lines: “But it was only a fantasy. The wall was too high, as you can see. No matter how he tried, he could not break free. And the worms ate into his brain.”
I sang along with my drunk American friend, now seated in the seat right next to me where I knew he would remain. He’d taken my hand as the song began and expressed his appreciation at being able to share the experience with a fellow fan. My feelings were mixed but if I was going to enjoy it I had no choice. “Together we stand. Divided we fall.”
Is There Anybody Out There?
A giant pair of eyes are projected on the wall and the spotlight shines down on random audience-members as the band sings the line “Is there anybody out there?” four times until the soft, lovely melody takes over.
Alone in the dark, it’s a much different song. When I was a teenager I’d ask myself “is there anybody out there?” and it had a real meaning to my lonely, isolated self. But here and now, there were lots of people “out there” and they clapped and cheered whenever the question was asked.
I made peace with the fact that this is what seeing The Wall live is like—it’s not going to be anything like it was when I first fell in love with the album and listened to it alone in the dark every night. While I may have been able to have a few fleeting flash-backs to the emotions of that time, this was an experience of an entirely different nature, and rather than lament what it might have been had I been able to see it during that period of my life, I should simply appreciate it for what it meant to me now.
Nobody Home
Another sad, slow song, this one dominated by piano. Part of the wall, the far-left part that’s already built even when the show begins, opens up to reveal a little mock-up hotel room with Roger seated on a chair in front of a table and a desk with a TV as he sings the song. “Got a little black book with my poems in…”
This was actually most enjoyable for me on Wednesday night, as from my seat way off to stage-right I was much closer to Roger than I was from stage-center or stage-left as I’d been in Mannheim. As I snapped a few photos it occurred to me that it was probably the closest I had ever physically been to Roger Waters and the closest I’d ever be. When he turned around to sing to our section of audience I made sure to wave again, and to take note of the fact that this was the only time I could really make out his facial expressions with my naked eye.
Also from that vantage point I was able to see what was playing on the TV-screen, just some stock footage of warplanes that I then noticed was also being projected across the wall at large.
Vera
This is a beautiful song and probably the most under-appreciated of the album. It’s very short and very sad, with simple yet powerful words. “Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn? Remember how she said that we would meet again some sunny day?”
When I saw Roger on the Dark Side of the Moon tour with my friend Corey who loves this song, he played it as part of the encore and it was so unexpected that nothing will ever compare to the feeling we got then. Knowing that it was coming was something different.
But there’s a short little video I don’t understand that plays when he sings, “Vera, what has become of you? Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?” of a young girl in a classroom who starts off smiling and then suddenly bursts into tears, walks up to the teacher and wraps herself in his arms, apparently having just heard or witnessed something devastating. But the others in the video are still smiling, and the whole audience starts applauding. Not knowing the context I just found it to be a very moving little piece of video and I feel strong empathy for that girl, but maybe it’s a more well-known video and I’m just missing the point entirely because I don’t know the context.
Bring the Boys Back Home
When Roger played this during the Dark Side tour, I was so moved that I sang at the top of my lungs so loudly and strongly that I wouldn’t be surprised if Roger heard me all the way from on stage. I had wanted the American audience to listen to the fucking words and think about them, as their timeless and universal relevance is even more relevant to America today: “Bring the boys back home. Don’t leave the children on their own…no…no. Bring the boys back home.”
Again, knowing it was coming made it slightly less moving during the show, but the projection on the wall made it very powerful nonetheless. With scenes of war and destruction following one after another, a quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower is cut up and projected line-by-line across the wall between the scenes:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Powerful words, never more powerfully delivered.
Comfortably Numb
Just as your chills from “Bring the Boys Back Home” are subsiding, you hear the sound of knocking, the voices saying, “Hello? Time to go…he keeps hanging up…it’s a man answering…hello?…time to go…are you feeling okay?…” and the chills immediately start up again. The drunk American next to you says “time to go” and you take a deep breath. You hear the hum of the voices grow louder and louder drowning out the chaos until suddenly, one last “is there anybody out there?” and then…
The first note. The chills reach their maximum intensity. “Hello…hello…hello…is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home? Come on…come on…now…I hear you’re feeling down. I can ease the pain…get you on your feet again. Relax…relax…relax…I need some information first. Just the basic facts. Can you show me where it hurts?”
What can be said about the best song of all time performed in its full context live before your very eyes? It’s the best thing in the world, one of the most awesome and intense experiences that someone who appreciates the music as much as I do can ever experience.
The thing is—I’ve now seen it live seven times. The last three were at these shows, the time previously was The Australian Pink Floyd (if you want to say that doesn’t count, you’ve never seen them do it), before then were the two Dark Side tour shows—the second of which was the second-most intensely awesome concert experience of my life—and the very first was and always will be the most intensely awesome experience of my life, concert or otherwise: seeing the one-time-only Pink Floyd reunion at Live 8.
So unfortunately it loses a little bit of its power by the seventh time, but that’s not to say it doesn’t still reach deep into my soul and rip it into a billion tiny little shreds. It’s only to say that during the verses it’s harder to stay in the moment, to not think about the guy next to me, to not try and compare it in my head to all the other times I’ve seen it and to think about how the meaning has changed since all those years ago alone in the dark.
But when the final verse is sung it all comes around, because the difference in who I am between then and now is one of the elements of the song’s meaning, and recognizing how after all these years the song still holds such a revered place in my soul in spite of everything that’s changed is enough to put my mind right where it needs to be to appreciate the solo: “When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye…I turned to look but it was gone…I cannot put my finger on it now…the child is grown, the dream is gone. And I have become comfortably numb…”
From behind the wall, a singer rises on the left to sing the choruses, and the guitarist rises up to play the first instrumental and then the heavy guitar solo at the end—the most awesome piece of music of all time. I hadn’t seen them on my first night because my view was blocked, but when I noticed them on the second night I got chills. On the third night, seeing them both from straight on, it was something else entirely.
Roger moves around the stage and bangs at the wall as the solo gradually increases in intensity, and I’m sinking more and more into the music and squeezing out every ounce of appreciation I possibly can from what is likely to be the last time I’ll ever see it live (I’m greatly relieved that my drunk neighbor is lost in silent appreciation as well), and then the projected wall breaks open to reveal a shining sun behind as the song reaches its climax.
The most intensely-felt notes are always right at the very end when you know the solo is just about to wrap up and there are only a few seconds left before this incredible experience is transformed into a mere memory—a memory you’ll take with you for the rest of your life. When it is finally over, you (if you’re like me) immediately rise to your feet and applaud furiously, then turn to your friend and exchange a few “wow”s and “holy fucking shit, man”s.
That’s the highlight of the show, but it’s far from over.
The Show Must Go On
It’s almost impossible to follow “Comfortably Numb” with any other song, especially on the radio when it’s almost always something incredibly weak by comparison. When Pink Floyd without Roger went on tour it was usually an encore and usually followed by “Run Like Hell”, and when Roger went on tour he either followed it with a song called “Each Small Candle” which is brilliant or, on the Dark Side tour, that was simply the very last song.
But the only song that is a truly perfect follow-up to “Comfortably Numb” is “The Show Must Go On”. It’s nice and soft and melodic and lovely, the perfect lead-out from what came before and lead-in to what comes next.
In the show, this is the moment when most of the band now relocates to the front of the wall so you can see them for most of the rest of the show. You also get the additional verse which isn’t on the studio album but I know from the live album. It introduces the next part of the story in which Pink now descends into madness and sees himself as a fascist dictator. “It was just a mistake, I didn’t mean to let them take away my soul. Am I too old, is it too late? Where’s the feeling gone? Will I remember the song? The show must go on…”
In The Flesh
Roger Waters loves to perform this live. It was the opening song of the show on his last two tours, and it works well as an opener but even better in context. He’s there dressed in his fascist uniform, the wall is covered with awesome projections of the double-hammer emblem, and the spotlight shines on random members of the audience as he points them out and demands that they get “up against the wall.”
When he says, “If I had my way, I’d have all of you shot” he points to a few audience members, then takes out a fake gun and shoots at them during the end of the song. Ironically, the best vantage point for this was from my seat on the far upper right in Mannheim, as he seemed to be pointing and shooting directly at me.
It’s quite the spectacle, and it’s probably the most quintessential The Wall you can get—they even bring out the infamous Pig.. During this number you have to just take a step back and appreciate what you’re seeing, especially because you know it’s almost over.
Run Like Hell
After “In The Flesh” Roger steps up and asks, “Are there any paranoids in [insert name of city] tonight?” and a few random people cheer. I’m not a paranoid, so I don’t cheer, and apparently the drunk American isn’t paranoid either because he remains conspicuously silent. To those who do consider themselves paranoid, Roger says “this is for you. It’s called ‘Run Like Hell’” and the song begins.
Like “Young Lust” this is another song written partly by David Gilmour that works faaaar better in context than out of it. At this point in the show people are ready to get on their feet and clap along to what is really the last big rock-and-roll number of the show.
Oliver gets to his feet and claps along right with me, though the guy standing in front is a German guy who really isn’t into it at all and only stands up reluctantly when everyone else does. But his lack of enthusiasm is more than made-up-for by the over-enthusiasm of my drunk friend, whose presence I’ve now completely grown to appreciate (especially after his good behavior during “Comfortably Numb”).
There is a slight bit of awkwardness when it comes to rocking-out to a song like this however, which is augmented by one of the clips that gets played during the solo. It’s a clip I was actually already familiar with, a leaked video from an Apache helicopter in Baghdad that shows the gunner targeting and killing a couple of reporters whom they mistakenly believed had a weapon. From the video, (eventually made famous across the internet under the title ‘Collateral Murder’) it’s clear that the gunner acted impulsively and recklessly, that had he been just a little less trigger-happy he would have confirmed that those people were no threat to anyone. So after watching this tragic scene of two actual people getting killed, it feels very strange to immediately start clapping and dancing again, but there’s a certain artistic irony in that as well.
At the end of the song the names of the aforementioned victims—Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh—are projected onto the wall with the message, “We will remember you.” We certainly will.
Waiting for the Worms
This is another one of those under-appreciated but totally awesome numbers in the show, but it totally kicks ass and I love it. “You cannot reach me now, no matter how you try. Goodbye, cruel world, it’s over…walk on by.” It’s the last truly intense moment before the wall comes down, and it basically serves to make the transition from Pink’s fascist-dictator phase to the moment where he faces judgment. “Sitting in a bunker here behind my wall…waiting for the worms to come. In perfect isolation here behind my wall…waiting for the worms to come.”
Another one of those iconic moments comes at the end when Roger is ranting and raving through the megaphone and the marching hammers are projected larger-than-life against the wall. That’s one of the most powerful animations of the The Wall film, and also one of the most simple (apparently it’s just eight drawings repeated over and over). Seeing it live is as awesome an experience as you can imagine.
Stop!
Oh man, just thinking about the moment when the incredibly loud, incredibly intense marching beat of the previous song suddenly and without warning stops and the piano takes over for this brief little haunting melody…that’s one of the most awesome moments of the show as well.
“Stop!” Roger sings and everything gets dark and quiet. “I wanna go home!” my drunk neighbor sings so loudly that Roger can probably hear him. “Take off this uniform and leave the show. But I’m waiting in this cell because I have to know…” And I join him in singing the last line because I also have to know: “Have I been guilty all this time?”
The Trial
Some time during the marching hammers, so smoothly that nobody notices, they remove all the instruments from the front of the wall and now the stage is completely bare expect for Roger and his wall.
He moves around the stage and sings all the voices of the characters from the trial while the projection is, with just a few brief exceptions, the exact same animation from the film. “Good morning, Worm, your honour. The crown will plainly show the prisoner who now stands before you was caught red-handed showing feelings…showing feelings of an almost human nature…this will not do.”
The judge calls the schoolmaster who regrets not having “flayed him into shape” because his hands were tied by “the bleeding hearts and artists”.
Then during the “Crazy…toys in the attic I am crazy” part there’s a new animation as it look like the wall detaches from itself and spins around. I couldn’t see it from my vantage point the first two nights but on Thursday I could tell that Roger actually ducks to avoid the projected wall as it looks like it’s going to hit him while it spins.
The wife is called and she lambastes Pink for not talking to her often enough and for going his own way, and the mother comes in to beg the judge to let her take her baby home.
Finally, the judge—the giant ass—decides that “the evidence before the court is incontrovertible” and “there’s no need for the jury to retire.” The way Pink made his wife and mother suffer fills him “with the urge to defecate!” A funny little bit of animation that was cut from the film pops up now as another character pokes his head through the wall and cheers him on.
“Since, my friend,” the judge continues, “you have revealed your deepest fear, I sentence you to be exposed before your peers…tear down the wall!!!”
It would have been awesome if the whole audience rose to their feet and started chanting “tear down the wall!” along with the pre-recorded voices from the album, but alas everyone remains seated. Roger runs around the stage, pumping his fists in the air, eliciting some fist-pumps from the crowd, until finally he exits to safety as the wall starts to sway, back, forward, back, and then finally the bricks start toppling over from the top of the wall to the bottom, crashing in a mess at the bottom of the stage.
Outside the Wall
The crowd immediately leaps to its feet in rapturous applause, which continues as the stage-hands push some of the bricks back to make room for the band to come out again and play the final song. Some sit down while they sing, but the true fans remain standing.
“All alone or in twos, the ones who really love you walk up and down outside the wall. Some hand in hand, some gathered together in bands. The bleeding hearts and the artists make their stand. And when they’ve given you their all, some stagger and fall, after all it’s not easy banging your heart against some mad bugger’s wall.”
More cheering, a bit more playing, the last two lines are repeated, and then it’s over. Roger thanks the crowd and the cheering and clapping goes on, then the music starts up one more time as each band member walks off the stage to Roger’s introduction and we clap for each of them individually.
Finally Roger thanks the people up on the left, and if it’s Wednesday I’m there to cheer and “woo-woo” when he does. Then he thanks some of the people on the floor and then looks straight ahead and thanks the people in the back. If it’s Thursday, that’s when I cheer and “woo-woo” the loudest. He thanks a few more people up front and then turns to those way up on the right and thanks them up there, and if it’s Friday in Mannheim that’s where I am from which to cheer and “woo-woo” before he finally walks off the stage and leaves.
If it’s Wednesday in Berlin the crowd stops clapping as soon as he’s gone and the lights go up almost immediately. But if it’s Friday in Mannheim or Thursday in Berlin, the crowd goes on cheering wildly for another five minutes, the sound not dying down at all, until the lights finally go up. On Wednesday Roger only told the audience, “You’ve been very warm and welcoming” but on Thursday he said, “You’ve been a great audience and that means a lot to us” so perhaps he could discern the differences in the crowd on both nights.
From back-stage I’m sure the band could hear us cheering until well after the end of the show and I hope they derive much satisfaction from that even after touring all this time.
Encore?
Unfortunately there can be no encore because the stage is covered in wall-rubble, so when the show is over it’s over. After the lights went up on Thursday night I exchanged a few more words with my drunk American friend, whose name I then learned was Bob. Kind of a coincidence, as I remember talking to a Bob with Corey after our second Dark Side of the Moon show, though I suppose the odds of two random American Pink Floyd fans being named Bob are not that small. We learned he and his wife had been following the European tour for a couple of weeks but that this was their fifth and final show. I wouldn’t have minded seeing it five times either. Hell, I could have done ten or twenty…
Bob explained that he’s been a huge Floyd fan since he was a kid, but that he was only 18 when The Wall was on tour the first time and he missed it. He did see Pink Floyd without Roger Waters but that was the only Floyd show he’d seen before. He said he’d been to a lot of big concerts in his time but this was by far the best. I explained that I was a “next generation” Floyd fan, that I’d discovered The Wall as a teenager and it changed my life, and that I always regretted having never been able to see it live but that now I’d finally fixed that. I didn’t ask about his wife, but she at least enjoyed the music enough to go to these shows with her husband and put up with his behavior during them, so in that regard he’s clearly a lucky guy.
Oliver and I wished Bob and his wife a fond goodbye and then went our merry way. At one point we went out to the balcony of the arena and heard a street musician playing near the parking lot. I wondered if he was a band-member or roadie who just liked to randomly play for the audience as they left the shows, so we decided to check him out. At first I thought that’s what it might be because he didn’t have a hat or a cup or an empty guitar-case out to solicit donations, but after we’d been standing there for awhile and a decent crowd had gathered around him he stopped playing in order to solicit. “For those of you who have a little money and give, I thank you. For those of you who have nothing and give anyway, I really thank you. For those of you who have nothing and don’t give, I thank you anyway. But for those of you who have a little money but don’t give, I’m not gonna say anything because you know who you are.” Very effective. I gave him a few euros.
It was fun to watch him play there in the middle of the road as the cars and the taxis rolled right by, and he was pretty damned good too. Someone asked him to play “Stairway to Heaven” and he did the first couple of verses before getting too bored to continue. He mostly just kept playing a few lines from one song or another and then instantly juxtaposing it with a completely different song, playing everything from “Blue Moon” to “Smoke on the Water” to “No Woman, No Cry”. We stayed there and enjoyed it for about 20-30 minutes. A little encore of our own.
I won’t post the other videos because I don’t want to infringe on any copyrights, but that’s not an issue with this one:
Oliver and I hung out in the general vicinity for a few more hours before going to sleep at our hostel. He told me, as well as his girlfriend Lena when she called him on the phone, that it was easily the best live show he’s ever seen. He’s seen a lot of big concerts including Led Zeppelin and David Bowie, but he said they were shite compared to this.
As for my impression, I’d say The Wall was easily the most high-quality show I’ve ever seen, but I still enjoyed the Dark Side of the Moon concert with Corey more and I don’t think any show will ever top that. But seeing The Wall with Oliver was easily a close second and I don’t think anything ever will knock it out of that position.
I spent the whole next day and night with Oliver as we drove back from Berlin and I spent the night in Celle with him and his dog, having a very nice time as usual. We were going to cycle around the Steinhuder Meer on Saturday but the forecast called for rain so we had to postpone that, but it was a nice evening anyhow.
But I couldn’t escape the sadness that it’s over now. I’d been looking forward to those shows ever since I bought the tickets a year ago, it was great having them in my future, and now they’re in my past. But such is life. We can only move forward. The show must go on.
I just want to write a very quick piece here as kind of a “programming note” to let people know what lies ahead for me this week if all goes according to plan. It’s going to be one of the most awesome, jam-packed weeks of my entire time in Germany.
It’ll start out very slow with just the normal routine until Wednesday afternoon, when I’ll be taking a train to Berlin, checking into a hostel a block away from the O2 Arena where at 8:00 I will get to witness Roger Waters perform The Wall for a second time—this time in Berlin where the idea of a giant wall being built across the stage and then knocked down is likely to elicit more of an emotional response from the audience than in most other cities. Unfortunately my seats will be just as awful as they were in Mannheim, though this time I’ll be far stage-right as opposed to far stage-left.
I’ll head back to the hostel, lie down and catch whatever Zs I possibly can (it’s likely I won’t catch any) before I have to get up and head back to the train station to catch the 4:00 a.m. train back to Hannover. I’ll get back home around 6:30 and have a couple more hours to sleep before going to work from 10:00 to 13:00. My 8:30 course was quite mercifully cancelled, and the two other lessons I have to go to are with two of my favorite students, so that also works out nicely.
Shortly thereafter I’ll meet up with Oliver and we’ll take his car back to Berlin where we will both have the privilege of seeing Roger Waters perform The Wall in Berlin on the second night, making it a grand total of three times that I’ll have seen it. Since it is the most influential album of my life—without a doubt I’d be a much different person than I am today if hadn’t discovered it when I did—I think it’s entirely appropriate.
The third time should also be the best, as not only will I have a friend with me but we will have much better seats, this time on the lower level (not the floor, but the lower stadium-seats) and directly stage-center. I’ll finally be able to see the whole wall from straight on, the way it should be seen.
Oliver apparently has a friend in Berlin who is willing to let us crash at his place, and the next day we’ll head back to Hannover.
Then the next day, Saturday, Oliver and I will meet up again this time for a bicycle-tour we’re going to be taking to the nearby “Steinhuder Meer”—a very large lake that will take many hours to circumnavigate. We’ll drive there with a couple of bikes, a case of beers, and Oliver’s dog, and ride until the evening at which point it’s assumed we’ll pitch a tent somewhere and camp overnight. We’ll finish the tour on Sunday and ride back.
That’s the very-awesome near future. The slightly-less-near future is also awesome, as I’ll only have two more weeks of work and then a long summer vacation involving a return to America before heading off to Japan in August.
When I heard last year that Roger Waters was going on tour to perform The Wall again for the first time in my lifetime, I immediately went and bought tickets for the first show he’d be doing in Germany, which was yesterday in Mannheim. It later occurred to me that it would be even cooler to see the show in Berlin—I can think of fewer cities in the world in which “the wall” concept would have more significance within the people’s living memory—so I bought tickets for that as well.
I had no idea that the concert would happen to fall right on the day after the last day of Rheinfest, and I would have stayed in Ichenheim at least another day if it hadn’t. But I had to alter my plans and buy a ticket to Mannheim for Friday afternoon and another from Mannheim back to Hannover this morning.
Yesterday morning I was relieved to find that I wasn’t too hung over—no headache or throwing up—but I was significantly out of it to the point where going to see a concert I’ve been wanting to see for my entire life seemed like too much too fast, especially considering the emotional significance of what had transpired the previous night.
I also want to correct the record and say that contrary to what I’d been thinking when I wrote the first paragraph of the previous entry, that was absolutely not the most drunk I’ve ever been in Germany. After writing that and posting it I began to remember all kinds of wilder nights, from all-night-long parties during my exchange student year in Frankfurt to the madness of the Berlin pub-crawl, I have in fact been significantly more hammered in this country than I was that night—though that at least made the Top 10.
Anyway, back to the story. It was a fond farewell to my family in Ichenheim, something I hadn’t been looking forward to but which went well enough. I hate goodbyes, and I know it could be quite a number of years before I see any of those people again, but at least I’m fairly confident I’ll make it back before too long. By then, Myriam will have had her first child (I found out this visit that she’d gotten pregnant—something she’d always wanted but didn’t think she could) and things will be much different.
[At this point I want to warn readers that unless you are a Pink Floyd fan I can’t imagine anything other than severe boredom being your reaction to the rest of this entry, so you might consider skipping it.]
After being dropped off at the Offenburg station I took the 50-minute train ride to Mannheim while listening to Wish You Were Here, then took a cab from the station to my hotel because I was carrying a bag that weighs almost half as much as I do. I checked into my single room (as I get older I find the extra price of privacy while travelling to be well worth the cost) and attempted to take a little nap before going to the concert, as I was still dead tired. But it was too noisy outside and I had too much on my mind, so I just lied there for about an hour until 7:00, one hour before the concert.
“Man, I do not feel like going to a Pink Floyd show right now,” I said to myself before leaving. “Maybe I’ll just stay here.” Haha.
At least by then I was feeling better physically, although mentally I was still very out-of-it and not sure that my emotional state would be conducive at all to the special meaning The Wall holds for me personally. I’d just spent the last week doing battle with my wall, smashing away some of those bricks to what I certainly consider great success. The Wall is a very depressing piece of music, and I was rather happy. Still, I would just have to go and do my best to get into it, and the whole time I could take comfort in the fact that if I didn’t enjoy this as much as I thought I should, I’d have another chance in a couple of weeks in Berlin.
I reached the SAP-arena with about ten minutes to go before 8:00, but I needed a drink of water so I waited at the first service stand I came to. Beer and bratwurst were being served like at all German concerts, but much to the credit of the crowd, no one seemed to by buying the wurst. Seriously—bratwurst and The Wall just do not go together.
But lots of people were buying lots of beer and the line was taking forever. I was so worried that I was going to miss the beginning of the show that I asked the guys standing in front of me if they could order a water for me if I paid them for it, and they agreed but the water dispenser ran out of water just as mine was getting poured so it took another five minutes to get it. I hurried off to find my seat and discovered—naturally—another service stand just a bit further down the hall with no line whatsoever. Live and learn.
Luckily though, the show hadn’t started yet. I found my seat and was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. Disappointed because it was way off to the side and in the very back row, and relieved because there was nobody directly in front of me to block my view like back at the Australian Pink Floyd show. The people around me also seemed to be okay, the guy on my left just quietly enjoying the show and the couple on my right drinking and singing along a bit but not obnoxiously so. The arena was apparently not completely sold out because there were a few open seats to the right of the couple on my right and the row in front of them, but other than a few scattered seats at the very back it was completely full.
I’d apparently just got there in the nick of time, because less than five minutes after I sat down the show began. When the first notes of “Outside the Wall” began playing softly I got all Enigmal, and again when the first notes of “In the Flesh?” blasted suddenly forth to interrupt the quieter music. And then there was Roger Waters literally in the flesh, walking triumphantly out on stage to the massive cheering of the crowd. This was the fourth time I’ve actually seen him in the flesh, the first being at Live 8 with the rest of Pink Floyd (best concert experience I’ve ever had or ever will have) and the other two times as solo concerts of his with Corey (the second of which was the second-best concert experience I’ve ever had or will have). Roger waved up in my direction as he entered, so perhaps he saw me and remembered me from the other three times…
What to say about the show? Of course it was fantastic, musically perfect and visually stunning, a concert experience leaving absolutely nothing to be desired. Watching them gradually build that wall across the entire stage during the first half of the show is certainly a sight worth seeing, and of course the music is some of the best music ever made.
There was a heavy political element to the show with quite a few projections containing anti-war messages and things of the sort, but I’ll be much better able to comment on them after seeing the show a second time. For now I’ll just keep the description mostly limited to my own personal experience. Regarding that, I certainly enjoyed it thoroughly and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, but I can’t help attaching a “but” to the whole thing.
Actually, I have to attach two “but”s to it. The first was the fact that I have a camera now and had to deal with the whole annoying mental struggle of should I or should I not attempt to take pictures or videos of the show? I always looked at people who take their shitty little cameras to rock concerts with contempt as they take their blurry photos and the poor-sound-quality videos, but now I was one of them. I figured I should take a few to see how they would come out, but every time I did it would mitigate my enjoyment of the song somewhat because I was more focused on the photo than the music. I also decided to try the video during “The Happiest Days or Our Lives” and the first verse of “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” because that was about as iconic Wall as it gets (and I’ve already seen it live several times), but nothing particularly visually interesting happened until the second verse, when a chorus of kids came out to sing the verse and then do some excellent dancing during the guitar solos. As much as I was enjoying it I was also thinking, “damn me, I should have taken the video now.”
Now that I’ve checked the photos and videos it’s clear that it’s probably not worth it to make a second attempt at the next concert and that I should just enjoy the music, but while most of the photos were just a useless blur I did get a few nice ones, and the video I took—when the camera wasn’t shaking—actually came out much better than I’d thought it would, allowing me to see more detail in Roger’s face that I could with my naked eyes from where I was sitting.
I really should have taken a video just before “Mother”, as this is apparently when Roger takes a moment to talk to the audience, and what he says is probably different for every show. He mentioned a couple of dates and nearby cities to the audience, saying, “Does anyone here remember such-and-suchadate in Dortmund? I was there. I remember it well.” No idea what he was referring to, but had I taken a video I would have been able to look it up. At least I’ll definitely get a video during that part of the show in Berlin.
One thing of note is that during one of the songs, a bunch of highly recognizable brand logos are projected falling down the wall, and one of the first to show up was the Mercedes logo. Apparently a lot of people in Mannheim work at the Mercedes plant because the logo got a very loud and ironic applause. There were also a few German phrases projected on the wall at random points like when he sang “Mother, should I trust the government?” there was “No Fucking Way” written on the right side of the wall and “Auf Keinen Fall” on the left, which also got a big applause.
The other “but” regarding the enjoyment of the experience is the more important “but” and it had to do with my emotional state. As I said, The Wall is very depressing and I was feeling good, too good to really get into a lot of the songs the way I used to. The Wall meant so much to me in my youth because it was the first album I ever heard that really spoke to me deeply and made me feel like some of what was in my soul was also apparently in the souls of the writers of this music, and it greatly influenced how I look at life. I’ve since bought every single Pink Floyd album ever made and now listen to The Wall with probably the least frequency out of all of them (except perhaps the Ummagumma studio album). The fact is I’ve grown up a lot since those angst-ridden days of my youth, I’m not as stuck behind my own private wall as I used to be (though it certainly still exists—as last Sunday’s journal entry made clear), and the music was more of a nostalgia-trip than a genuine emotional experience. Had I been able to see the show as a teenager, it would easily have been the experience of a lifetime.
Ironically, had things gone worse for me on that last day in Ichenheim I probably would have appreciated the show more as well. If I’d had terrible failure with the girls-of-interest, been too scared to try and talk to them and just ridden the emotional downward spiral all the way down like I had on Sunday, I would probably have been more into it. But a lot of the lyrics which would have really touched me had that been the case just kind of bounced off of me as I realized I don’t actually feel that way anymore—that I can no longer stretch the metaphor to identify with the character Pink the way I used to.
Although I suppose, in the end, that’s a good thing.
I switched seats during the intermission to get a slightly improved view, and took a picture of the completely-built wall which had projections of pictures of people who’d been killed by violence in the Middle East that had been sent in by family members. The pictures would change every few minutes, and at one point I looked over and noticed a face and name I actually recognized: Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian woman whom I’d written about during the Green Revolution in Iran a couple of years ago, the one whose gruesome death from a bullet-wound was caught on film and spread across the internet like wild-fire. That had a profound effect on me when I saw it, and it touched me to see her face among all those others.
For the second half of the show I’d resolved not to take any more pictures, but there were some I couldn’t resist. Unfortunately, most are just blurs anyway.
The highlight of the show, naturally, is Comfortably Numb, and while it was certainly awesome and certainly affected me deeply like it always does when I hear it live, there was just something that detracted from it because the guitarist was behind the wall while he played the solo. Snowy White did such a damn fine job of it that I wanted to be able to see him, but instead it was just Roger banging at the wall while the lights and projections provide all the fodder for the eyes. Still, those projections got increasingly awesome until an amazing climax where it looks like the wall opens up and the sun shines through it. When it was over the crowd went wild—I assume most of them haven’t heard the song live before—and the applause lasted for a solid five minutes if not longer. I heard the couple next to me say, “Das ist richtig gut Pink Floyd Musik.”
After the lovely “The Show Must Go On” interlude (at which point they brought some of the band members and their instruments back in front of the wall again) came the full-length “In The Flesh” and after Roger sings “if I had my way, I’d have all of you shot!” he points to a few people in the audience, then takes out a fake gun and fires at them. He pointed and fired directly at me, probably because—as I said—he recognized me from the other shows I’ve been to.
After “The Trial” came the big finale when they actually knock down this whole gigantic wall they spent the first half of the show building, and I took a video of it which I won’t make the mistake of trying again because the light was low and it barely came out.
With all the rubble on the stage now it was clear there would be no encore. Only the whole “Outside the Wall” song and then final bows. He gave the audience a lot of heart-felt thank yous, and I’m sure he really felt it too because the audience had been wonderful. Now that I’ve been to a few concerts in Germany and compared them to the concerts I’ve been to in America I think I can safely generalize that audiences here are just better. They were all really into it, all really loving it, clapping along whenever there was clap-conducive music, and remaining pretty silent during all the more subdued emotional parts. They gave him a standing ovation which lasted about five minutes even after his final exit.
And just before he left he pointed again to a few sections of audience with special thank yous. “Thank you in the back” he said, then turned to me and said, “And thank you up there!” just before leaving. Yeah, he definitely recognized me. For sure.
So that was that. It was a great experience but I’m really glad I’ll get another shot at it because I feel like I could have appreciated it more than I did. Next time I’ll be sure not to get drunk the night before. And maybe I’ll deliberately put myself in a bad mood….
The rest of the night consisted of me taking the tram back to the station and walking from there to the hotel, getting some water and something to eat along the way. It was a lovely night and if I hadn’t been so tired and out of it I might have considered going out and seeing what the Mannheim night-life had to offer, but after the heavy ordeals of the previous night and the show I’d just seen, I just went back to my room and went to bed.
Just a word of warning—if you ever go to Mannheim, especially on a Friday night, do not stay at the Hotel Luxa. The hotel itself is fine enough, but it’s on the loudest street I’ve ever slept at, and that’s no exaggeration. You could hear drunk people “woo-woo”ing all night long. Every couple of minutes you’d hear loud “woo-woo”s from people, though I have no fucking clue what there was to “woo-woo” about. Just “woo-woo”ing the fact they were drunk I suppose. I don’t remember “woo-woo”ing when I was drunk on Thursday night, at least not after the music ended.
For the first couple of hours I drowned it out by listening to The Wall and some other Pink Floyd on my headphones, but even when I finally turned to try and pass out at around 2:30 it was still going and indeed continued until the sun started rising at 5:00 a.m. Every few minutes: “woo-wooooo!!!” as if done for the sole purpose of keeping everyone on that street awake. I wished I had Darth Vader powers and could choke them from far away. If I hadn’t been in such a good mood in the first place I might have seriously lost it and gone out there to try and find these people and shove my socks down their throats.
But at least I was able to get some sleep between 5:00 and 8:30, before getting up and taking the train back to Hannover. And now I’m back and still awful tired but still with a few things to get done before I can relax, writing this journal entry being one of them. I really hadn’t expected it to be this long but that’s how it typically goes with me. Apologies if you read this entry and found it painfully boring—at least I warned you.
So that was the end of a pretty incredible week for me. My last visit to Ichenheim, an unexpectedly awesome epilogue to a significant event from seven years ago, and the fulfillment of a near 11-year-fantasy of being able to see The Wall performed live. Regarding both the girls of Ichenheim and The Wall concert: here’s to things that happen that I never thought would happen!
I was now on the final stretch of my Rome trip, it was getting late and I still hadn’t really met anyone. Not wanting to interrupt the Floyd-playing street musician as he talked to the restaurant owner, I went off in search of somewhere to buy beer, and found a “Bar” towards the south end of the square that allowed me to buy a bottle of beer and take it out with me into the square—just so long as I stayed in the square. Unfortunately, Italy is not like Germany where public drinking is not only acceptable but expected.
I took my bottle of beer to the fountain near the street musician and waited for him to be done talking to the restaurant owner. Because he’d been smoking a cigarette while playing, I knew I could try my lighter strategy with him. I went up and said, “Scusi, do you have a lighter?” making the standard cigarette-lighting-motion in case he didn’t understand me. “Lighter!” he said. “Ah yes, it’s called ‘lighter’!” I asked him what it was “in Italiano” and he told me but I once again forgot. He asked me in broken English if I was a musician. I told him I wasn’t but I loved Pink Floyd and he said I look like a musician. I said lots of people tell me that and I wish I could play. [Unfortunately, my only talent seems to be writing, the least sexy talent on earth].
It would have been nice if I could have had a conversation with him, but the language barrier was too great and we just wished each other a pleasant evening. I turned and sat down on the rail on the edge of the fountain, finishing my smoke and keeping my ears open for English.
The Piazza Navona at night was lovely but unfortunately the atmosphere was somewhat tainted by all the kids around. As I mentioned before, there were swarms of middle-school or high-school students all over the city, and a whole lot of them were now concentrated in the square, running around and laughing loudly and clearly not appreciating a damned thing about where they were. I wasn’t about to try and strike up a chat with any of them whether they spoke English or not.
But I had a little bit of luck as before I finished the cigarette a young couple with American accents came up right next to me and talked to each other. I waited awhile for a good chance to turn and speak to them, but whenever they stopped talking and I turned I saw that the reason for the pause was they were making out. When they finally paused without making out I turned and said, “Are you guys from the states?”
My worry that they might not have wanted someone to interrupt their romantic moment turned out to be completely unfounded. They were quite friendly and more than happy to have a chat, especially when I told them what I did for a living. They were travelling for a month before having to go back and take exams in England where they were studying. But they’d heard about English teaching as a way to keep travelling and they were excited to hear more details about it from me. The guy said he would definitely look into it and it’s possible I might have had a serious influence on his life. Maybe.
After about a thirty-minute chat involving all the standard “where have you traveled so far?” and “what were your favorite places?”-kind of questions, they decided to go off in search of their friend whom they had apparently just lost. They said he was drunk but they didn’t think he would have left the square, and they kept thinking they spotted him but never did. I joined them on the walk to the other end of the square, as they said he might like to talk to me because he was interested in Germany, but their friend was nowhere to be found. They decided he’d probably just gone back to the hostel, and now they were just going to head to the Pantheon and then go back home. I was welcome to join them, but I said I’d rather stick around and try to meet some more people. They were really nice but I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night with them. I’m still glad to have met them, Hannah and her boyfriend (the other one of the two people whose names I forgot).
I went back to the “Bar” but the guy told me they were closing and he couldn’t sell me another beer, so I just asked if I could use the toilet and when I was done I decided to leave the square and try my luck at the last night-life location that had been circled on my map: the Campo de Fiori.
This square is a bit smaller than the Piazza Navona but just as densely packed with restaurants for sitting outside and drinking beer, wine, or cocktails. A lot of young people go there, but I was hoping to talk to people a bit older. I settled on one of the restaurants to sit outside in, partly because there was a couple there who struck me as perhaps being interesting to talk to, and I sat at a table near them and ordered a beer.
The girl was still finishing her pizza when I sat down, so I waited for her to be done and for a pause in their conversation before I turned and asked them if they were from the states. They were—they were from Wisconsin—and I later learned their names were Ira and Sara [I don’t know if it had an ‘h’ or not but I’ll omit it to distinguish her from hippie-chick Sarah, whose name might not have had an ‘h’ either].
I’d definitely found some good conversationalists in Ira and Sarah, as we were able to talk about more than just the standard traveler’s questions. Telling them about teaching led to a conversation about education in general, and I was even able to get somewhat political with them. One of Ira’s relatives was a teacher and she’d recommended a documentary called “Waiting for Superman” done by an actual teacher who explained everything that was wrong with the public education system including teachers’ unions, and which they both insisted was one of the best documentaries they’d ever seen. They told me a bit about how poorly the schools are doing where they’re from, and I said that surprised me “because the government just keeps throwing all this money at education” at which they laughed quite a bit.
One question I’d been asking people whenever I thought of it is whether they’d seen HBO’s Rome. I wanted to know if anyone there had been looking at the city through the same HBO-tinted lenses as I’d been, but nobody had. I’d even asked Cristiano the night before because I wondered whether the series was well-known in Rome itself, but he hadn’t heard of it. Ira and Sara had heard it was really good but they hadn’t seen it. I told them it was one of the best things ever made for television, and Sara said she’s heard the same thing about the show Lost. I explained that this was high quality writing with extremely well-developed characters and she said, “Oh, so not like Lost?” and I insisted that on the spectrum of TV-entertainment, Lost is as one end and Rome is at the other.
They said they wished they’d brushed up a little on Roman history themselves before coming here, as they probably would have appreciated the ruins and monuments on a much deeper level than, “ooh, think about how old this is.” I agreed that knowing about the history of a place before you travel there is probably the best way to amplify your appreciation of it.
At around 1:00 we all agreed that we should probably get going, and after making sure to get a picture of myself with Ira and Sara I wished them a fond farewell and headed back towards my hostel.
This time I took the scenic route because I knew the next day I was just going to go straight to the train station as soon as I got up and this would be my last chance to see the Colosseum and the Forum ruins. I took those sights in one last time, injecting one last dose of Enigmality into my soul before bidding Ancient Rome farewell and heading back to the modern part of town.
It had been a pretty successful night. It wasn’t as climactic as a pub-crawl might have made it (I actually found out from Ira and Sara who’d checked online that the pub-crawl only met on Mondays and Wednesdays), and I’ll forever remain a little disappointed that I hadn’t offered to escort those Asians to the Trevi Fountain, but I did get to hear Comfortably Numb because of that, and I think I did well enough for myself with the two nice couples I’d met.
Just before I reached my hostel there was one final bit of amusement as I found myself walking behind a couple of Japanese girls (real ones—they were speaking Japanese) who were walking at a slower pace than me. As they heard my footstep getting closer and closer they started walking closer together and the one girl put her arm around the other. One of them nervously glanced behind her, and I smiled and waved which made them both start giggling. “Don’t be afraid!” I told them, and their giggling increased in intensity as they walked off in a direction I wasn’t going.
Sleep came very easily as I was now thoroughly drained of energy, and although I was woken up at 7:00 I let myself lie in bed and recover a bit more energy until 9:00. I considered going for a walk among the ruins one more time but I figured I’d already had an appropriate enough farewell the night before.
I’ll spare you and my future-self from the details of the voyage home, but there’s one last anecdote that needs mentioning. I knew I’d probably be seeing the German couple with the Sara-look-a-like at the airport, and I did spot them on the check-in line but they were far ahead of me. I didn’t spot them at the terminal or on the plane, but after the very pleasant flight home I knew I’d have an opportunity to talk to them at the baggage claim.
Unfortunately I wasn’t actually in the mood to chat with anyone, let alone in German because my brain was now operating more slowly and it would be a lot more difficult than it had the first couple of times. Furthermore, I was pretty sure they spotted me at the baggage claim but they didn’t acknowledge it so I figured they had no interest in another encounter with me either.
And yet I knew that I should talk to them one more time simply for the sake of the story, so I went up to them at the baggage claim and we exchanged a few words. I was correct in thinking that my German-skills had been reduced, and I felt a little embarrassed with some of the mistakes I made. Of course they’d had no way of knowing until then that I wasn’t actually German, so it felt especially awkward after our brief exchange during which we only spoke about being exhausted and having crammed so much into the space of three days.
When I wished them goodbye and headed down towards the S-Bahn platform I realized I’d forgotten to ask them for their names, which bothered me for reasons I shouldn’t have to explain to anyone who’s read this far. I’d made it a point to get the names of everyone I’d met, and if I wanted theirs I’d have to approach them again.
But when I spotted them on the S-Bahn platform and they seemed to be pretending not to see me, I became even more wary of doing this. The guy even walked right in front of me at one point without turning his head. To them I must have been this creepy weird guy that kept popping up during their trip to Rome.
Still, I knew that if I didn’t get their names it would leave a sour taste in my mouth and that was the last way I wanted this trip to end. Yet when I got off the S-Bahn and waited at the bottom of the stairs in the Hannover main station for them, they’d somehow separated and the girl walked by me with no acknowledgment. Clearly she had no interest in another exchange of words with me.
But knowing how I’d feel walking out of that station without having got their names vs. how I’d feel if I did, I forced myself to catch up to them and “Entschulding” them before they could get away. I apologized for interrupting them but they laughed and smiled, thus relieving all the tension. I explained that I was too tired to speak German very well right now, but I’d forgotten to ask them for their names. They happily gave them: Christian and Inge.
Now that the cat was out of the bag that I’m not actually German, we had a brief exchange in which I explained what I was doing in Hannover, that I’d lived there for three years but my German still wasn’t perfect, and Christian assured me it was better than his English. Before finally saying goodbye one last time, they remarked how Hannover was a small town and we’d probably spot each other again, just like in Rome. Hwaatacoeenzedenze that would be.
And so I left the station and headed to the Opera House, where I sat and went through all the photos I’d taken before Lena came to meet me so I could give her back the camera. The rest is history.
And that concludes the story of my trip to Rome, which I hope you’ve enjoyed reading half as much as I’ve enjoyed writing. Not only was it a wonderful experience in terms of the fulfillment of a lifelong goal, but I had a genuinely good time for nearly every part of it and I feel like I can be proud of myself for having gone about it so well. I learned a lot more about Rome but I also learned a lot more about myself.
I’ve come a long way since my first solo traveling adventure in Europe when I went to Paris and London in April of 2005 during my exchange-student year. Back then I saw only the most famous sights in each city, while this time I managed to check out a few lesser-known points of interest as well. Then, I’d been too nervous about eating alone at a restaurant and ate only fast-food the whole time, but this time I ate at actual restaurants and while the food wasn’t spectacular it was a much better way to go about it. Most significantly, back then I’d avoided the night-life altogether and failed to approach anyone in an attempt to meet people. This time I made it a point to go out at night and to meet as many people as I realistically could. Whenever I approach others I worry that I might be imposing my presence on people who would rather be left alone, but I think I realized that I’m actually a pretty interesting person and that most people enjoy talking to me.
I can now leave Europe feeling like I’ve seen everything I’ve really wanted to see here. I may not have been everywhere but I feel like I’ve experienced enough to have a much better impression of life here than most people from elsewhere. It’s a great continent with a hell of a lot going for it in terms of culture, history, and people, but I know there’s a lot more to learn in other parts of the world. It’s helped me grow tremendously as a person—far more than I would have had I remained in the states—and I can be sure that spending the next part of my life in Asia will help me grow even more.
And so I leave Rome and prepare to leave Europe behind with the same sentiment on my mind that Julius Caesar had over two thousand years ago: I came, I saw, I conquered.
I don’t think I’ve ever had such an experience that was both fun and enjoyable while simultaneously painfully difficult. I want to write about what happened for the sake of normal journal-documentation, but then I also need to do some serious venting which will have to be done in a separate, private entry.
On Friday afternoon I called Oliver to see if maybe I could come to Celle one night of the weekend, but he told me that he was going on a trip. He, Lena and his daughters were driving to a little village in the Harz mountains where they would be meeting Lena’s parents as well as Amanda and her girlfriend from Berlin, to see a show and have dinner before spending the night at a bed & breakfast. He said he would have invited me but his car was full, but his older daughter Ronja had been sick all week so if she wasn’t coming I was welcome to join them. I said I’d be glad to. Oliver, Lena, and Amanda are my three favorite people in Germany (not counting my family in Ichenheim) and it’s extremely rare that I get to hang out will all three of them. A short while after we hung up, Oliver sent me a text confirming that I could come.
The next day at around 2 p.m. I took the train to Celle where Oliver, Lena, the dog Buutsch, and Oliver’s younger daughter Nele were waiting in the car for me. We drove the one and a half hours to the Harz and found the bed & breakfast without any difficulty. Lena’s parents were already there and checked in, and a few minutes after we arrived Amanda and her girlfriend Peggy as well as Peggy’s neighbor Matza (I’m not sure how it’s spelled, but it definitely sounds just like the Jewish cracker) pulled up in their car. We all got checked in, had a beer out in the parking lot while we waited for everyone to get situated, then headed down the street in search of a beer garden to have another one before the show.
The village, called Rübeland, was extremely small and quaint but also quite beautiful. The Harz mountains themselves are actually not all that impressive—they’re essentially glorified hills—but compared to flat Hannover it was a really nice change of scenery. We walked about ten minutes down the road—the only road in the whole village—before coming to a nice restaurant where we could sit outside and have a beer.
I was attempting to practice my German as much as possible this weekend because aside from Amanda I was the only native-English speaker there, and Amanda speaks great German anyway. I did a pretty decent job while we were chatting, and after that second beer I was already feeling pretty nice.
Soon enough it was time to go to the show, “Nacht der Vampire”, which interestingly enough took place in a large cavern deep inside the mountains. The show began in the lobby, with the actors actually moving around through the crowd while they played out their scene. Of course it was all in German so I had a hard time understanding it and paying attention. I spent more time cracking jokes with Amanda than paying attention to the actors, but soon enough they all went through a door in the back leading into the caves and beckoned the audience to join them.
After a five-minute walk we were in a giant opening in the cavern with about ten rows of benches all facing the “stage” which was made up of various rock formations with different sets constructed in different areas. One was the inside of a mansion, another was a graveyard, and so on. The show itself was loosely based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula so I could pretty much tell what was going on, but with the German it was still hard to follow and throughout the whole second half I could hardly think of anything but how badly I needed to pee. After the show, the others confirmed that it was pretty mediocre, but the fact that it was inside a cave made it cool.
The sun was on its way down when we left the theater, and we all went back to the restaurant where we’d had the beer to sit down for dinner. The food was excellent, and the conversation was fun. Amanda’s really great to joke around with, and her girlfriend Peggy is quite nice as well. At this point I was wavering quite a bit in my resolve to stick with German because people kept speaking English to me, and eventually I was pretty much speaking only English.
There was a dessert menu on the table the whole time, and after we’d eaten a bunch of us were looking at it and really working up an appetite for some ice-cream, but the waitress told us the kitchen was closed so she couldn’t serve dessert. We spent the rest of the night bitching to ourselves about not getting ice-cream, wondering why it mattered that the kitchen was closed. How hard is it to open up some tubs of ice-cream and scoop some out? We asked the waitress if there was anywhere else we could go to get ice-cream but she said there wasn’t—it’s just a tiny village after all. Those of us who live in cities found it very strange to be in a situation where there was simply no way to get ice-cream—not so much as an ice-cream bar from a vending machine—without driving some distance.
When we left the restaurant we walked back to the bed & breakfast where Lena’s parents went to bed and the rest of us sat in the lounge downstairs continuing to drink and talk and occasionally go outside for a smoke. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about but it was a nice time. One by one the others went to bed until it was just me, Lena, and Oliver, and they were asking me about Japan. Lena said that if the school that hired me wants to put me anywhere near Fukushima I shouldn’t go, but I tried explaining to her without sounding too death-wishy that I didn’t care if I got cancer—Japan is my plan and I’m not going to let fear stop me from doing what’s been nearly a life-long dream for me.
Lena shared a room with Nele, and Oliver and I had a room to ourselves which is where the night ended for me. My favorite part of getting drunk is having mushy-emotional conversations with friends, and Oliver and I definitely had one as we stayed up and drank a little more before going to sleep. We were telling each other how much we valued each others’ friendship and that kind of thing, as well as getting somewhat deep and philosophical as we speculated about possibly having known each other in a past life. I was opening up rather substantially, but I still had to hold back with regards to certain things, things I also have to hold back from writing in a public blog entry.
We got up at 9:00 in the morning to go down and have breakfast, and we discussed what we wanted to do before heading back. Amanda and the two people she came with were going to a nearby Alpine slide, and at first we agreed to meet them there later once we’d all showered and got our things together, but that was not to happen because it was a 40-minute drive in the opposite direction of Hannover. Instead we—me, Oliver, Lena, Nele, and Lena’s parents—went for a little hike in the mountains which had plenty of really nice spots with great views that revealed just how small this village actually was. The weather was as perfect as you could imagine—not a cloud in the sky, not too cold, not too hot—and the only thing that could have made it better would have been leaves on the trees. It’s strange because the trees in Hannover are already blooming but apparently not yet in the Harz.
After the hike we went back to the same restaurant where the others had lunch but I wasn’t hungry, and as they all chatted in German my mind was elsewhere and I was sinking further and further into a deep state of depression that had hit me in the morning and progressed as the day went on. At about 2:00 we went back to our cars and parted ways with Lena’s parents, then took the hour-and-a-half journey back to Hannover because Nele had to take a train from there back to Emsland where she lives with her mother—Oliver’s ex-wife—and sister. There was some time to kill before she had to leave so we went outside the station where Nele and Lena got some ice-cream but I was still too depressed to eat. I was doing my best to hide my sadness by smiling and cracking jokes a bit, but somehow Lena was still able to pick up on it and she expressed concern, but I had no choice but to go on pretending that nothing was wrong.
We finally parted ways about a half-hour ago, then I came back to my flat, got everything unloaded, then laid down on my couch and curled up into a fetal position for a few moments before going about writing this down.
And now I have to write the rest of the story, which is faaaaaaaaar more interesting and meaningful than the bare-bones account I just gave, but because the world is a stupid place and certain thoughts and feelings that can’t be avoided can nevertheless be held against you, I must do that in a private entry. For anyone who cares—or if you just want to know what the Sisyphus reference in the title is about—I can give access to private entries to people I trust. Just register for the journal, then leave a comment or send me an e-mail and I’ll change your status so that you get full access.
Just a guy sharing his thoughts and experiences as he wanders his way through life and the world. Here you'll find stories from the life of an American living overseas, politics from a liberal point of view, and philosophical thoughts about man's place in the universe.
part of the show, then took him to the back and told him what to expect. At the end of the show the blue men brought him up on stage, put a little blue mark on his face, then put him in a costume and a helmet and brought him backstage. On the screen it showed him getting splashed with blue paint, tied up by the heals and then smashed against a canvas to make an imprint of his body in blue paint, then the blue men came out on stage rolling a box with some gelatin on the top and it was revealed that his head was actually inside the gelatin. We found out later that it wasn’t actually him getting smashed against the canvas.
After the show we walked to a nearby tavern called McSorley’s, which my Dad says is the oldest continuously-operating tavern in NYC, which didn’t used to allow women up until a couple decades ago, and when they were finally forced to they just didn’t put in a ladies’ room. We each drank some beer there but it wasn’t that great and the place smelled pretty funky so we left after just fifteen minutes or so. 
![The [Berlin] Wall](http://kemstone.com/Journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/DSCF0162.jpg "The [Berlin] Wall")
As I said, The Wall is very depressing and I was feeling good, too good to really get into a lot of the songs the way I used to. The Wall meant so much to me in my youth because it was the first album I ever heard that really spoke to me deeply and made me feel like some of what was in my soul was also apparently in the souls of the writers of this music, and it greatly influenced how I look at life. I’ve since bought every single Pink Floyd album ever made and now listen to The Wall with probably the least frequency out of all of them (except perhaps the Ummagumma studio album). The fact is I’ve grown up a lot since those angst-ridden days of my youth, I’m not as stuck behind my own private wall as I used to be (though it certainly still exists—as last Sunday’s journal entry made clear), and the music was more of a nostalgia-trip than a genuine emotional experience. Had I been able to see the show as a teenager, it would easily have been the experience of a lifetime.
