Germany is very punk.
Leather jackets, buzz-cuts and lank pony-tails … and that’s just the women.
Boom Boom. No, but seriously folks…
I scandalised the good French citizens of Toulouse last week by eating a croissant ON THE STREET, OUT OF A PAPER BAG and wearing my home-made, reversible, long-sleeved tee-shirt, fashionably INSIDE OUT !
True dinks.
A woman passed me on the street then double-backed for a second, gob-smacked squiz.
A young woman.
She brought friends with her for the 2nd circuit.
In Germany I might as well be someone’s nana.
Deutschland is very…sort of… how you say in your country ?… white supremacist.
Almost British. Circa 1978.
Nose-rings, bovver boots and black everywhere.
More black clothes per square metre than the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts Opening Night party.
Young German women seem to be seriously height-challenged.
The world-wide, battery-chicken-nurtured tendency to giant children and large breasts seems to have passed rural Germany by.
Drifts of short girls with faces caked in goth-style white pancake and industrial strength mascara, piercings, Fudge overkill on the blue, green or yellow streaked hair – stiffened and layered like Cilla Black on crack – torn stockings and Chucks.
Converse must be making a fortune in Rhineland.
Converse and steel-capped cothurni ROOL OKAY.
Maybe I’m getting this impression because I’m doing so much train travel ?
Maybe the autobahns are jammed with BMW’s and Fow Vays (that’s VW’s for those of you playing at home) full of fashionistas ?
But where do they go when they park and get out ?
The parts of Germany I’ve been seeing have been quiet.
The big towns seem, spookily… like Adelaide….. cue Twilight Zone theme.
Train travel in Germany, however, I have to say, gets the Big Tick.
I had so looked forward to train travel in Europe, but the French TGV(very-fast-train) left a lot to be desired.
The German ICE – Inter-City Express – on the other hand is sensational.
Those big trains whoosh, almost silently, into the stations like Great White Pointer sharks. The doors buzz open and you enter a world of very clean, beautifully catered, very fast and efficient, comfortable train travel.
In first class they serve you in your seat – meals, booze, the lot.
On one of my Hildesheim to Braunschweig runs there was a party of women who had taken the ICE hospitality a glass too far.
Lord knows how many cities they’d been through but by 11.30 on this particular morning they were pissed and raucous.
A lot of shouting and flirting with starled, sixty-year-olds was going down.
I WISH I knew what the occasion was.
My money was on a beauticians’ bonding weekend.
That’s one of the many drawbacks to a lack of fluency in the local language. You can make yourself understood at the rail counter or in the cake shop (thank God ! just point that fat finger again, Jane), but you can’t get the entire gist of something like these wild gals.
And you can’t engage in the random conversations which are the staple of travel.
Which is a pity.
The best I’ve managed has been the odd joke with a newsagent or waitress. But the laughter sprang from relief that we understood each other to the extent of seeing the mild humour in a situation.
It dissipated quickly.
At the bus-stop in the little town of Dinklar, outside Hildesheim, I seemed to always catch the bus to and from town with a sprightly looking woman of about sixty. (Yes, almost my age).
I couldn’t help noticing her because she was always immaculately fitted out in my favourite colours. Full length black leather coat, striking red scarf. Red and black bomber jacket, black stilettos and leather pants.
She was very slim, immaculately made up and had long, greying, blonde hair piled into a neat roll on her head.
She knew everyone.
People on motor-bikes and tractors waved ‘Halloo !’ to her.
She automatically tried to strike up a conversation with me, and her frustration was palpable when I, the only other passenger at the bus-stop, didn’t speak German. She loved a chat and I’d ruined her day.
I knew just how she felt.
On yet another train from Hildesheim to Hannover a young man in the seat across the aisle from me suddenly leaned over and let forth a stream of German too quickly for me to grasp.
I trotted out my usual, pathetic, ‘Ich kann nicht Deutsch sprechen – sorry’ (can NEVER remember the German word for ‘sorry’. Maybe John Howard was German…).
To which he immediately replied,
‘Oh, okay, but do you have a pen I can borrow ?’
Sure I did.
‘Ich bin eine shriftstellerin’ init.
(The German word for ‘writer’ is suitably long and sibilant).
He wrote for such a long time with my ‘Kugelschreiber’ that I was beginning to wonder if perhaps he was a ‘shriftsteller’ too.
I also began to wonder if (a) he was ever going to give it back to me and (b) if there would be any ink left in it when he did.
He eventually did (a) and I felt more confident of (b).
He asked me where I was from and whether I was on holiday and I suddenly found myself having a lengthy conversation with a stranger. My first since the beginning of this trip.
He was a singer from Hannover, he told me. The choir he was in was off on a tour of Venezuela the following day.
I told him a bit about my book and answered his many questions about Australia – he plans to visit us soon.
We had such a lively conversation that I felt compelled to ask him how come he spoke such good English.
He grew up in Hannover, he said, but he was born in Afghanistan to an Afghani father and a German mother. There was a UN school where he lived and he opted to learn English.
We rabbited on until the train pulled into Hannover but when we parted I couldn’t help but regret the number of other interesting conversations I might have had in the three countries I’ve visited so far.
Sartre said ‘L’enfer, c’est les autres’, but maybe he didn’t get out of Paris enough.
I’ll make enquiries when I lob at the ‘Deux Magots’ tomorrow.

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