Spargel Everywhere: The Monochrome Set Germany Tour 2015: Part 2 - Hamburg & Berlin (including a meet up with Anka!)

Photo courtesy of Caryne

COLOGNE TO HAMBURG

'Alaska's cave' - a tardis stuffed to the gunnels with Zubehör

Easter Sunday saw the first long drive of the trip, and my first experience of tour bus travel. It was in fact technically a tall van - a Mercedes Splitter - but seemingly the Germans would refer to it as 'ein Bus'.

The most remarkable aspect of the van was driver Alaska's comprehensive assortment of accessories and bloke-y tackle, which hung off the back of the headrests, were stowed under seats, lined the dashboard - and also dangled perilously from pegs clipped onto the roofliner. He had everything on board from plastic cutlery to a spare toothbrush, torch, screwdriver, whistle, straws, paper cups, tissues, penknife, bottle opener, obligatory pin up photo, drinks box, tote bag of 'passenger reading matter', first aid kit, and - most intriguingly - several sets of swimming goggles. And this list is by no means exhaustive.

A small snapshot of Alaska's bits and bobs

A rat's eye view of the Autobahn

On Day 1, seating habits were formed, which also included my travelling mascot, Max Rat, who assumed one of several more or less perilous poses to the left of the drummer's headrest. On cold days, he took to swaddling himself in the keyboard player's scarf, which also made for better stability (see one of his many toppling incidents below).

Motorway travel games and ghosts of projects past

Further to the head scratching over US states that also double up as Christian names, another travel game I played with the keyboard player consisted of listening out for travel bulletins, specifically any instances of a person or foreign body obstructing a motorway lane. This is an incredibly common phenomenon in Germany, and on a single trip could range from the customary burning vehicle or HGV tyre shreddings to 'metal poles', 'unidentified objects', and - our personal favourite - 'children'. We didn't encounter any 'Geisterfahrer' on tour though - so-called 'ghost drivers' who drive the wrong way down the motorway, causing a major risk to other traffic. Oh, and the bass player remarked that for a long time he had thought 'Ausfahrt' was a major city in Germany, as so many roads seemed to lead to it...

Max inexorably heading for the passenger reading matter bag

Then I am not sure if it counts as a game as such, but pretty much any sign off the motorway had associations for me with a particular job - or several, indeed, going back over the past 25 years...So, Laupheim (high speed blister packing plant), Hannover (blind rivets, rubber additives for tyres), Rottweil (architectural lighting), Wittstock (composite wood panels), Schneverdingen (wafer biscuits), and so on. On one - rather startling - occasion, a domestic appliance factory I had visited in the late 90s turned out to be bang opposite the venue! And when we stopped for lunch at a service station on the way up to Hamburg, I realised I had been there in 1994 to met a Dutchman in the cafeteria, whom I interviewed in German about stationary waste compactors. So whilst I was outwardly in 'band on tour' mode, the ghosts of my professional past persisted in popping out of the woodwork at every turn...;)

My jacket potato with 'no sour cream please'

HAMBURG

The gig that night was held in Hafenklang, a scruffy but capacious club by the harbour. All but obliterated by graffiti, as is standard for the German indie scene. Our rather 'retro' hotel was within easy walking distance, and I was invited to join the band - and Caryne and Dave, the husband and wife duo selling the merchandise each night, aka 'Die Merchandiser' - for a delicious homecooked meal at the venue.

Note the matching shower curtain with its cheery depiction of marine life!

The rhubarb lemonade raid

Now we were in Hamburg, we had squarely entered Germany's answer to Yorkshire's Rhubarb Triangle, meaning we had ready access at last to that sought-after soft tipple of Rhabarberschorle - the rhubarb equivalent of 'Appletizer', comprising rhubarb juice and fizzy water. The lemonade part is poetic licence to be honest, though you can also get a rhubarb version of that. And thus it was that at the end of the night I was charged with yet another drinks mission using band vouchers - to include as many rhubarb drinks as the bar had left.

There were so many of these vouchers that I decided to minimise my embarrassment by staging a split raid between the upstairs and downstairs bars. The upstairs sortie passed off without a hitch - was 'reibungslos abgewickelt', as the Germans might say - and I snagged five bottles of Rhabarberschorle. However, when I went downstairs I found the way to the bar deliberately blocked off with trestle tables and stacks of chairs. Nothing daunted, I managed to negotiate this veritable obstacle course of furniture and sneak through to the bar, where I scored another half dozen bottles of our rhubarb elixir. My cunning plan backfired rather though, when the woman from the upstairs bar - who must have wandered down for some reason, possibly to seek replacement stocks of rhubarb drinks from her colleague downstairs(!) - caught me in flagrante as I was clumsily clambering up the trestle table mountain on my way out.

Source: milchmaedel.de

HAMBURG TO BERLIN

The next day, Easter Monday, should have seen a fairly straight run down to Berlin, however we hadn't fully reckoned with holiday traffic, and got caught out with a vengeance a little north of Neurüppin. We were so behind schedule that I scrapped my idea to take the band on a scenic Umleitung to view the Trabant on a pole of a past post. My assigned mission that day was a spot of emergency navigating - using a paper road atlas, how impossibly quaint! - yet essential to figuring out a route that dodged the main jam and any likely spin off bottlenecks on the more obvious alternatives. To say we ended up off the beaten track is putting it mildly. Some of the minor roads we traversed were so minor they were cobbled, an oddity peculiar to former East Germany, as far as I can tell.

On this leg, I was also given the very important task of 'holding apples and envelopes of money'. Just briefly, you understand, while band members' hands were otherwise deployed.

BERLIN

The third and fourth gigs of the tour were back at Monarch, a quirky little venue overlooking the U-Bahn station of Kottbusser Tor. A full description of the place may be found in last year's tour report. Back then the dressing room had consisted of a subutteo table, but the ever resourceful Alaska took it upon himself to fashion one this time using a black out curtain and some of his extensive collection of clothes pegs.

Two English fans had come over specially for the gig, and proffered their necks for me to sniff - Simon (he of the Pratchett-esque beard) was sporting the über-elegant Chanel pour Monsieur, while his wife Mazz was rocking Aromatics Elixir, which wore beautifully soft and mysterious on her. I was rightly reprimanded for completely failing to recognise either of these iconic fragrances.

Photo courtesy of  Caryne 

At some point in the evening I embarrassed myself in the (heavily graffiti-daubed) ladies, when I followed a young girl inside without realising that the toilet cubicle itself was missing its door, thereby scotching the usual possibility of someone going to the loo while the waiting person touches up their makeup or whatever by the sink. The girl proceeded to take her trousers down in front of me, muttering with a slight note of petulance: 'Well, okay then, if you must', whereupon I legged it out of there as though I was on fire. I was sure to use the disabled toilet later on, which to my amusement was not completely free of graffiti either!

Hope and Anka

The following afternoon I had arranged to meet fellow perfumista (and Bonkers reader) Anka in a coffee house near our hotel, where I took a seat at a table by the window a little ahead of the appointed time. Anka recognised me straight away from my blog photos - while I recognised a woman with a look of recognition of her face ;) - and we spent a most enjoyable hour chatting about our respective jobs, her recent holiday, and that evening's gig which Anka and her husband had gamely agreed to attend! Our chat stretched my 'extrem eingerostet' German to its limits, but it was a jolly good thing for me to practise in this way. Surprisingly, we barely touched on the subject of our fragrance hobby...another instance perhaps of '(brand new) friends before perfume', to quote Val the Cookie Queen.

I didn't catch up with Anka and her husband till after the gig, though they had texted me their whereabouts, while I had left a notice by the door to direct them to where I was standing, in the unlikely event of their wishing to be as close as I like to be to the stage (for reasons of height and photography, mostly)! I was delighted to learn that they had enjoyed the set. Moreover, as they were eating their dinner before coming out, they had tuned into a live radio interview with the singer, Bid,  which had helped them to get 'in the zone', as it were. ;)  I should also mention that Anka was wearing Rozy edp, which smelt amazing on her. It proved to be an unexpected leitmotiv of the tour, as will become apparent in due course...

My confusing use of arrowheads was a source of some merriment

Oh, at the end of this gig the bass player sent me back upstairs to 'waste' TEN more drinks vouchers on beers for the next leg of the trip. I encountered the same resistance to the 'alcoholic beverage takeaway concept' as I had in Cologne, but in the end I managed to do a runner with all ten, though not before I'd copped for a serious ear bashing from the barman.

The singer leaves his mark at Hafenklang

PS Spargel (asparagus) will be along soon!

Bonkers 'on tour' in Germany again: The travel bit - Part 1: Berlin & Hamburg

It is two years since my favourite band, The Monochrome Set, last toured Germany.  On that occasion, they were promoting their new album, Platinum Coils, and I attended four of the gigs and sold the merchandise. And now they have a new album, Super Plastic City - also available in vinyl! (never say never...) - so it was time to hit the gig trail there again. This time the band started their itinerary with a one-off date in Paris, but I decided to join them in Berlin at the start of a six day circuit of Germany. And this time round I didn't have the responsibility of doing the merch either - Jane and her husband, who procured me that bottle of Méharées featured in my last post - were happy to do the honours.

NB I have decided to split this post into several parts - two(?) to recount the travel aspects of the tour, and one to cover the sniffing side of things, which was by no means all shop-based this time...

Berlin 

St Patrick's Day dawned bright and...what am I talking about?  I was stirring well before dawn to catch a train to Birmingham airport.  And having got up at the to me unimaginably early hour of 4.30am (says she, easing into the swing of German syntax before I have even left England!), I was uncharacteristically ravenous by 7am, and ordered French toast with bacon in a branch of the diner chain, Frankie and Benny.

When my food arrived, I was crestfallen to see that it looked to all intents and purposes like fried bread, with no fluffy yellow quilting, and only barely detectable trace elements of egg in its greasy core.  I ate one slice because I was hungry, toyed with the other, and decided to complain to the waitress when she predictably popped back to inquire if everything was all right with my meal.  She then fetched the chef, a kindly Indian gentleman, who apologised profusely and explained that he might not have been '100% sure' how to make French toast, and that he deferred to my judgement on how it should be.  'Definitely with...you know...egg.' I piped up brightly.   Then before I knew it, the waitress had presented me with a voided bill for £0.00, even waiving the cost of the perfectly decent pot of tea I had ordered with the toast.

So that little customer service coup put me in a cheerful frame of mind, which was further reinforced by a curious sign in the ladies toilets.  The term 'multi-faith washing' seemed to imply that you must be a member of a minimum of two religions to qualify to use these facilities, which on the face of it seemed an unlikely scenario.  Baptist and Buddhist?  Methodist and Muslim?  It was a conundrum.

After a quick shufty in the Duty Free (to be covered later in 'The scented bit'), it was soon time to board the flight. As I stood queuing on the jetway, I caught a glimpse of the two pilots in the cockpit and gave them a searching stare. It was just after the terrible business with the missing Malaysian plane, and the flying public everywhere was ultra-twitchy.  One theory at the time was that - for whatever reason - the pilots of MH370 had deliberately deviated from their flight path, so I was trying to suss out if this Germanwings duo looked like the sort to have other, undisclosed travel plans.  Suddenly, the first officer turned round and smiled broadly in my direction, and I decided that my fears were probably unfounded...

Germany began in fact the moment I set foot on the plane: for the flight attendant wished everyone 'Guten Morgen', even the passengers with a complimentary copy of the Birmingham Mail tucked under their arm. From this point on, there was no real milk, only the condensed travesty that is Kaffeesahne, and as we touched down, the captain wished us all a 'pleasant remaining day'.

The Germans knit too - yay!

I jumped on a bus to my hostel in the east of the city.  It was a huge, echoey, rabbit warren of a building, that turned out to be a former school.  Rather unexpectedly for such budget accommodation, it boasted a pool, but as I learnt when I pitched up there in my costume at 8.11am the next morning, it didn't open till 10am. Why of course it didn't! - the young people who make up the typical clientele will still be in their pits until gone noon...

How could I miss it?!

Back to Monday though, and the first gig at Monarch in Kreuzberg, a scruffily modish area south of the river. Even though I had been to two previous gigs bang next door to the club in question, I still couldn't find the entrance. 'Never being able to find the door of a venue, however many times you have been there before' is in fact an incontrovertible rule of the German indie scene, and after staring quizzically at assorted unmarked doors covered in a palimpsest of peeling posters and stickers, I was relieved to see the band's drummer suddenly hove into view, who was able to escort me the 10 yards to the club.

Bass player's eye view

The venue was upstairs, with a large expanse of windows along one wall overlooking the Kottbusser Tor metro station.  This prompted the guitarist to quip, mid-set: 'I wonder how many bass players have been lost out this window?  Look, the putty is still fresh!'  Other trademark features of Monarch - and most such grungy venues - is that it was smoky(!) and very, very dark.  I could just make out the flock wallpaper which was an eerie match for my blue brocade trousers.

My trousers!

This unexpected coincidence prompted the band to throw down the gauntlet and dare me to coordinate my trousers with the wall coverings in every venue.  Given the capsule wardrobe I had brought with me and the unknown decor of all the clubs to come, I hadn't a hope in hell of pulling off this stunt, but airily accepted the challenge regardless.

The wallpaper!

Another 'running gag' on the tour was the vanishingly small dressing rooms.  At Monarch, a table football table was pressed into service.  By the time we got to Bavaria, the sight of band members stripped to the waist outside the men's toilets didn't prompt so much as a raised eyebrow.

The Monarch gig was enthusiastically received, with a number of regulars in the audience whom I recognised from previous tours.  These included a Japanese lady with striking long blonde hair, who danced enthusiastically in the front row, thrusting two toy bunnies before her like a pair of furry maracas.

The dancing bunnies

After the gig, Jane and her husband headed straight back to their hotel with the merch case, while I did a spot of impromptu roadying.  I carried the bass player's guitar part of the way back to their eclectic, comprehensively graffiti-daubed accommodation, then joined them at a nearby kebab shop for a quick snack.  I took it upon myself to negotiate the menu in German, notably the various sauce options and choice between chips and pitta.  Yet again I fell into that trap of 'involuntary raw onion consumption': trying to effect a triage between halloumi cheese and the mountains of accompanying lettuce and red onion garnish was a doomed undertaking.

Hamburg

After the abortive pool incident first thing, it was a relatively short train ride to Hamburg next day - just two hours - and I was lucky to be able to check into my hotel off the notorious Reeperbahn pretty much immediately.  Jane and her husband were staying in a former brothel(!) that had been converted into a hotel, and it didn't open till 3pm. But of course not!  For in the red light district no one does any business that early...;) Although my hotel was geared towards conventional check in times, it was bang next door to one of the many sex shops and lap dancing clubs in the street.  Which you could say was entirely in keeping with its name - 'Grosse Freiheit' ('great freedom').

My friends' rather blue - and bullish - ex-brothel

My deceptively saintly hotel, with en suite strip joint

After a quick lie down, I decided to revisit some old haunts by the harbour and grab a bite to eat before the gig.  In particular, I recalled a bijou and inconspicuous venue called the Goldener Pudel Klub, housed in a concrete bunker, and was curious to see if I could find it again after a long interval.  I narrowed the field down to two 'bunker-esque' buildings, then caved in and asked someone...

Goldener Pudel Klub - still surprisingly hard to find - the door takes even longer

Next up, I headed for a favourite restaurant along the quay, where I got stuck into what ex-Mr Bonkers used to term 'big fish'.  Or rather 'three small fish in batter', which collectively could be equated with one big one.  Somewhat intoxicated from an overly large small glass of wine with my dinner, I strode purposefully to the venue in the drizzling rain - any loitering along the way can readily be misconstrued round these parts.

That night's venue, Astra-Stube, is a converted bakery that holds about 10 people comfortably, but is billed as having a capacity of 200.  I am not sure how many were in that night, but suffice to say that ordering a drink on one side of the room or using the toilets on the other involved the burrowing skills and force of character normally associated with tunnel engineers.  The audience was packed soooo cheek by jowl that when people posted photos of the gig on Facebook the next day, I recognised their avatars and cover photos from having had a forest of phones waved around just inches from my face. In this club the dressing room had shrunk to a small dark void under the merch table where sundry band members had risked chucking the odd belonging.

Steve the drummer warily eyeing up on-stage 'sharps'

The stage was similarly 'compact', and there was a very real concern that the band's guitar headstocks could do someone a mischief.  Add a pall of cigarette smoke into the mix, a large brown dog threading itself between people's legs, and a suffusion of red light, and you had the quintessence of the alternative music scene in St Pauli...

After the gig, we flagged down taxis in the busy intersection outside.  Jane couldn't resist ribbing me about 'standing on street corners', but I suppose it had to be done...

Coming up: Cologne, Augsburg - and Berlin again...and The Scented Bit!