I get the point!
Jul. 26th, 2003 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enthusiastickOK, Germany. You win.
Last night chewed me up and spit me out but good. All I wanted to do was take a nice trip up to Köln (that much I accomplished.) As part of some freakishly awesome one-night engagement, Ronan Harris (the singer from vnv nation, a personal hero of anyone who's ever seen him perform) was DJing at a club called the Alter Wartesaal.
I made it to Köln in one piece. It's about an hour train ride, and the train only comes about that often. I even found the club, a good hour in advance of when it was supposed to open. Finding the club turned out to be quite a feat, as it was located in a tunnel underneath the train station. The door was randomly open, so I chatted with one of the guys putting up posters. He confirmed that the doors opened at 10, and Ronan was playing a two-hour set from 11 to 1. This was not, he assured me, like when you went to see a band perform and they take the stage a half hour after they're scheduled to go on, minimum. Ronan would be getting behind the turntables promptly at 11. Cool.
I went and had dinner on the other side of the Kölner Dom, the third largest Catholic church in the world. It's a truly staggering piece of gothic architecture, and I smile every time I see it. With the shadow of this twisted thing on the horizon is definitely the right way to go to a goth-industrial club, if ever there was one.
I headed back to the club around 10:30, and was mildly surprised to see a rather long line had formed in front of the door. No big deal, I get in line. I am, to my pleasant surprise, chatted up by a couple of slightly older-looking goths who have somehow kenned that I'm American (maybe it was the Strong Sad t-shirt.) As 11:00 approaches, I finally make my way up to the door. I will now translate the most excellent conversation between me and the bouncer.
ME: How much is the entrance fee?
HIM: 8 Euros. (Pauses, looks me over, smiles evilly.) But you can't go in like that.
ME: Like what?
HIM: Dressed like that.
ME: What's wrong with the way I'm dressed.
(Brief pause due to breakdown in translation. He consults with his colleague.)
HIM: You're wearing shorts. You have to be wearing long pants.
ME: ... Oh.
I should point out that it's a nice hot muggy July evening, and I know from having been inside already that this place is not air-conditioned. This is a ridiculous dress code requirement, but whatever. I shrug it off and wander back into Köln to, well, buy pants. (What, you thought I was just going to give up?) Of course, it's Germany, so everything is closed. After about half an hour of fruitless searching, I give up and return to the club.
The line has gone down, so I walk straight up to the Evil Bouncer from Hell. I explain my plight to him... all of my clothes are in Bad-Godesberg, it will take me at least two hours to get long pants. Ronan has already begun to spin. It is a big deal to me that I get inside. The Bouncer from Hell is not impressed. This is not, he tells me, his problem. I offer (quite seriously) to rent his pants for 50 Euros. He interprets this either as a bribe or ridicule, and somewhat angrily chases me away from the door. The man is a good 6 inches taller than me even without his big combat boots.
I wander the streets of Köln depressed, offering to buy the pants off every sufficiently large stranger I meet. At this point my tiredness and frustration has made my German rather poor, so I find no takers and am treated like the big weirdo I am. I slouch to the train station and catch a train back to Bad-Godesberg, which hillariously runs into several delays on the way home.
Sigh.
I get the point. It's clear to me now that the whole region of Germany in the vicinity of Bonn just utterly hates me and would like me to leave. I'm pinning all my hopes at this point on my program in Weimar (coming up in August) being better than this one, because otherwise I'm going to write off the whole two month trip as mostly a disaster. I just have to survive one more week here. I can do that. Everybody keep your fingers crossed for me.
Last night chewed me up and spit me out but good. All I wanted to do was take a nice trip up to Köln (that much I accomplished.) As part of some freakishly awesome one-night engagement, Ronan Harris (the singer from vnv nation, a personal hero of anyone who's ever seen him perform) was DJing at a club called the Alter Wartesaal.
I made it to Köln in one piece. It's about an hour train ride, and the train only comes about that often. I even found the club, a good hour in advance of when it was supposed to open. Finding the club turned out to be quite a feat, as it was located in a tunnel underneath the train station. The door was randomly open, so I chatted with one of the guys putting up posters. He confirmed that the doors opened at 10, and Ronan was playing a two-hour set from 11 to 1. This was not, he assured me, like when you went to see a band perform and they take the stage a half hour after they're scheduled to go on, minimum. Ronan would be getting behind the turntables promptly at 11. Cool.
I went and had dinner on the other side of the Kölner Dom, the third largest Catholic church in the world. It's a truly staggering piece of gothic architecture, and I smile every time I see it. With the shadow of this twisted thing on the horizon is definitely the right way to go to a goth-industrial club, if ever there was one.
I headed back to the club around 10:30, and was mildly surprised to see a rather long line had formed in front of the door. No big deal, I get in line. I am, to my pleasant surprise, chatted up by a couple of slightly older-looking goths who have somehow kenned that I'm American (maybe it was the Strong Sad t-shirt.) As 11:00 approaches, I finally make my way up to the door. I will now translate the most excellent conversation between me and the bouncer.
ME: How much is the entrance fee?
HIM: 8 Euros. (Pauses, looks me over, smiles evilly.) But you can't go in like that.
ME: Like what?
HIM: Dressed like that.
ME: What's wrong with the way I'm dressed.
(Brief pause due to breakdown in translation. He consults with his colleague.)
HIM: You're wearing shorts. You have to be wearing long pants.
ME: ... Oh.
I should point out that it's a nice hot muggy July evening, and I know from having been inside already that this place is not air-conditioned. This is a ridiculous dress code requirement, but whatever. I shrug it off and wander back into Köln to, well, buy pants. (What, you thought I was just going to give up?) Of course, it's Germany, so everything is closed. After about half an hour of fruitless searching, I give up and return to the club.
The line has gone down, so I walk straight up to the Evil Bouncer from Hell. I explain my plight to him... all of my clothes are in Bad-Godesberg, it will take me at least two hours to get long pants. Ronan has already begun to spin. It is a big deal to me that I get inside. The Bouncer from Hell is not impressed. This is not, he tells me, his problem. I offer (quite seriously) to rent his pants for 50 Euros. He interprets this either as a bribe or ridicule, and somewhat angrily chases me away from the door. The man is a good 6 inches taller than me even without his big combat boots.
I wander the streets of Köln depressed, offering to buy the pants off every sufficiently large stranger I meet. At this point my tiredness and frustration has made my German rather poor, so I find no takers and am treated like the big weirdo I am. I slouch to the train station and catch a train back to Bad-Godesberg, which hillariously runs into several delays on the way home.
Sigh.
I get the point. It's clear to me now that the whole region of Germany in the vicinity of Bonn just utterly hates me and would like me to leave. I'm pinning all my hopes at this point on my program in Weimar (coming up in August) being better than this one, because otherwise I'm going to write off the whole two month trip as mostly a disaster. I just have to survive one more week here. I can do that. Everybody keep your fingers crossed for me.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-26 03:19 pm (UTC)