When, late one evening, after beer has been taken, a German
friend asks you if you would like a lift to Dresden the next afternoon, there
is generally only one answer: flip a coin to decide. We’d planned to see a
Doors tribute act that evening, you see. Lady Luck smiled on us, and we asked
another German friend to see if he knew anyone who would be willing to put up
two drunken, English, Erasmus students - whom they had never met before - in
their house. Strangely enough, we had a taker. So, the next afternoon, we got
into The Dude’s car. He pulled away, only to hear a dramatic crunching noise,
which I think set the tone for the whole weekend. We decided, when we stopped
for petrol, that we needed some kind of ashtray, not thinking to use the empty
can of Coke that we’d previously saved for just such a purpose. Obviously I
bought a beer, which turned out to be 6%. I cracked it open, and The Dude
turned round from the driver’s seat to ask for a mouthful. When in Rome, and
all that. Now, fate had been kind to us so far, which meant that our luck had
to run out eventually. We got stuck in a big old traffic jam, that lasted for
around an hour and a half. A little quirk of Polish traffic lights is that
they’re rubbish. They stay green for up to 30 seconds at a time. They also have
a little timer, so you can see just how much of your life you’re wasting whilst
sat there. In a nutshell, they have a unique capacity to destroy your soul and
cause huge tail-backs. And, as everyone knows, beer has a habit of going
straight through you, especially the stronger ones, so that was a very long
hour and a half for Mr. Mungo.
Anyway, life moves on, and so did we. In the first 20
minutes away from the tailback, we covered more ground than we had done in the
entire afternoon. I was quite excited about the prospect of seeing some
authentic Polish countryside. I was also excited when I saw The Phantom Menace in the cinema: pretty
similar experiences, really. It turns out that it’s boring as anything. They
also have a propensity for putting big billboards in the middle of fields. That
doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but I wasn’t sure what they were
advertising. Could have been dental care, life insurance or internet
providers. Anyway, we made it out of
Poland, at last. I’d never actually been to Germany before that weekend, so I
had plenty of stereotypes and expectations. The first is that the autobahns are
fantastic. You can thank my sixth-form Kraftwerk habit for that. And you know
what? They’re pretty cool, as motorways go. Sadly, the second we got onto it,
the heavens opened like you would not believe, which made things interesting to
say the least. We were driving at around 160 k/h when the Dude turned round,
wearing his trademark smile, and said “boys... at this velocity, if I made a
mistake... none of us will survive”. Thankfully he didn’t. He’s an excellent
driver, to be fair. And quite the showman, he knows how to make an otherwise
dull drive exciting.
Dresden is actually quite a beautiful town. You can thank
the Soviets for rebuilding it. When we arrived, we went to The Dude’s friends’
flat. He rang the intercom, and belched loudly into it. I thought then that
these were people I could get on with. I wasn’t disappointed. They were like
something from a cult film. They certainly enjoyed smoking and drinking, which
is a trait I like in a person. They spent much of the evening trying to teach
us how to open bottles with a lighter. ‘Trying’ is the key word in that
sentence. They put on Disraeli Gears,
by Cream, which is one of my favourite albums, and very fitting to the general
atmosphere. They then got completely sidetracked by eating cornflakes.
Absolutely fantastic, and so accommodating, I was very grateful to them. Lovely
set of guys, the only problem being that we were a bit worried about where we
were going to be sleeping, seeing as the girl whose house we were staying in
wasn’t answering her phone. We needn’t have worried, as she and her flatmates
were lovely as well. Marek and I were on a sofabed, complete with blankets. It
was better than any of the beds that I’ve seen in Poland. Anyway, the second
we’d put our bags and what-have-you down, we were off to a club. Something that
the German youth does like is walking down the street drinking beer. Me, I’m
not so keen on it. I always think that that kind of behaviour is reserved for
the homeless, those with a drinking problem, scummy teenagers and hooligans of
one kind or another. We had dinner in this little Turkish place, which was nice
enough, until The Dude forgot to pay. Thankfully, everyone was very nice about
it. I’ve always been nervous about Turkish people working in food outlets after
a friend of mine in Guildford tried to complain that he had been given a large
kebab instead of a small one, and one of the guys came out of the backroom, holding
a big knife, telling him that that was what he’d got, and he’d better pay. The
nightclub was strange. You couldn’t smoke inside, for a start, which is one of
the things that I now look for in a bar. It also had a kind of games room, with
table football and pool. In England, they would be broken down to their
component pieces and used as weapons, which I took to mean that they don’t know
how to party properly. I found the club to be a bit soulless actually. Nice,
but I just didn’t enjoy it. It could be something to do with the fact that I
realised I was using Euros. Whilst the Euro is vastly inferior to the Great
British Pound, it is an actual currency, and it does have a real world value,
as opposed to the Polish Zloty, affectionately referred to as “Monopoly money”.
It was unsettling to say the least.
The next day, we decided to look at Dresden’s old town, just
Marek and myself, neither of us capable of speaking German. It’s a very pretty
place – the buildings even look authentically pre-war and everything. For some
reason there was a large number of horses and carts roaming around. Horses
unsettle me, I don’t understand people that willingly have them around. They
can kick, bite and stamp, as well as being completely unrestrainable, should
they take a mind to be so. Anyway, it turns out that Dresden is full of bloody fountains
as well. I still don’t understand why people go mad for them. I don’t care for
German food overly much either. I don’t really eat meat, if left to my own
devices, which kinda makes me stand out like a sore thumb in the Fatherland. I
don’t consider a big sausage as a meal in itself. On the other hand, the bona
fide German market we were in partly redeemed itself by serving beer by the
litre. I felt like a hobbit in the Prancing Pony, it was fantastic. Until I
realised that they expected me to pay a five Euro deposit for the glass. I
actually thought that five Euros for a big old glass like that was a bargain,
but I decided against it. I wish I had, it might have shown them that their
system is theoretically efficient (important word to Germans) but doesn’t work.
I do regret being taken in by the comparative good looks of the barmaid. That
brings me on to another point. The two towns aren’t that far away, but the
women in Dresden are far, far less attractive than the ones in Wroclaw. I don’t
know why that should be, but it was disappointing nonetheless. Someone else who was disappointed was the singer in a busking duo. Both were wearing military uniforms, with one singing and one playing accordion. I wanted to show my support, but I didn't want to part with any money, so I threw them a handful of (worthless) grosze, the sub-unit of the Zloty. I'm not certain what they shouted after me, but it sounded a lot like a threat or a curse of some description.
Anyway, we decided that we’d exhausted the joys of Dresden,
so went back. That involved a train ticket, which was a bitch to buy. Eventually
we got on one, and had a German family come and sit next to us, and start
eating some sandwiches. That was fine, but two minutes before the train
departed, they got off. I still don’t understand what was going on there. The
train stopped at literally every station between Dresden and Wroclaw, and mercy
me, were some of them grim. Grey, dull, clearly hadn’t progressed since the
early 70’s. Reminded me a bit of my housing estate back home. As a parting
note, regarding the whole escapade, when I got back, I realised that the bloody
Germans had sold us a ticket to Breslau. For those that don’t know, that was
the old German name for the city, before Poland was shifted West. I don’t know
if I’m reading too much into it, but that strikes me as being both bitter and
arrogant. Our answer to that? Use the damn thing as roach paper, because we’re
living the dream.
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