BA Heaven

I flew back to the UK at the weekend again for 24 hours or so. Since the early Sunday a.m. Ryanair flight seems to have been discontinued I was forced, forced to fly with BA for hardly any more money.
What is it about BA? There's this effortless ease, boundless confidence about what they do. The cabin crew are grown-ups and give straight answers. You get food and drinks. You can check in online and choose your seat (why the hell can't Ryanair and Sleazyjet do that?). And we arrived 25 minutes early. How on earth you shave 25 minutes off a 70 minute flight I can't begin to guess.
Anyway, my gorgeous kids seemed to remember vaguely who I am, and I cooked dinner for my lovely wife - well, having missed almost all the previous 9 weeks' cooking, cleaning and childcare it seemed fair. It's that spirit of give and take which keeps a marriage fresh, I find.
And then back on the coach to Stansted for a Ryanair flight back - of which I shall say only one thing. The cabin crew on a BA flight would never, never make disparaging comments out loud about the pilot's skills to passengers, no matter how bumpy the landing. Shame on you, Susanna the Purser.

Fleamarkets

Hamburg's great for a flohmarkt and every Saturday there's a big, busy one in Feldstrasse. Jenny and I went there today, and it's the first time I've seen English people in any numbers here. They seemed to be everywhere talking on mobiles and holding plastic bags.

Amongst the usual market tat there were some interesting things - a few bits of Whitefriars but nothing which blew my skirt up. And whilst most stalls were anything and everything, there were a few that specialised. One seemed to have a job lot of surgical instruments of every conceivable type (including a whole range of speculums which must have made every adult woman shudder when they passed), and then I came across this:

A whole stall devoted to old lab equipment? Stills, retorts, test tubes, bunsens. It's all there. Anyway, we didn't want any pyrex beakers or benzine droppers, so we headed out and passed the entrance to the DOM, which is right next to this edifice, called the Hochbunker.
That name is a masterstroke of understatement. It is HUGE. A government bunker from the last war, it's been reinvented as a gig venue and music school. When I asked Kai, our SM, why it hadn't been dismantled after the war, he said, in his typical dead-pan way, "Well, it was designed to be totally bomb-proof. That made it a bit difficult to demolish".

Good point.

Wheels

I've just been out for a walk - it's Good Friday and gorgeous - and everyone's out on wheels. Cycling is BIG in Hamburg, there are cycle lanes on all the pavements. And you've never seen a Hamburger properly annoyed until you've seen a pedestrian stray into the cycle lane - the air turns blue. Plus there's buggies, unicycles and inline skaters (some of whom were men in their forties, oh dear...)

Anyway, I stopped for a little while next to a skate park and watched the kids on boards for a bit - I say kids, I mean boys, as there don't seem to be any more girls skateboarding now than when I used to do it myself. I did wonder, though, why no-one was using the half-pipe. I mean, they were all using the low-level ramps and quarter-pipes but no-one was on the half-pipe, and when I was skating it was so popular you had to queue to even get on it. They all looked really accomplished, too.

As I moved off, I got a view of the top platform on the half-pipe, and realised why. There were about a dozen girls up there, reading magazines, swapping make-up and generally claiming it as their territory. Clearly none of the guys were going to even think about challenging them.

Emergency Literature

I posted a while ago (during the Sternschanze episode, in fact) about reading things you wouldn't normally pick up/have time for/notice in a bookshop. Each of the flats has a selection of books which reflects the tastes of hundreds of ETH actors, and sooner or later you're gonna run out of things you read out of choice, and pick up one of these gems. It's like flying to Australia - eventually you'll be reading the print on the sick-bag.
Or, if you'd rather not be saddled with Sam Bourne, John Grisham and Herman Wouk (!) you could always toddle along to the nearest Oxfam (mine's on Hoheluft Chaussee) and look in there. And what a bunch of smarty-pants Anglophiles we have in our neighbourhood! Or it could just be one expat with a voracious appetite - Life of Pi, Barrytown Trilogy, George Mikes' How to be a Brit (nicely ironic, that one), Ben Okri, Barry Unsworth, Angela Carter and a host of other literary fiction. I'd buy them all, but I'd never have time to read them at home!

Finally, the Story Outruns the Truth

I found this on an American website (the italics are mine):

A British actor suffered a heart attack and collapsed onstage at the precise moment during a play that his character was supposed to have a heart attack. Fortunately, Steve Dineen’s co-star Alice Selwyn realized he wasn’t faking and stopped the performance of Abigail’s Party to call for a doctor. Dineen is expected to make a full recovery, said spokesman Paul Brunton, but “it was very traumatic” when Dineen was lying on the stage, gasping. “It was almost like real life imitating art.”

And here's another corker from Worldmag.com

Missing a beat
The audience at the Musselburgh's Brunton Theatre in the United Kingdom couldn't tell, but actor Steve Dineen was slightly ahead of cue when he collapsed during the final scene of Abigail's Party. But his fellow actors knew that Dineen's character, Lawrence, wasn't supposed to collapse and die of a heart attack for a few more lines. Dineen's heart attack, it turned out, wasn't staged. Co-star Alice Selwyn quickly noticed Dineen wasn't acting and emerged from character to ask for a doctor. An ambulance arrived in time to take the veteran actor to the hospital, where he is recovering

VETERAN ACTOR! Jesus Christ on a bike, I'm 42!

DOM

God, they know how to do fairs here. We have a fair in St Giles' in Oxford once a year for two days. In Hamburg they have the DOM three times a year for a month each time. And it's great.

And I'm speaking as someone who doesn't like rides much. At the Oxford fair in 1981 I was violently sick after riding "The Cage" (all because my mother forced me to eat an omelet before I went) and I've never forgotten it. But I will do Dodgems and Ferris wheels and stuff. There was a good deal of machismo from our SM Kai at the mediaeval axe-throwing contest (he was beaten by a girl) and we all did the archery, ghost train and log flue. But the highlight for me was the Mouse Circus.

I don't think I was actually expecting mice taming smaller creatures, or on the trapeze and what-not. Actually what you get is hundreds of mice belting around the place climbing over stuff. And it makes you smile much more than it should:

The Ferris Wheel is not to be missed, either. At twilight you get a sensational view over Hamburg, and the DOM itself is the brightest thing in the city:

It was all very "Third Man". If we hadn't been the worse for a couple of Gluweins by that stage then maybe one of us might have quoted it.

Fischmarkt

This is a Hamburg institution - I mean, it's been going since 1703. And you feel that old when you pitch up at 7am - any later and you might as well not bother.
The first signs are at the St Pauli tube. There's a group of four hammered 20-year-olds, and one of them is carrying a crate of strawberries; you know, 24 punnets. I guess he'll work out what to do with them at home. There's hordes of people getting off the tube, and it's Sunday morning. Nothing is normal about today so far.
The market itself runs from 5-9am every Sunday, and it's a boisterous affair. Follow the crowds in the grey morning drizzle and quite suddenly you're there. Dozens and dozens of trucks, sides open, selling smoked fish, fresh fish, pickled fish, fish sandwiches. And that's just the fish. Fruit (mainly strawberries today) and vegetables, tat Hamburg souvenirs, hats, fruhstuck vans and god knows what else.
Everyone eventually heads for the fish auction hall - a huge galleried affair with beer stalls and grills selling bratwurst and krakauer. The Rough Guide talks about German rock being thrashed out in here, but today it's ZZ Top (except they're not doing the difficult guitar solos). It's like Saturday night, we mooch around, thinking about sausages for breakfast (well I do) and try to talk over the noise. Heather says something to me, but at that precise moment everyone choruses "Every girls crazy 'bout a SHARP DRESSED MAN!!!" and we revert to sign language. She points outside, and she's right. This is all too much with a hangover.

Saturday Night

Last night was one of the best shows we've done, and definitely the best audience we've had. They were incredible. An amazing sense of warmth and enjoyment just washing up on stage in waves, and an insane number of curtain calls, and some people even standing - although they might have been late for their trains, I suppose. No, let's say they were standing and leave it at that.

I've noticed a feature of audiences here that you don't get at home, and it's to do with their enjoyment of the details of the language itself. Colloquialisms and idioms which would pass unnoticed in a native speaking audience get extra mileage here, I suppose because they have to translate and interpret and then understand. For example, Jenny (Mother) has to say that the play is trouble because "...it's chiefly to do with you-know-who." That's just a phrase to us, but the audience translate it, and then realise who she means, and it gets a huge laugh. It's odd.

'Nother Notice

"Steve Dineen as John (the "troublemaker" in the family who insists on bringing up issues) transmits John's persistence as being his character's virtue but also his vice beautifully".

How do you like them apples? Cheers, Hamburg Express.

Haar Here

Ages ago I posted about how ghastly it was having to sport a 70's moustache in 2009 (or 2008 as it then was). The subject would always come up when I was having a haircut - you'd see it in their eyes, a kind of quizzical "He wants a normal haircut but has THAT on his face? Does he know?" so then the story would come out..."You know Abigail's Party? No? I'm surprised...well, it's quite a famous play that's set in the 70's and...."
Bad enough. But tomorrow I have to go have my roots done and ask them to cut my hair in a deliberately bouffant 70's style and leave the sideburns. In German. Consequently I'm leafing through every dictionary and lexicon I can lay my hands on to anticipate every conceivable outcome.
I don't want a repeat of the occasion when I tried to check into a Spanish hotel on spec with a friend of mine, and we wanted a twin room. We didn't want to end up with a double bed, obviously, but all my useful Spanish on the topic deserted me, so I found myself asking for "a room for two male persons who are not homosexuals, please".

Return to Sternschanze

One of the places I visited with my B-I-L last week was Sternschanze, and I had a chance to look at it with fresher eyes than before. I still wouldn't want to live there - too noisy - but it reminds me strongly of what happens in some London areas when they become gentrified - the good and the bad which characterise it are swept away in favour of the safe and middle-class.

Geoff, our SM, told me that the fabulous Wasserturn or water-tower was lately converted into a luxurious Movenpick hotel, but in the teeth of protracted local opposition. The residents didn't necessarily want to do anything else with it, but it seems they objected to it being exploited for financial gain on principle. Guests arriving at the completed hotel had to be protected by security and police for some months after it opened, such was the strength of feeling.

The same local activism has successfully prevented the wreck of the Flora Theatre (now called the Rota Flora) from being renovated - here's a picture of part of it:

The Lonely Planet guide calls it an "alternative culture centre and drug-dealing hub", which is something they probably don't put in the estate agent's description when they sell neighbouring flats. Whatever it is, Geoff apparently went to a show there last year and couldn't shake the fear that the whole place was about to collapse about his ears. Just round the corner is another venue which Geoff has visited:

What was the show, "Stig of the Dump"?

Slips and Blips

It seems to be an absolute aeon since I wrote anything about the actual SHOW, which is why I'm here, after all. That's because it's going well, with very healthy houses and not too many hiccups. Not the stuff of entertaining blogging.
However, that's not to say there aren't moments. Rory, in particular, suffers from a type of foot-in-mouth which is all the more agonising for being subtle. He'll mix up names (he has dozens in his speeches) so instead of Harry Blackburn, Marv Watson and Phil Foster we'll get Tony Blackburn, Hank Marvin and Norman Foster. The audience don't notice but we do. Jenny very occasionally forgets the words "cheap and self-indulgent" and will substitute almost anything, from "nasty and selfish" to "I........just don't like it!". Heather's mouth usually behaves, but she makes up for it by tripping down the stairs every now and then, usually when she's got someone in.
How I manage with these rank amateurs is anyone's guess.

Boyz 2 Men

My brother-in-law left yesterday after a crammed two days. We drank beer at luncheon on show days and drank LOTS of beer on school nights, raced go-karts at the DOM fair, ate pretzels, hung out in Sternschanze, did the art galleries and, of course, trawled the Reeperbahn. Well, as Bradley says in the play, "It's there, he's young, so I gave him my blessing".
When we got to Herbertstrasse, the closed street which is basically a block-long brothel and which is verboten to any women visitors and men under 18, we did what hundreds of thousands of men before us have done, and walked down it to have a browse.
This, however, was a wet Wednesday afternoon, and we weren't anticipating much talent to be in evidence. How wrong we were. There were LOTS of women there, and some of them were arrestingly attractive.
And herein lies a thorny problem - do you give in to your strong instinct to almost break into a run (as someone did right in front of us) or take a measured and exaggeratedly carefree saunter whilst having no intention of buying anything?
I've only experienced this sort of dilemma once before - when someone bought me a lap dance at a club without my knowledge, and I found myself in a private room with a girl in a bikini. In the heat of the moment, is it worse to flatly refuse, or to allow the event to happen and live with your conscience afterwards? I opted for the latter, ands excruciatingly embarrassing it was too. I was clutching my beer so tightly she had to prise it out of my grip. Never again.
On the basis that this was the first and last time, however, my B-I-L and I took the more leisurely approach, even pausing to add credibility to the exercise and to more amply appreciate the visuals. We then had a stiff drink and talked about nothing else for the next few hours.

Flug mit Fame

I've noticed this bizarre tendency with some of the "value" airlines lately - the crew on the flight deck seems to have new responsibilities. On Sunday, the captain was telling us all about the tempting range of baguettes and paninis, for God's sake. I kept thinking "Look at the instruments, man, not the menu!". I bet they love having to do that - like Paxman loved doing the weather on Newsnight.
Aside from that (and the crew banging on and on about scratchcards) the Ryanair flight was notable because it was carrying T-Rex back from Hamburg. No Marc Bolan, obviously, and Mickey Finn died quite a few years ago. But the drummer's the same guy. I think.
I knew they were rockers at once, but only because they weren't exactly trying to hide it - I mean, they seemed to be wearing their stage clothes, for a start. And there was the odd medicinal sharpener - and this was at 8am. And they all wore shades. And called each other "man". It was like Spinal Tap live.
I was sitting two rows behind them when either Rob or Graham (they both looked identical) called the cabin steward over and had a discussion about the wine. I couldn't hear much of it (although I was straining to hear) but I swear I heard the steward say, with an air of finality:
"I honestly don't see how it can be corked, sir - it's a screw-top bottle".

Flight 435

I'm doing my third Ryanair Lubeck-Stansted flight to see the wife and saucepan lids tomorrow. It's a flight which I'm certain has been specifically designed for English party people who have been "giving it large" all night on the Reeperbahn. You can imagine the state of some of the travellers at 8.55am - at least they sleep most of the way. But it works fine for me.

Lubeck airport is not much more than a cow shed - it's almost as bad as the NZ airport Bob Downe describes as "a runway made from a couple of paddocks and a caravan for the terminal". Here's a photo:

Pretty yummy. That brown box is the frontline for border control out of Germany.

I also saw something on the flight that I haven't witnessed since my friend Richard tried it on a flight to Nice in 1982 - a passenger invited one of the cabin crew to SIT ON HIS KNEE! He wasn't English, so he carried it (and the inevitable rejection) off with aplomb. And he continued to watch her retreating bum with undisguised interest every time she had to push one of those trolleys up and down the aisle. I confess I sneaked a bit of a look, too...