Cologne is a very dangerous city. That’s not to say that it isn’t a very nice city. There are the appropriate amount of historical buildings for tourists to take photos of, there are a lot of nice shops to shop in, the locals seems friendly, the food is nice and I am sure the crime rate is quite low. However, this does not change the fact that it is a very dangerous city for one simple reason. Cologne seems to have been built on the theory of Darwinism. If you are not intelligent enough to survive Koln then Cologne will do its best to remove you from the gene pool all together. I discovered this during a recent business trip with a group of colleagues which I feel we were very lucky to return from with all our limbs attached.
We faced our first challenge before we even set foot on German soil. We’d been on the train from Holland to for four hours so we were eager to disembark. The four of us stood crowded around the door, taking turns to peek out the tiny window in an attempt to spot the platform. Finally the train stopped, we opened the door, the first of us put a triumphant foot forward to step out… and quickly had to be yanked back before becoming the owner of a pair of broken legs.
To say that there was a distinct lack of platform is technically untrue. There was something that could have been classified as a platform but it was over a meter down from the door which I’m sure is in violation of EU regulations.
We spent a full minute just staring at the drop in front of us, trying to work out if ‘that was just how they did things in Germany’ and ‘how in the hell’ we were going to get down. Our options seemed limited. Either we would have to make a rope out of our jackets or simply accept that the first one would have to sacrifice himself so the others could have a soft landing. The solution turned out to be a lot simpler than we thought when we checked the other side of the train carriage and discovered that that door could be opened too and the platform was located on that side.
Having nearly failed the first of Cologne’s Darwinian intelligent tests we disembarked from the train and decided to never speak of it again.
A few hours later we discovered that if visitors survive arriving in the city, Cologne has another way of making sure the unintelligent and unobservant are prevented from future additions to the gene pool. This is done in the form of poles that seem to have been randomly placed around the city at crotch height, sometimes in the middle of the path. If someone (let’s say me for example) was not looking were they were going they might end up receiving the kind of surprising and unexpected blow to the dangly area that makes the voice go a few octaves higher.
When this happened to me my last second attempt to protect my genitalia from impact by sucking them up into my body almost resulted in me doing a full frontal flip over the obstacle which would have looked very cool had I pulled it off but in reality resulted in me falling over and almost impaling myself. Luckily my genitalia came away from the incident unharmed.
Having survived the first two attempts to thin our numbers Cologne resorted to a much more subtle and psychological means of trying to remove us from the mortal world; Elevator music! Or as we started to call it; ‘music to write a suicide note to’. It was elevator music that was not just restricted to elevators. We heard it everywhere; the hotel, restaurants, bars, even the games convention we were attending. It was the kind of happy but sad music that you would expect to hear in a montage of long gone happy memories being remembered by the unhappy soon to be no more writer. I could even hear it in my hotel room coming from the corridor as I tried to sleep and not think about picking up pen and paper myself.
Luckily we did not give in to the cities attempts to break us and later returned to Holland in one peace.
The offending pole outside our hotel
(Check out how well our previous business trip went as well: Lost in Liverpool)
7:45pm – INT – RESTAURANT ENTRANCE
A family of four enters the Pannenkoeken house and waits by the entrance. They are approached by a waiter. He is a young waiter. He probably works at the Pannenkoeken house part time and goes to college where he studies for a less pancake orientated future. For the purposes of this story we will call him Dirk van Pannenkoek. Dirk van Pannenkoek enquires as to how he may assist the family. The family of four requests a table of four since it is what they require.
Dirk shows the family of four to the requested table with four seats and presents them each with a menu (which totals four). English menus are requested and given. Dirk does this quickly and efficiently as he is a well trained waiter.
With the menu’s arranged Dirk enquires if drinks are desired and four drinks are ordered, one each for the family of four. A short while later Dirk returns with the drinks.
7:55pm – INT – RESTAURANT TABLE
When Dirk returns later once more the family of four has suddenly become a family of three. Dirk suggests that he should return when the three have become four again but the family of three insist that they are ready to order. Dirk takes out his order pad and pen and three orders follow, each of which he writes down. He waits for the fourth order for the missing member but no order is given or seems likely to be given. Confused for a moment Dirk wonders if he imagined the fourth family member or if they are a very unkind family who considers someone to be on their own and forgotten when they visit the bath room. Slightly perplexed Dirk returns to the kitchen.
TEN MINUTES EARLIER
My father had spent a good amount of time umming and erring his way through the menu’s selection of pancakes on offer. It seems that no amount of ice cream or strawberry toppings could change his opinion of the pancakes nutritional value so he volunteered to go to the McDonald’s across the street. Shortly after he left the waiter had returned.
8:15pm – INT – RESTAURANT TABLE
Dirk returns with three pancakes for the family of three but something else is wrong now. It quickly becomes apparent that a mistake was made in the order. One of the three pancakes is wrong. Dirk apologizes for the mistake but the family offers to pay for the incorrect pancake anyway. Dirk does not know how to react to the English politeness so he puts the pancake down in front of the empty fourth seat and takes a new order with his pad and pen.
Dirk returns to the kitchen more confused than previously. He is confused by their politeness about the error while they showed such disregard for the missing fourth member (he still wonders if he imagine that). And why had he witnessed the young lady hitting the young man in the arm as he had approached the table.
FIVE MINUTES EARLIER
Even with the English menus the pancakes had a lot of unusual names so it was no surprise when my mother got the names mixed-up and ordered the wrong pancake. When the waiter had returned with a pancake covered in chicken instead of a pancake covered in ice cream the mistake became apparent and she ordered a new pancake.
The unusual sounding names were also the reason I had started making jokes at the expense of my girlfriend and her pancake order. I can be incredibly immature at times and anyone who orders a pancake called, “The farmer’s daughter,” is just asking for it.
“Have you had the farmer’s daughter before?”
“Yes. A few times.”
“So you’ve enjoyed having the farmer’s daughter a lot?”
She hit me on the arm when she realized what I was doing.
8:35pm – INT – RESTAURANT TABLE
Dirk returns to the family of three with the new pancake. He is about to put it down on the table when he suddenly notices something that courses him to pause. The family of three has become a family of four again and the fourth member is sitting with a pancake in front of him.
The confusion that Dirk is experiencing is very apparent on his face. A few seconds pass before he realizes he is standing still, staring at the family, holding the new pancake in mid putting it down motion. The fourth family member smiles at him, looking happy with his pancake.
The cogs in his head are trying to turn. A family of four had ordered four drinks only to become a family of three who ordered three pancakes and then ordered an extra one to become a family of four again.
Dirk puts the pancake down. Dirk wishes the family of four a happy meal. Dirk turns around and leaves. Dirk returns to the kitchen. Dirk sobs in the corner of the kitchen while rocking back and forth.
FIVE MINUTES EARLIER
After a successful trip to the McDonald’s my father had returned. He had sat back in his unoccupied seat and was slightly confused by what looked like a chicken covered pancake we had ordered for him in his absence. Once we had explained the mix up he was less confused than our waiter looked when he returned. My father gave the waiter one of those awkward British smiles as if to say, “It’s alright. This kind of thing happens to us a lot.”
It’s gay pride parade day today here in Amsterdam. A day when men and women of all preferences come together to celebrate diversity in sexuality by dancing to the Village People’s greatest hits while trying unsuccessfully to not to crash their canal boats into another group dancing to the greatest hit of The Weather Girls (and no, that’s not a euphemism).
It’s a great parade to check out even as a straight person. The city’s canals turn into one big party of music, dancing and feather bowers. However, it is maybe not a good idea to check it out as a straight person while wearing a t-shirt with the words ‘I Like Me’ written upon it in very large letters. As I discovered three years ago it’s all about context. On any other day of the year ‘I Like Me’ is a humorous T-shirt worn for simple amusement. However, on gay pride day ‘I Like Me’ becomes a T-shirt that unintentionally declares, “I’m here and I’m quire and I’m ok with that,” to other free and single male celebrators. Especially if you start throwing shapes to YMCA like I can never seem to stop myself doing.
So waking up in the morning and deciding to put on such a T-shirt when you know you are going to watch the gay pride parade (as I did) might not be the best informed choice to make even if it is nice to find out that you have options… a lot of options (as I did).
Last Tuesday I was standing in a queue outside the Melkweg in Amsterdam, waiting to see Flight of the Conchords live on stage. I’d been looking forward it for weeks and had shown up early with friends to make sure that we got good seats. We were not the only ones that had had this idea either. There were a lot of people queuing. I knew there were more friends somewhere in the queue, as well as some coworkers and a fellow blogger that I had not yet met in person but was probably going to bump into.
After an hour of waiting in the queue, just 5 minutes before the doors were going to be opened I discovered that I had made a small error. This came to my attention as my friends began to look over their freshly internet printed tickets. I noticed that they each had two print outs. I on the other hand had only one print out. This seemed worth questioning.
“Why do you guys have two print outs?” I asked.
They looked at me and laughed, assuming that I was making some kind of joke. I wasn’t.
It turned out that in addition to being emailed our tickets we had also been emailed a membership pass for the Melkweg. Without realizing this I had only printed one of the two. Of course this was not a problem if I had only printed out my ticket and forgotten the membership pass. I could simply show my ticket to the doorman and pay the 3 Euros membership fee again. A small loss but at least I would still be able to see Flight of the Conchords. No problem.
However, if I had only printed out the membership pass and not the ticket I was in trouble. Guess which one I had not printed out.
I gasped. My friends gasped. Nearby people I didn’t even know gasped. There was only one thing for it. I had to get back to the office and print out my ticket, quickly.
I sprinted passed the entire queue, jumped on my bike, cycled like hell back to the office, ran past the security guard, dashed up the stairs, turned on my computer, waited, gave up waiting when it got stuck on configuring updates for too long, commandeered the computer of someone else who was working late, printed out my ticket, checked very carefully that it actually was my ticket, dashed back down the stairs, passed security, jumped on my bike, cycled as fast as I could back to the venue, locked up my bike, ran inside, showed my ticket, searched for my friends, found my friends, dropped down in to the seat they had saved me and tried to catch my breath. I was out of breath, sweating, red faced and looking like I had just ran from a crime scene. It was at this point that the girl sitting in the row in front of me asked, “Excuse me but are you Stuart?”
It was Alison from the blog A Flamingo in Utrecht. My reputation has preceded me once again.
———
The concert was great. If you are not familiar with Flight of the Conchords they are a comedy band from New Zealand. Here are some of their songs: Jenny, Business Time, Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros, Most beautiful Girl in the Room.
———
In other news: My girlfriend has a guest post up at Greetings from Holland. Her own blog can be found here: Ladybird & Butterfly.
During my time in Holland I have taken a few Dutch courses in an attempt to learn the local language. During one of these courses the teacher decided it would be fun for the class to play scrabble. Obviously playing scrabble in English would not have been very educational so we were required to play the game in Dutch.
Trying to learn a new language is already very difficult at the best of times but trying to come up with words you don’t know from a new language you don’t know while using a random selection of letters seemed almost impossible.
However, when we started the game I somehow managed to identify a Dutch word hidden within my random assortment of letters. Unfortunately for me it was not a word I felt very comfortable putting down.
During my first couple of turns I tried to ignore it in the hope that a better word would come up but as I accumulated more letters it was still the only word I could identify. When the Dutch teacher started to insist that I must have a word “by now” I decided there was nothing for it but to put the word down.
H-o-e-r
The teacher (who was female) paused. A few students sniggered.
“Can you say the word?” The teacher asked a few seconds later, trying to keep it educational.
“Umm… Hoer.” I had to answer embarrassingly.
“And do you know what it means in English?” She asked.
There was another awkward pause and some more giggles.
My brain could have picked any manner of politically correct ways of describing the words meaning but it had decided that I was on my own and the first thing that jumped out of my mouth was, “whore?”
Damn you brain.
“Prostitute! I mean prostitute!” I quickly corrected myself before it sounded like I was calling the teacher names.
Another awkward pause. More giggling.
Without saying a word the teacher took a look at the other letters I had available. “You can make it into a different word you know.” She informed me after some thought.
“Oh.” I expressed as I looked at my letters and tried to see it for myself or any other word that would get me out of this embarrassing situation before I permanently labeled myself as the guy with the one track mind.
After a few more awkward moments she decided to put me out of my misery and show me by putting the letters down herself.
H-o-e-r-e-n
(A group of prostitutes)
“It’s a higher letter score.” She informed me.
Later I realized I could have put down horen (meaning to hear something) but she was right. It was not worth as much as a group of prostitutes.
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