CITIES Geographical exploration with Claudia (First Paris experiences plus more)
Well Paris is nearly the centre of my existence. Not only was it the first European capital but it is where I live now. Iti s where I spent many many nights drunk. It is where I have sang, read, oozed. I met Kattia here. I have lived with Kattia here together for more than 10 years. I met Iulia here, the woman I went to dinner with the other night, she who actually reads my book. I met Inga here, the Latvian writer who I spent a summer with a few years ago and who I am visiting in less than a week in Riga. I have spent many white nights here, have had infinite orgasms, countless museus and exihbitions. I have probably walked at least 10 000 km here. Is that humanly possible? I have had picnics on the Seine. I have imagined lives from the 70s. I have imagined the history leaking out of every street and building here, thought about the people who were born and who died here who I will never know or know of. I have completed two novels here, one in English, one in French. I've sung blues at least once here, I've survived through Covid, I will likely die here if things go to plan.
***
Some of the memories are too old to remember properly. Meeting Kattia for the first time maybe in Baron Rouge, let me see if I can find it, a mail I wrote to the café about my first week here with the idea of moving here, when I first met Kattia: Tomar Un Baño Aromatico de Jazmin Con Una Mujer (Paris, One Week) - As Ferdinand Celine once wrote: " Si j’avais bien dormi toujours,
j’aurais jamais écrit une ligne. " (If I'd been sleeping well all the
time I would never have written a line) - I'm not sure he meant it in
the context of all-night revelries with complete strangers from cafe
to cafe, house to house however, I am now officially recommending this
course of action in Paris as a tonic as well as an endurance test.
Having exhausted the Italians I decided for a night whilst they
recovered I would strike out on my own again in similar fashion as I'd
done the week before. In doing so I decided on a change of venue from
Montmartre to an area in Paris which had been recommended to me as
being off the beaten path a bit, La Butte Aux Cailles, a hidden
quarter in the hills of the left bank not terribly far from
Montparnasse in the 13th.
I recommend it to anyone who has had enough of crushing crowds of
humanity, face pressed against the Metro car window sort of crowded,
and wants a breath of respite while still in Paris - it's a weird
place, quiet, eerily so almost with art deco/art noveau (try and
manage that on one street!) architecture and cobblestone streets -
weird cafes which although the area is historically working class, are
affluent artsy-sort of places, a clashing enclave where the impeccably
dressed dare mingle with the neighbourhood riff raff. I'd even had a
good restaurant recommended to me and was planning a quiet Basque
meal, bringing along with me this incredibly appropriate novel for a
person travelling, Metropole, written by the Mad Hungarian (not
Hrabowsky but Karinthy) - one of the cool things about reading it
other than its contents of course is that the title is not overtly
English thus i.n reading it in public you are not automatically
identifiable as foreign although surely after mumbling a few sentences
with what has over the years, strangely become a Dutch-accented French
(in particular, the "r"s) the point becomes moot.
Unfortunately, after I finally located the restaurant I saw it was
shut - no sign - shut every day forever, only wednesdays, only open on
weekends? I dunno, no explanation, so I continued walking further and
came across a little cafe called La Folie en Tete - historically
speaking a place where a tropical band was invited one night to
perform there and people were so incited they took to dancing on the
tables, hence the name, or a very quick synopses - to be honest, what
drew me in to start with was this sign which said Apéro-Heur' which,
if you're like me (and hopefully you aren't) is all that it takes, the
lure of Happy Hour written in slang and whatever richesses behind the
door to get inside
flavours and colours, set me at a stool and at an overturned wooden
spool with Metropole such compelling reading I could barely wait from
the Metro stop to getting here to finish where I'd left off - I won't
go into the story in detail however, a link is here should you feel
curious:
(http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/european-literature/846-karinthy-ferenc-metropole.html)
which also shows the book cover which does not automatically identify
you as TOURIST - you know, as a sidebar I should mention I have the
rather absurdist and certainly egotistical need to think even though I
am coming to Paris from elsewhere I am somehow not a tourist as well,
those I am sniffing at with their big booming voices of ignorance,
loud and objectionable clothing and complete lack of grace (ah yes,
and armed with a map and confused look as well) - that is not me of
course, I hide my little red Paris Plan d'arrondissements wherever I
go with great vanity and only when I am seemingly lost without hope do
I dare sneak it out of my pocket and sneak a peak as though I'm
looking at tourist pornography. I go to great lengths to pretend I am
different all of which, as previously noted, is lost the moment I
commence speaking in my newly discovered Dutch-accented French
(perhaps all those years in the coffee shops smoking AK47 and White
Widow finally did my head in for good).
Anyway, the place was quite nice, completely authentic, all locals
inside and perhaps because they were locals they immediately must have
known I was a stranger as everyone inside seemed to know each other
quite comfortably. I kept to myself, uncharacteristically, absorbed
in the book up until 8 when the Apéro-Heur' ended and I decided to
have another go at the Basque restaurant thinking perhaps it opened
later as some restaurants do, only to find it as shut and as empty as
when I'd last walked by. Bummer. There were other places to eat but
knowing that I had quite a distance on the Metro to get anywhere on my
list of places I would be seeking refuge in for the night and knowing
that after a few beers you will quickly discover on the Metro a very
indelicate absence of bathrooms inside so I decided to stop at the
first place on my list, the Baron Rouge, recommended to me by the one
and only Viktor, hopped from foot to foot for 15 or so stops (it might
have seemed more like 1000 for all the urgency I endured it with.) -
once I shot out of the Metro stop there were none of the Boulevard
free public toilets in sight as nothing open around, I plunged into a
run-down looking cafe and down the winding metal stair case relieved
that the proprietor was not there to wag a finger in my face and
demand, as did one in a cafe on one of my first nights here, that you
must "consume" something in order to use the facilities (I've since
heard from Paola that this is not the case and it against city
regulations now for proprietors to refuse to allow you to use the
toilet without buying something first and, during the Bals de
Pompeurs, she was with me to test this little theory out so when the
proprietor told me nonono, I turned to Paula and said with a smirk
because she'd been so insistent the day before: "here's your big
chance to update them on the new city regulations" which led her to
enlighten me to one of the many little insider Paris secrets - just
ignore what people tell you and do what you want anyway - sure enough,
I went right on through and the guy never said a word to me...amazing)in any event, finally relieved, I made my way back out in search of
this place near the Place de la Bastille which, as you can well
imagine, has a pretty substantial monument in commemoration which is
plopped in the middle of a massive roundabout -
Le Baron Rouge, despite the silly name is quite an epicurist's wine
bar, barrels of wine laid out inside, excellent quality wines from all
over France, excellent sausages, cheeses, oysters and pate. I have
one glass of Roussillan, stand at the zinc bar standing on a floor
covered in wood shavings like some sort of hamster cage. A couple
come up, smiling present their bill which is a total of some 11 or 12
glasses consumed, babbling to anyone in earshot in what a later learn
is Languedoc-accented French, so I ask them what they would recommend
and then order another glass, this time from their recommendation. By
then the hunger's eating away at me so I ask the bartender for his
recommendation to go with a plate of saucisson al ail (sausages,
sausages, have I ever stopped eating them here, sliced tissue paper
thin, every trip into the street, a stop in the charcuterie for
another few mouthfuls), smiling pleasantly at people when they look at
me, slowly sipping my wine trying to fend off as long as possible the
urge to go out and roll a Drum because then I'll have to go outside
onto the street where a substantial group of posh Parisians were
loitering and chain smoking when I'd first come through the entryway
and christ knows I didn't want to feel self-conscious with my
Dutch-spattered French, my knee length pants and sandals - these
people were in suits and looked like they considered themselves
important but fuck it, I thought to myself, everyone in Paris has been
incredibly friendly (bar a surly waiter or two and the postman on Rue
des Abbeyessess who barked at me when I approached him as he was
emptying the post box and tried to hand him my postcard, Here! He
snarled pointing to one side of the sack (the furriner side) and then
Here! again when I didn't move quickly enough for him...)
In any event, I'm out there, rolling a Drum (instead of beating one)
and immediately fall into a conversation with two women who I presume
to be French but not part of 12eme arrvistes who are standing in front
smoking cigars and primping themselves - before they can react I am
already plunging into a detailed recitation of the Czech movie, Czesky
Sen (Czech Dream) about the advertising team that created a fictitious
new supermarket, put out bizarre, yet catchy print and radio and tv
ads for over a month announcing this grand opening and then when they
have it voila, revealed as just a field outside of Prague, empty a
figment of their imagination. Don't ask me why I started this nervous
chatter, I was looking for a way in, a crack in the armour and this
story, like my internal infielder trying to keep up the spirits of my
internal pitcher. Maybe it's a little nuts but the way I look at it,
I'm on the clock for this Parisian bird thing and quite frankly, I'd
be hard pressed to do worse than that night of wine-driven, teary
reminiscing of Valerie a few nights ago, so I've got nothing to lose
and I think people are sometimes feeling that spastic energy, a
seemingly maddened gibberish, my head still spinning languages in
every direction hoping somewhere it sticks.
It quickly transpired one of the women barely understood me (owed to
her lack of French for a change, not mine) and as it turned out the
other woman was from Argentina but lived in Paris and so suddenly we
were switching to Spanish, then back to French because sometimes it
takes awhile to jump-start the head into Spanish after thinking to
yourself in French (and oh yes, this moment comes after a few days,
idle thoughts running through your head say, when you're waiting for
the Metro, you discover halfway through are being muttered in French
and surprised you immediately ruin it by translating it in your head
back to English again) - but shortly we are in prolonged conversation,
to the point, still standing outside because none of us feel like
moving until the point when the last orders bell rings at 10:30,
somewhat surprised, we are at a loss until the Argentine after the old
eye contact consultation with her mate from Spain (who has already at
this time turned me on to Jaime Gel de Biedma, a Barcelona poet, one
of Spain's most celebrated poets of the 20th century (who I of course,
had no idea of but was immediately suggested by the Spaniard as
impossible to continue to ignore - ) as a quick sample of his lines:
"Para saber de amor, para aprenderle,
haber estado solo es necesario..
Y es necesario en cuatrocientas noches
con cuatrocientos cuerpos diferentes-
haber hecho el amor. Que sus misterios,
como dijo el poeta, son del alma,
pero un cuerpo es el libro en que se leen."
(part of En Pandemica y Celeste de Moralidades)
Anyway, the three of us end up walking all the way to the Argentine's
neighbourhood (the Spaniard is a long-time friend of the Argentine and
is in Paris on holiday but the Argentine, fittingly, another
non-French Parisian, is keen that we all hang out, have another bottle
of wine, we sit around outside in the warm Parisian air talking those
same strange mixtures of languages as I have with the Italian only
this time the Spanish is in distinct, nay, heavy duty Spaniard
Castellano contrasting with the "Casteshano" that they speak in
Argentine - in fact, the Argentine has been living away from Argentina
and speaking French so long her Argentine is even less pronounced than
mine as she keeps calling me "hombre, hombre" and while we're hanging
out talking someone at the table across engages us and the next thing
there is the Lisa Bonet-type (the Lisa Bonet singer type, like from
that Cusak movie adopted from Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity" not from
the Huxtables) and we're jabbering on about music thereafter and as it
turns out the four at the other table play in a band together and they
are playing on Friday night at a little place called Bizz'Art for a
"Woman of Soul" night, etc etc.
You get an understanding of how exhausting it all becomes, hour after
hour after hour stuffing all this new information in your head,
exchanging it for your own, an international, free verbal market of
literature, philosophy, music all the while pushing around these ideas
in different languages, pushing your brain (worse so considering the
incessant consumption all the while, wine, cigarette, wine, cigarette,
man....)
But tonight, a little peace, I hope. I'm going to see a film called
Après l'Océan, the age-old topic of trying to go home again although
in this case, two African refugees from the Ivory Coast who had been
living in Spain return to the Ivory Coast to see how it's changed.
The director is pretty good - she also did Bronx-Barbes about the
gangs of Abidjan - and hopefully, the cinema air conditioned as it's
bloody hot in Paris today.
Tomorrow it's onward to the "Tatouage" to have my other arm done (at
the moment, since 12 or 13 years ago, my right arm has had the drama
mask of Tragedy tattooed on it and I've been telling myself in all
that time that one of these days the time will be right to get the
Comedy mask tattooed on the left, for equilibrium, of course.
The time is finally right.
******
Rome? Well, I was just there two months ago near xmas time with Kattia. Filled with the enthusiasm of exploration. My first time there sober although not that I was drunk all the time there. The first time I was ever there was probably there with Clauda Scala, yes, a different girlfriend named Claudia, imagine that! Anyway, we probably came down from Perugia. Met a Palestinian student on the train, who lived in Perugia and invited us out that night to hang out with Lucky the Greek and his drug dealer friends who bought coke from Colombians and had parties at their flat with giant platters of cocaine, lots of weed, hash to smoke and lots of wine to drink. I remember very good pizza in a place near the Spanish Steps. I remember the thrill of "bartering" with a vendor of this cool book that had drawings of what the ruins of Italy looked like now and then a cllear paper you could put over it to show what it looked like at the time, during the Roman Empire. Stumble everywhere over history. I remember sparrow clusters no they were the starlings of ancient ROme. They swarmed in massive flocks of the kind we today call murmurations—thousands of individuals cascading and folding in awe-inspiring geometric patterns in the sky. I have been several time since that original time. The dried out Tiber, hung over in the heat of August walking for miles with Shari,after a café Blue meeting in Tuscany for a week or two. The places you can always drink water from, clean water. Seeing the Pope, yes Pope John Paul give Easter mass, I remember that now, seeing millions of people watching him as always hoping for peace. Seeing Michelangelo works. Staying in a hotel with Alexandra before she was flying back to America...but it's difficult, much of the memories to summon. There are layers of my own history.
****
Berlin is where KW and I went on our first holiday together. KW is my writer friend who hardly ever writes. She is from SF She belongs to same café as me. Her birthday is close to mind so she offered to meet me in Berlin and we could celebrate together. I imagined I was going to meet with her once and then spend a lot of time alone. I arrived in Berlin, walked to East Berlin where my flat was. I went out and had my first few beers in an empty bar, smoking indoors with great joy because you can't smoke indoors anywhere any more except in Germany. ANyway, I was supposed to meet her later that first night. I went to another bar and drank all afternoon. She contacted me and gave me an address some bar with a Scottish barman she knew. I took a taxi, she ordered a white wine and whiskey and from then on, we hung out all the time. All day the next day for brunch and then museums oh jessus, then that crazy bar in East Berlin with a fake tree in the middle of it where we drank and smoked all afternoon and then wandered all night until nearly noon drinking drinking everywhere....and then being there still a few days later for my brithday at a jazz bar calleds The Hat and going to meet and old friend of hers in a late night bar then going with some guy we'd just met Rashidi, a black guy from Philly who was a great gguitar player and staying in his place all night drinking and smoking into oblivion wee hours all night waking up and it was really still my birthday and trying to get back to my home...then yes, finding this old folks home of an East Berlin bar where we drank and ate, I always two portions and then KW wanted to go to Poland for her birthday so we took a train to Poznan without knowing any thing about it, not even that they didn't use euros and then spending the nights two or three in posh hotel spa which cost like pennies going out to dinner drinking heavily, I met Maria, who I am still friends with to this day, great jazz singer and performer...back to Berlin, I dunno, it was a crazy begining to KW and I hanging out and traveling for years and years. But remember Berlin is about Nazis and also about Soviet Union cutting it in two and cheap thrills, lots of immigrants, hipster bars with no names lit by candles, good beer everywhere...unlimited smoking and drinking, boy I loved that holiday. We even found time to go to some museums and ate out many times and KW never ate all her food so I ended up eating hers and mine and it was for the best becauase I was drinking non stop and needed foor to stay healthy
(The Oral History of Blindness) Berlin, Poland...
what can be pieced together because it will always be coming back in fragements.
***
saturday, precisely as planned, even better than planned: the lovely, slow walk down the wide expanse of Karl Marx Allée, fascination with architecture and the newness of the past. Stopping every five minutes to gaze in awe. Noting everything. Up to Frankfurter Tor...Right up to the researched wifi café where he plopped down and waited for noon and whilst he waited, engaged by an East German engineer, who spun tales in German he could only half understand.
Then to the room, all sorted and then the excitement of getting out and exploring.
Down to the square where he said he would start. Grunberger strasse and Boxhagener square. Fascination in a different mode. Feeling like NYC. Sun shining, trees, bars, cafés, going to an open market, buying his first sausage which was as delicious as imagined, strolling on the march for his first beer, finding it at the Bier Bar, nobody in there, darkness and dust and the joy of sitting Inside to smoke Inside whilst enjoying the beer. In the half dark. One beer and a half. Watching a man pushing a baby buggy with his beer in hand. Everyone drinking on the street. Pushing off to get out and not stop in one place only...going down to the river and seeing the Wall museum, some shite replica, having to piss whilst walking because the beer was going right through him and there was no where to go but to find an isolated area and just let it out without stopping. So much grey and Wind and beautiful clouds and tourists and ugly tourism, cheap collective tourism, boats floating down the river cross the river on a bridge to Kreuzberg and finding the incessant urge to piss with nowhere to go and feeling it ready to rain, looking for a bar to smoke in and to piss in and finally coming across an old man's dive with a giant screen tv German SkY German match of the day, one good beer after another chainsmoking without speaking until match finished and beers anchored into the skull, feeling free to converse with anyone and everyone.
Smoking a joint in the street with some weird looking woman and another man, everybody likeable. Needing English because mixing german with french and English, everything, the drunk, the peeing, the smoking, catching up with him until finally he hears from Karen and they make a rdv for the next pub she knows of and he takes a cab and they meet. Bam. Ignition. She is ordering white wine and shots of whiskey, he is already well wasted and by the evening's end he is not sure where they went, how they ended up except that he woke up face down in his bed, fully clothed, as one should on the first night in Berlin
days two Sunday
Planification insisted a meeting at Geist im Glas for brunch because he had read something about a bourbon maple syrup that knocked him blind with desire. He walked all the way. Christ knows how many clicks, but at leisure, with a map, evading hail and rain and occasionally lingering in sunshine, stunned and awed at every turn, at every sight, at the pure existence of it is and it was and it will be in whatever order it happens to fall.
then they meet at the appointed place somehow and they are shocked by the quality of food, huevos rancheros, pancakes and several rounds of green bloody marys with cucumbers. could have been drunk all day on that alone except then she suggested a museum: art deco museum or something, another cab, a great afternoon of half-drunk fascination, walking through Tiergarten, coming out to meet the Brandenburg gate with a hole in the grey sky and an unholy light pouring through. In front, tourists and a punk band.
From there, a métro ride, a random exit and more random walking until they seemed to fall upon the street they had been on before for brunch and simply took that one. They stopped in a 1970s dive bar with hardly any customers and listened to the flies and the time standing still, football on telly without sound. Trees in the middle of the bar, Karen ordering fancy wine in a place that served wretched wine but in wonderful glasses. One after another after another. The Chinese illegal gambling parlour hidden in the back where customers kept appearing and disappearing out of before the bar lady finally kicked us out, early closing and sent us back out on to the path of drinking.
The old staggering man in rags who, when asked for a blues bar, says Cowboy Bar over and over and in fact, turns us on to a very good artsy joint with great music, cavernous ceilings, incredible ambiance.
No good, we have to keep moving so Karen gets info from friends and barman and they hit another taxi and go somewhere that is closed, told where to go to another and end up in yet a different place. More ambiance. No name bar with no name customers and no fixed time to open or close. Just keep 'em coming for crissakes that's all we ask.
then dumped out too early we wander aimlessly looking for bars, asking people where.
getting nowhere. into a taxi with no fixed adresse in mind just drunken demands for whevever is open and serving, getting more hostile by the minute until the driver loses his patience and kicks us out without even having to pay, what do we owe you? nothing, just please get out and leave.
so they stumble to a hideous bodega serving coffee and shite pastries and he orders a bottle of beer, asks to use the toilet (peepee, the guy asks him and then practically follows him in to make sure he isn't shooting up then he falls asleep on the patio drinking his beer whilst Karen comes up with the grand plan to go to Bikini Berlin bar which is supposed to be open all day and night the 25 hour hotel and we take a cab there and in order to drink without being hated in a sterile coffee bar of tourists and children, we say we have just flown in from a long flight and need drinks now and spend all morning waiting for noon, drinking more and more, laughing hysterically as if we were tripping on acid instead of just sleepless and drunk. Raw nerves. At noon they can have cocktails so go up and have the most beautiful pisco sours ever made and by then it is simply too much, the body is surrendering, giving in, deflating and we must go quickly before any more damage is done, before we are caught out, before the police or worse are called.
Go home and sleep how long? All day? All night? By then it is already Monday and they haven't done anything.
was monday lost in its entirety then? Unknown but not possible. they must have done something, a day lost?
No;, birthday was at midnight, piecemeal and incremental so after sleeping a few hours on monday; monday he went to her Hood Charlottenberg where he felt uncomfortable alone waiting hours for beer, wanting smokes and food. She watched him eat and work his way through a few beers and fags before they decided to go to jazz club. there at midnight they fetted his birthday and when it closed, they decided to seek out her old friend and the Sandman bar.
Chaos. Everyone wasted, the Inside a dump, a wreck, a tragedy of indecency but everyone friendly and peaceful nonetheless and when that was over, invited to Rashidiis spending the night up drinking and talking drinking and talking until people could no longer continue, well beyond dawn, sleeping.
He woke up in early afternoon in the middle of nowhere but did not want a cab, wanted public transport with map. Wandering aimlessly but with interest, hour after hour until finally giving in and asking someone. From there, a piece of cake, bus to métro to town....
and from there, out at alexanderplatz a lovely slow-motion evening down Karl Marx allée this time the other side of the blvd. Stopping in what seemed like an old communist restaurant filled with nearly no one, ordering random food, a beer, having a smoke and then paying and leaving. Then walking further to another bar, another beer and a half, watching a football match and observing people from afar feeling euphoric but tired.
then a bar closest to his neighbourhood oh how he remembers having just a small beer and thinking just one and he will go and then thinking no this is absurd, he must get drunk and mingle and so ordering jaeger meister and a large beer and on and on until a connection was made with a kiwi and a german and drinking Berliner Luft and jaeger and drinking mad beers into the wee hours until back to german's flat to drink beer and smoke weed. lovely wobbling night. that was his birthday.
thinks on wednesday that would be, Karen came out his way to meet him and they were walking down karl marx and decided to stop for lunch at the same place he'd had dinner the night before and then spending all afternoon in there burying themselves in large shots of jaegermeister, beer, then large shots of beckerovka and then feeling sloshed and cozy and then moving out to some kebab diner where to eat with that they ordered bottles of jaegermeister. from there, it is a blur, non?
wednesday night...ah yes, in early because they were going to get up early to catch the train somewhere to poland.
and thursday morning he woke afraid of black poland, darkness, death, terrible things happening.
they had a plan to meet at hauptbahnhof without saying where or what time really and somehow meeting there just when he'd hoped they wouldn't and he could go home and lick his wounds and keep his fear at bay.
what was he afraid of? death, really? losing something valuable? just a foreboding with no specific target.
but they found each other and heard stories about crossing the river into the border of Poland from Frankfurt Oder which seemed absurd until he demanded to see a map and they Google mapped him the lie to make it seem more real and they decided hey, on the basis of an ancient lonely planet guide, we'll choose between two cites and take the first train that goes to either; Since the first became confused with Chechnya (slow train to Grozny, just imagine) they picked Posnan.
two bottles of wine on board without glasses.
a brief respite in a weird restaurant bar in the train station filled with fake birch trees and weirdly friendly waiters.
on the train they are relieved, so relieved that he says it loudly, great, at least you guys speak English, a hungover couple with Yorkshire accents (cricket accents if the radio broadcaster was still alive) on their way to Poland for his brother's wedding.)
and because they were English no qualms about drinking wine from the bottle and telling funny stories making them laugh, make themselves laugh, feeling the absurdity on the skin like an itch, and scratching away, cup after cup of wine (after the porter handed them a few for free) and the one man who could hear nothing with his expensive headphones and silent disapproval...imagine his nightmare, a train car full of English speakers two of whom were drunk beyond reason and laughing and snickering hysterically.
then birthed out into Posnan to discover that they didn't even use Euros.
So in a foreign country without knowing the language or currency, what the fuck are zlotys and insulting everyone by demanding to pay in euros, finding a few good souls in the academic bar to send us in the direction of currency exhange (of course a little shop with a giant dollar sign outside of it would be the logical choice) then wandering out after changing money, flush with fun, through a park and into a complex, an commercial mall and cultural center where they wandered further looking for a hotel any hotel and the woman in the boutique with the beautiful blue eyes giving us to options and taking the closest one which was in fact a four star hotel and then finding as they walked up to the front desk that the price was absurdly cheap and thus booked and got out and went drinking champagne in the hotel bar and then went into town by cab where the driver told us the nazi chief had been hung into the center of town a beautifully unfolding and well preserved market town gestapo headquarters (another driver telling us there is the building, five years of death and torture) the giddy twilight, the coziness of freedom and the success of finding...
man on bike we stopped to ask for his favourite local restaurant serving typical then him pausing and asking us absurdly if we liked beer and if so then oh yes a lovely place where we ate and ate and drank and drank and set out on full bellies into the Posnan night looking for more fun and adventure.
Man passed out in chair in the middle of street, two 18 year old birds culturally stimulating full of music and ideas, drunken british wife of drunken man in chair, off then to another bar after a leisurely beer, sitting at a table, meeting a Young fireman and offering him slivovice and getting absolutely wrecked on that one, or three and finding him his way home as well as hours and then into the hotel casino where they went mad until the bar shut and then thinking it was 24 hours getting angry and going back to room to order room service and non they do not serve and Karen saying of course they do you have to bribe them and so calling them again and she demanding and then suddenly, a cart is pushed into the room with food and a bottle of white wine and they are doing christ knows what but he wakes face down in the carpet the next morning and wants to stay another day.
they do, it is sorted, they go out without eating, order a cab to the cathedral for a pretty moment except the cabby takes them somewhere else far away and he becomes rabid and threatens to kill him with his bare hands, drink his blood or whatever insane drunken thing came to mind and they left the cab paying only half and the cabby honking on and on, they ignoring him and keep walking...
and wandering the Streets to see how lovely how lovely and wandering into a gaming bar where they stayed loud and drunk and weird to anyone looking and not caring anyone not even them and then the belgian bar where the slightest demand was difficult and absurd until Karen was crashing hard and we had to leave immediately and that was pretty much the end of it all therafter the end of the Madness in one neat package
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