Part 13: Whale-Fish!
No one game is more under stated than the gentle, relaxing game of Bowls (Boules, Petanque). Forever big in France, I see my old Frieburger (German) friends have all grown into - what I thought was - ostensibly an old man´s pastime, chucking heavy metal (a clue?) balls around in a sand pit or barren patch of dusty ground.
CLONK. CLONK.
At the Freiburg GANTER Pilsner-beer, ´bier garten´, it´s positively a religious ritual.
CLONK. CLONK.
Here, several years ago, these guys would have been paralytically drunk, chasing Hilda, or, hungover, sipping jugs of milk, reading Wittgenstein, at the nearby bar, the WALFISCH (Whale-Fish), which, presently open, lies empty, with ceiling and walls studded with bones, skulls and the like; on the juke-box, the band Motorhead, probably, blasting to the people vacuum.
CLONK. CLONK.
But here, in the GANTER bier garten´s relative tranquility, the fast fading light of a Summer´s eve, gnats dancing under the elms by the banks of the Dreisam river, the lads, playing away, chucking those ball-missiles around, raises my own safety concern level...with every CLONK.
And yet, content with my beer and happy to be among old comrades, I surmise, people get old...or older, activities mellow, new wives, new - lesser intensive - lives. And having children, as some have, are always the great maturer, sometimes destroyer, especially of young provincial men´s lives and dreams.
...Thus I find (CLONK!) a tribe of friends whose raging youth, now ebbed, still clinging to the Pack, the Group. Some are rich, some, not so. Still the most intellectually provocative, are the financially challenged, who still talk well but need to collect our beer garden glasses for the return deposit at the distant garden bar... CLONK!!!
Still, it´s been a brilliant and idyllic German Breisgau Summer´s day, so I bid my ´adieu´s´ till we all meet later at the Heavy Metal bar of old, the Walfisch, and on departing the Bier Garten I - not quite unexpectedly - hear a loud CLONK, a loud piercing SCREAM and hue and cry.
An ambulance, with all it´s bells and whistles blaring, sirens past me before I even get 500 yards!
c. 2010. Freiburg I. Breisgau/ our man in europe/dave delacroix
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
OUR MAN in EUROPE/dave delacroix/Part 12: I am a Zimmermann
Part 12 : I am a Zimmermann
It would be remiss of me, having left Germany via Freiburg I. Breisgau and then travelling up and over the width of Switzerland not to write something of note....
In Frieburg, due to my all black clothes and Stevie Ray V. leather floppy hat, the locals confuse me with a Zimmermann,
"Das dar... ist ein Zimmermann!"
"Make way! Hier komt... ein Zimmermann!"....
(No. Weŕe not talking about Bob Dylan....and if you´re an idiot, please google, under "Z")
....Which, honestly, from a point of social respect, I quite enjoy... As...sometimes with a loaded wallet, sometimes NOT! -courtesy of those swines at Capitol One (Whatś in YOUR wallet?), this trip-holiday is punctuated by hairs and scares with ye olde Cap One Credit card...though, up to this point, not ruinously.
Zimmermanner are, of course, respected travelling Artisans as indeed. am I, so I enjoy the courtesy and recognition given by the German "cogniscenti", the Deutsche Dudette and Dudesters!
Freiburg (Freetown), established in the 1300´s as a free trade city. Even back then, I guess, there was a Ross Perot (Ross who?), olde world buildings, cobbled streets, "trad" German (Bavarian) restaurants (Schnitzel-City!) checkered with Shish-Kebab kiosks and a ZOO of streets musicians, buskers and entertainers, even a troop of Russian soldiers - in full uniform in the Summer heat - doing the Ruskie Cossack fandango!
Pur-leeze!...
My mind wanders... I´m supposed to be teaming up in Paris in October with my American Music-film crew...
Can y´all bring me some SELSIN BLUE anti-scalp-itch Shampoo...
Some Habernero Chillis...for my "on the road" curries...
And...remember that extra SAMSONITE "wheelie" bag I brought...full of prophylactics?
Well, so far?... Itś been a BUST!
2010, Sept. our man in europe/dave delacroix
It would be remiss of me, having left Germany via Freiburg I. Breisgau and then travelling up and over the width of Switzerland not to write something of note....
In Frieburg, due to my all black clothes and Stevie Ray V. leather floppy hat, the locals confuse me with a Zimmermann,
"Das dar... ist ein Zimmermann!"
"Make way! Hier komt... ein Zimmermann!"....
(No. Weŕe not talking about Bob Dylan....and if you´re an idiot, please google, under "Z")
....Which, honestly, from a point of social respect, I quite enjoy... As...sometimes with a loaded wallet, sometimes NOT! -courtesy of those swines at Capitol One (Whatś in YOUR wallet?), this trip-holiday is punctuated by hairs and scares with ye olde Cap One Credit card...though, up to this point, not ruinously.
Zimmermanner are, of course, respected travelling Artisans as indeed. am I, so I enjoy the courtesy and recognition given by the German "cogniscenti", the Deutsche Dudette and Dudesters!
Freiburg (Freetown), established in the 1300´s as a free trade city. Even back then, I guess, there was a Ross Perot (Ross who?), olde world buildings, cobbled streets, "trad" German (Bavarian) restaurants (Schnitzel-City!) checkered with Shish-Kebab kiosks and a ZOO of streets musicians, buskers and entertainers, even a troop of Russian soldiers - in full uniform in the Summer heat - doing the Ruskie Cossack fandango!
Pur-leeze!...
My mind wanders... I´m supposed to be teaming up in Paris in October with my American Music-film crew...
Can y´all bring me some SELSIN BLUE anti-scalp-itch Shampoo...
Some Habernero Chillis...for my "on the road" curries...
And...remember that extra SAMSONITE "wheelie" bag I brought...full of prophylactics?
Well, so far?... Itś been a BUST!
2010, Sept. our man in europe/dave delacroix
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