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I have two friends travelling in Europe at the moment: one in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia; the other in Auschwitz, Modern History's melonoma. As they circumscribe the hackneyed trails of their friends and relatives - know-alls who've eagerly willed them to visit the same historic sites and amazing bagel shops as they visited, taste the same delectable cold meats, marzipan facades, cake annals, and sweep down the same frosted cannals, ravishing the autumnal beauty of such and such - taking it all in and writing home as if they were the first to make cultural jibes about how regressive they all are - backwater this, antipodean that - it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to do some sort of comparatiive analysis. Being in Germany, it seems appropriate to adjudge the two travelogues, both of which are being written from cities which Germany overran and appropriated during World War Two.
So I propose to analyse how entertaining they are, how informative, how relevant, how original...and other such criterion as I consider fit. That way you get three perspectives on a city, for the price of one. I could be onto something here...
Ok, so I was wrong about Italy. And now, Germany seems like the worst possible place to be right now. While Germany were still in the Cup, everyone was all cheery smiles and 'Here have das free stein'. Now that they're out - and the chips are down - it's like the Wall never came down. I tried to get on a bus today, and a German man chested me out of the way. Must have been from the East.
Now, not only do I feel empty about Australia playing no role in this unifying game, this balletic samba, but my Last Great Hope is out too. Leaving me with bile. Caustic bitter dissolving glibness, swirling around my gums. And just when things seem like they couldn't get any more shocking - here's a prediction: Portugal to beat France. Portugal to win the whole damn thing! Shall I skip over there then? Shall Lisbon be my next destination, so I can suck up the tide of euphoria, and find the Last Kabbalist sloshing cocktails with Madonna?
Dortmund is actually known as Westphalia's "green metropolis", because nearly half the municipal territory consists of waterways, woodland and green spaces with parks such as Westfalenpark and Rombergpark. Must-sees. Otherwise, there is absolutely no reason why you might want to go to Dortmund except maybe to see the Worlds biggest Christmas tree, formed by stacking hundreds of trees into the shape of a pyramid. To me, that sounds remarkably pointless, since you dont make a taller person, simply by putting other people on top of their head. Funnily enough, in Catalonia, people-stacking is actually a sport in which Spaniards called Castellers form human castles by stacking people into various rude shapes and the occasional Gaudi replica. There is even a region in Germany called Castell! Perhaps thats where the people of Dortmund got it from
To be fair to Dortmund, it does offer beer. That, for many travellers, is a selling point. Unless you know that the soft pilsner, Dortmunder Union Export (Das Original), once the ambrosia of Germany's largest brewery, was amalgamated with pale imposters to form Brinkoffs Brewery. I mean Dortmunder is a name you can shout and bring fear into the hearts and minds of peace-loving Germans. But Brinkoffs? Please. Havent they heard of détente? The Cold Wars over we went to the brink, and there was nothing there; just a few seedy Prussians playing chess.
Speaking of which, Dortmund is also home to the Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting - an elite chess tournament held every July. It happens to be one of the three "majors" on the chess tournament circuit along with Corus and Linares, in The Netherlands and Spain respectively (Spain: home to so many marvels!). When you win, you get a green jacket just like in golf. But dilettantes beware: Dortmund is an invite-only event, and only the strongest grandmasters are invited. Previous grandmasters include: Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Claude Debussy and Jean Cocteau.
The tournament is usually played in a round-robin or double round-robin format. However, it took the form of a series of heads-up matches in 2002 and 2004. This means that you are not allowed to look at your pieces at all. However, it was received more favourably than the first-touch matches of 2001 and 2003, whereby the piece you touch first is the piece you have to move for the rest of the game. Naturally, a computer won all four tournaments anyway.
Dortmund sits at coordinates 51°31 North 7°28 East. Its mayor can be found here:
http://www.langemeyer.de
He is a really busy guy. Look how many friends he has?
Stuttgart was fun. We had good times. Things were going just swimmingly until Part Two of the Italian Job. Not a conniving heist involving good looking jewel thiefs; not an action-packed remake with sharp camera work and glazed onlookers; not three Mini Coopers burning round the laneways of Venice, ducking in and out of imaginary witches hats, spinning like draddles on Chanukah, donuting out around infamous busts of Italian artisans
.
Im talking about the great thievery of the 21st Century: the second fall of man, when darkness befell the verdant fields of Mother Natures wonder, when wily smog of Milanese origin encompassed the Garden of Eden and Adam, experiencing mild déjà vu, took the apple from Eves sweaty little hand, and tasted the nectar of evil and despair, insouciant free will, sybaritic eternal suffering. When Lucifer himself, Fabio Grosso, slithered his way into the path of the unsuspecting angelic Lucas Neill, a man of great heart, honesty and piety, and fell over him, metamorphosing into a gazelle struck mid-air by a gamehunters dart - the plight of biblical man was tarnished for a second time. Forget the Second Coming. Forget Messhiachs and other gutteral inflections. Stuttgart will never be the same again. Its rich soil has been infected - dessicated by the scourge of Azurri guile.
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A city located in southern Germany, Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg with a population of approximately 590,000. It happens to be the sixth largest city in Germany, as well as the home of Porsche (motor enthusiasts will notice that the city name appears in the centre of the badge). The region also currently has Germany's highest density of scientific, academic and research organisations, and tops the national league for patent applications. Woo! Patents! Everybody say "Gooooooo Patents!" Pom-poms etcetera.
Another interesting bit of trivia for bored readers: Stuttgart also has two Max-Planck Institutes. Fancy that. Now, as you already know, Max Planck is considered to be the founder of quantum theory. His most famous discovery was probably the Planck length - a very small length which he found when he first looked between his legs.
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The reason for all this talk of football and crying and hugging and gyrating circles of magical Alice in Wonderland bliss is simple: the Germans are not really renowned for their emotional outbursts. They suffer the emotional ailment laid out in the preceding posts as if it were a permanent ideology-pathology. This is the nation that gave us Nietzsche. And before him -Schopenhauer. And after him - Hitler and his merry Henchmen. (OH! Faux Pas, mon amis! You mention Hitler! Shame on you!)
But even without Hitler, the Teutons never came closer to outward emotion than with Wagner, and let's face it, Debussy absolutely sh*ts on Wagner for expressionism.
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For aeons sport has had this loosening effect on men. While the Sapphists were lolling about on the Island of Lesbos, the men of Ancient Greece were wrestling each other at the base of Mount Olympus. Sport has always sanctioned male behaviour which is otherwise taboo. Outside of sport, the concept of eros remains firmly demarcated from masculinity. Today we have merely replaced wrestling with various codes of football. We use these 'codes' to keep a lid on a desire to connect with other men emotionally; to express affection for them; to love them. Journalist Rob McFarland recently wrote that "Anger, disappointment and excitement are all appropriate emotions for public consumption, but sorrow, heartache and misery for some reason, aren't."
The experience of thousands of men at Olympic Park confirms that description. But with Australian triumphs of that calibre so infrequent, it can't be healthy to wait until the next big win to have a good cry. At least in Columbia, if they lose, they get it out of their system right away with a riot or they pop off a few rounds into the air, and oops, we need a new forward line. (Everyone take a step forward. You! In the back! Yes, compadre, I'm talking to you - now you play midfield.)
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...Four years earlier, it was a different story. Following the Socceroos' bitter 3-0 loss to Uruguay in Montevideo, we all watched as Tony Vidmar cradled his head and wept. As the siren wailed the death knell of Australian soccer, Vidmar became the conduit for the nation's tears. It was the portrait of a dream shattered. And it reminded us of one of our most resilient taboos: the grown man crying.
In an age of diagnostic excess, the pundits had a field day scrutinising whether sportsmen should cry openly. There were even echoes in some quarters of Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own: "There's no crying in football!" But when thousands of grown men erupted into tears last November, there wasnt a psychologist in the house. As Australia watched the nail-biting penalty Schwartz-out, all the pundits were silenced, the witchdoctors vindicated and John Saffron added to Soccer Australias payroll. With that shirtless wonder Aloisi came an outburst of emotion so effusive it flushed across the crowd like a benevolent tsunami, washing away four years of recriminations.
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Being in Frankfurt now (in my mind's eye anyway) well, it's simply bliss. Sure, the World Cup only rolls around once every four years, but if you can jetset over to the Hinterland, then why not? Do it. Go on. Take that extra online market research survey, beef up your bank account, get yaself a ticket, and squat in some Lederhausen-clad jaunty bugger's backyard. Clear that rash right up.
We all know the string of symptoms World Cup fever can induce. With the insomnious nights come behaviours that should otherwise be hermetically sealed and placed in a time capsule. Every four years, Australians are accustomed to claiming English heritage for about 3 weeks. This interest in genealogy normally disappears without any good explanation around semi-final time. Then there are the frequent trips to the markets for soccer paraphernalia. Once again, these normally dissolve during the Spin Cycle - a term which also refers to the period following England's exit from the Cup. And who could forget lounging in nothing but holeproofs and underdungers with the boys, ay? Laughing at Peles erection problems; screaming Batistuta sporadically when Argentina isn't playing; reliving every goal with an undersized sponge replica, air-planing through to the kitchen with pyjamas over head, hitting your elbow on the fridge, clutching your ankle in agony, having a quick fit, giving yourself a red card, throwing a tantrum and telling the Ref hes a trundle bed in Italian; relishing the thought that if Italy lose, the residents of Leichhardt will light flares and set fire to stuff; relishing the thought that if Italy win, the residents of Leichhardt will light flares and set fire to stuff.
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So my flight to Rome was somehow rerouted to Frankfurt, Germany. And due to a space-time anomaly, I ended up in June 2006. Yes! I write this to you from the heart of Germany itself: the Reichstag!
I'm here addressing the German Parliament on the benefits of training young children to be goalkeepers and shuttling them down to Australia. My reception was a little underwhelming, but then again, it's probably the single greatest display of emotion by the Teutonic race since Wagner was set to Apocalypse Now.
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Comment by Anthony
on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I dug your review of Hitchhikers. At this stage, i've only seen the movie, and the book is on my list - but i wondered - being a fan of melded genres, have you read (or reviewed) any Jasper Fforde?
The Eyre Affair is the first in a series similar in style to Adams' series of books, although this time the subject matter is literature itself, not space/sci-fi action.
Anthony