We had a three-day weekend, so my buddy Chris and I decided that we should get out of Bamberg, especially considering how little I've actually seen of Germany and how little time I have left here. We were thinking of going to Dresden, so I told the boss, Major Weeks. He said, "You'll have to fill out a pass form since it's far away." I told him "never mind in that case" and Chris and I figured we were definitely going to Dresden.
We got off to a relatively late start to the trip on Saturday, having stayed in Bamberg to go to a party the night before (I woke up with twin zits on my forehead, though they looked more like evidence of a blind vampire attack in the night; I made sure to wear my hat when we were out and about), and we considered not even going right up until we actually got on the Autobahn. It was already two in the afternoon, it was raining, and a cold front had dropped the temperature into the low forties/ high thirties. Regardless, with a sense of impending adventure and/or catastrophe in the air, we boldly drove on.
As young men are wont to do, we were incredibly insensitive, especially in regards to the plight of Dresden. As we finally got to the outskirts of the city and came to the sign for "Dresden- Neustadt" (meaning the new part of the city), Chris asked me, "Isn't it all new?" We had a nice giggle about that. Chris also had a fun time staring at my forehead when speaking to me, or just staring at my forehead while I drove. I, in turn, made various sundry comments concerning his sexual proclivity, be it towards the masculine gender, animals, or animals of the masculine gender.
After making our way to the heart of the city (during the drive in we couldn't tell what had been worse for the city, our firebombing or the Soviet tenement housing; the turquoise and maroon high-rise threw the scales to the Soviets) we parked in a parking garage and set about to search the city. The temperature was in the high-thirties, it was raining, and the wind was gusting. My new overcoat and trusty Stetson- style hat kept me relatively comfortable. Chris, dressed in the height of German hobo chic, shivered every time the wind whistled through the factory installed gashes in his jeans.
Having done no research whatsoever and having no map we walked toward a huge, domed church that we stumbled upon. We saw people entering and, upon getting to the entrance, were promptly charged eight euro apiece for the privilege of going to the cupola. We figured that, what with having no map, it wouldn't be a bad idea to go up and get the layout of the city. The church was being rebuilt and so we saw the various stages of construction, as we circled and circled and circled and circled to the top. We had not intended to pay to get exhausted. At the top, a good two hundred feet up, we walked out of a door into the maelstrom. I took off the hat so that it wouldn't fly off into the gray beyond and hid behind a pillar while Chris talked to the poor girl whose job it was to suffer out there for hours and answer idiots' questions.
She pointed out the museum and opera house. Chris asked her what the two fancy, baroque buildings were across the Elbe and she said, "They're for the government."
"You mean they're not museums or anything?"
"No, THEY'RE FOR THE GOVERNMENT."
We skedaddled down the church as we pondered whether the Dresdeners hit the deck or ran screaming when they heard airplanes pass by. The joke was turned on us though when a heavy door slammed and we both turned bleach-white and had visions of mortars and IEDs go through our heads. We decided to give the firebombing jokes a rest.
Chris was determined that we should get a bit of culture. After walking around a bit we found that we couldn't get tickets at the Opera House for a few hours since the box-office wasn't open. In the meantime, we headed over to a cocktail bar. Chris ordered the drinks as I ran to find a bathroom (the coffee I drank before we left had made its presence known in my bladder, vehemently). When I came back Chris was trying to hold back tears as he drank a Tom Collins.
"Dude, this is the worst drink I've ever had in my life. I told the bartender, 'Two Tom Collins' and he had to get a copy of the menu to see what was in it."
I had a sip of mine and, while I think that I concocted worse as a teenager, it certainly was the worst drink I've ever paid for. Fortunately, the real bartender came in as we were choking down the rest of the Toms (the cocktail bar prices meant that there was no way we weren't going to drink them…even with them tasting and looking like carbonated transmission fluid) and we decided to have another drink to get the taste out of our mouths. My only requirement was that we each have a drink we'd never had before. I, stupidly, ordered a "Green Russian", a blend of vodka and crème de menthe, and Chris had a "Hemingway", which looked and tasted like a pina-colada on steroids.
The Green Russian was interesting in that I knew the second it touched my lips that I probably would have been better off drinking rubbing alcohol or jet fuel. I swallowed the first sip and my elbow gave out. Chris laughed, thinking I was joking, until he put his lips to it and promptly set it down. Fortunately the sight in my right eye came back a few minutes after I polished it off.
By that point we were beginning to get a bit silly and we started coming up with names for the pimples. Chris said he might start calling me Satan because it looked as though I had horns beginning to grow out of my head. I deftly bypassed the pimple jokes when the ultimate Dresden firebombing joke occurred to me.
"Dude, we need to order 'B-52s'!!!"
Chris laughed so hard that he covered his drink menu in spittle. We decided that if we actually did order that we'd probably end up getting drinks with substantial amounts of urine in them. I wanted to anyway, but Chris talked me out of it.
We stumbled out of the cocktail bar, wandered around in the rain a bit as Chris did his best to convince me that we weren't lost and he knew exactly where he was taking us, found the car again after getting thoroughly soaked, got our bags and got a taxi.
After checking into the hotel Chris determined that alcohol was an absolute necessity for the opera so we went to a nearby store. I purchased a flask and Chris bought the cheapest rum he could find. I filled the flask in an empty kiosk of the bank lobby where Chris drew out money for the evening's entertainment.
Upon getting to the Opera House we were told that the show was sold out. Chris asked the young woman, who spoke with a flawless British accent, if there were an opera anywhere else. She looked at him strangely and said, "No, THIS is the opera house." He valiantly continued and asked if there were anything else cultural for us to do. She had the ticket- tearer hand her his brochure, pointed to something, and said that we should go there. She sent the ticket-tearer off to get us a brochure of our own and we chatted with her.
"Your English is fantastic," we told her.
"Why wouldn't it be?" she said combatively, "We take it in school."
"Right, but you don't have an accent at all."
"We have good teachers," she said, very defensively.
"Oh, I'm sure," I said before continuing, "but it's just that you speak with a British accent…"
She cut me off. "Of course I do. That's how I was taught. We learn that way."
The conversation lasted for about thirty more seconds before we gave up, realizing that no matter how we phrased ourselves, she was determined to cling to the idea that the damn Americans were insulting her. We got the brochure and headed off in a taxi to the unknown cultural event.
The taxi nearly passed the little hole- in- the- wall joint, but we managed to get him to stop and we walked in. There were two young people in jeans talking in the corner of the room which had a narrow hallway directly in front of us. Chris was wearing a white linen suit with a black shirt and a pink tie. I was wearing slacks, a blazer, and white shirt and tie. They looked at us strangely until Chris announced that we were there to see the event. We still didn't know what the hell we were going to see but the girl quit talking to the boy, told Chris and me to follow, and sold us tickets. As I'd paid for the hotel, Chris offered to pay. When the girl handed us two tickets and said, "Five euro," we looked at each other and started laughing. What in the world had we just paid to see?
After dropping off our coats (Chris had worn my rain jacket which, as he is about six inches shorter than me, seemed to swallow him whole. He deftly crushed my jokes about it by saying, "What was that again? I was distracted the huge zits on your forehead."), we walked down the hallway and opened the door to what we assumed would be an auditorium.
And it was…sorta. There was a parquet floor in front of us, a twelve feet high projection screen to our left, and three tiers of cheap metal seats to our right. All the Germans, the ten to twenty or so (all dressed extremely casually), stared at us as we giggled a bit and then made our way up to the back row.
"Oh, God!" Chris whispered, "we came to a high- school play!"
"There's no way we can drink here," I groaned, "They're probably going to be so thrilled that non-family members showed up that they'll do the play right in front of us."
Fortunately, that thought quickly left us as we watched the projectionist/lighting guy trying to hide a beer behind his back as he came in the room and made his way to his booth.
The lights went off and we were treated to a DVD on the projection screen of some British stage director prattling on and on about his production. It was a bit confusing because we didn't really know what he was talking about, this segment obviously intended to be seen after one had watched his production, but we were finally able to piece it together.
In the history of horrible theater ideas this had to take the top prize. I took notes in the dark in between swigs of the horrid swill we'd brought in the flask. This is what we got from the limey:
"I really wanted to do something in the vein of Hitchcock. You know, a thriller… That's why we use the music from Carmen but have no dialogue and use a different story. But I wanted people to know that's where I was coming from and so I named it The Car Man… I set it in the fifties… Because, you know, I loved Death of a Salesman… the details… I loved the hairy back!... And, you know, America has so many different backgrounds that I made it Italian- American and set it in a garage/ diner (since when are black guys in cowboy hats 'Italian- American' and who the hell eats at a garage?- ADR)… The difference between doing a play and doing film means that you can't do the same things… And I mean, what is 'dance'?...They do modern dance movements, but it's more than just that…And the main character is a Marlon Brando/ James Dean kind of cool (which apparently meant that he wore tight jeans and a white t-shirt –ADR)…But then he seduces the wife and the young man, because audiences today are used to that sort of thing so the bisexuality isn't a leap (as all of a sudden two men kiss on the screen –ADR)"
I had been laughing, silently, the entire time that the dodo had been prattling on about the travesty. Chris had chortled at first and then just kept a look of horror firmly entrenched on his face.
The lights came on and a woman stood up and began speaking to all of us. Neither of us had a clue as to what she was saying, but, as she interspersed "Atmospheren…James Dean/Marlon Brando… film noir… Hitchcock… thriller… atmospheren… thriller" throughout, we figured that she was reciting what the director had said on the DVD, verbatim. I had a pleasant smile on my face for the entire twenty minutes she droned on. I had no idea what she was saying so I looked at her boobs, then her very dyed hair, then her wrinkles, and finally her man hands. I may have looked at her boobs some more
I continued to smile as I wrote this down in my notebook:
"We paid 2.50 to watch a gay theater production that was filmed badly. Correction; we paid to watch a DVD of the director show how he was an idiot and then the lights come on and we get a nice twenty minute lecture on the DVD, in German, from a nice lady."
"Dude, let's leave. I'm not watching high school kids do that piece of shit," Chris pleaded.
"No way. This is terrible. This is awesome."
Fortunately there were no high school kids. Instead the lights went down and we watched The Car Man. I continued to laugh myself silly, though I made sure to do so silently because I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that Chris and I were sharing a flask in order to get through it. Chris didn't find the experience nearly as funny as I did and leaned over every few minutes to plead for our departure. I stuck to my guns, thinking that there are only so many times in your life when things can go that far wrong and you should appreciate every one of them. That being said, by the end of the first act, which had taken an hour and was filled with gay mechanics rubbing all over each other and a disturbing scene of a '57 Chevy rocking back and forth before the Marlon Brando/James Dean guy popped out with the lovestruck young man (we then got to see them kiss as they had during the director's speech), the hilarity of the situation had given way to absolute despair and disgust. We bolted out just before Act 2, when the young gay man was going to be raped in prison, having been framed for a crime he didn't commit.
Chris wanted to find something else to do. I wanted to eat and go to the hotel, because, at the rate we were going, something truly terrifying would befall us. At the restaurant we got the only ugly waitress and some fool in lederhosen serenaded the table near us with a medley of "Ziggy Stardust"- era David Bowie tunes. I gave up. Dresden had won.
P.S. As some of you no doubt think I'm making this up, here's the link to the movie, which it mis-labels "an auto- erotic" thriller, instead of an "auto, erotic thriller". Of course, considering what we saw in the first act alone, onanism may have reared up later on. Praise Jesus that we left when we did.
http://www.imdb.com/title/
This is the review that some schmuck posted about it:
Words dont say it all, 18 February 2002
Author: David (thegretelclub@hotmail.com) from Scotland
The Car Man was brilliant. It used the music from the classic opera Carmen, which worked well in the modern setting of this drama. It conveyed the story through movement rather than words, which I thought was extremely well done and comprehendible. The story is about a guy who comes to town and quickly becomes the object of a lot of attention. He's a heartthrob to the ladies and a hero to the men. He gets involved with someone's wife and a young gay man. When the husband is killed by his wife the gay man is framed and goes to prison, where he gets raped etc. However the wife and main guy run off together and, due to his relationship with the gay guy, guilt sets in and he goes a bit crazy. This was really good if you like the theatre and stuff like that.
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