Part 10 - Playing Away - Back From Cologne

Previously, on A Self-Help Freak's Guide to Living In Paris:

‘OK, band huddle!’ I say. They gather round. ‘Right, guys,’ I tell them, ‘we are The Notes From The Underground. There is no room for any holding back or any shyness. We are going to give a full-on, kickass, balls-out performance!'

Liselle objects to this. ‘That’s a bit sexist.’

‘You could do a tits-out performance, if you prefer,’ suggests Paul. Liselle doesn’t like this idea any better and punches Paul on the arm.

‘I’m going to rock out with my cock out,’ says Gareth.

And with that, we take to the stage.

And now... part 10:

Unfortunately, another band’s just been on. They’ve changed all the settings. Someone’s gone all Spinal Tap on my guitar amp. My first chord nearly blows Liselle off the stage. I have to concentrate on playing quietly –the exact opposite of the full-on, balls-out performance I was talking about. Even worse that that, someone’s unplugged Liselle's mic. She’s singing away gamely but no sound’s coming out. The big techie guy wanders over and plugs her in, but he doesn't change my amp setting. We get through the first song. We’re billed as ‘the band from Paris’ so Paul speaks to the audience in a comedy French accent: ‘Allo, we are Ze Notes From Ze Underground. Zis is our first time on ze stage.’

‘We can fucking tell!’ shouts someone in the audience.

We do the next two songs. I’m still strumming my guitar halfway up the fretboard so I don’t make too much noise. But, although my guitar’s too loud, my vocals are too quiet. On the two songs I sing, I have to bellow. As a way of establishing stage presence, bellowing isn't too bad. Our death metal take on the Monkees’ “Steppin’ Stone” certainly gets the crowd’s attention. The people who have enough room are dancing. Other people are singing along. The set ends with Liselle speed-rapping through a song called “Loose Lips”. This always goes down well. We get a big cheer as we go off and people are calling for an encore. ‘We should go back on,’ says Paul, eagerly. ‘What other songs do we know?’

‘First rule of showbiz,’ I remind him. ‘Always stop while they still want more.’

Adrenalin has carried me through the show. As soon as we’re off stage, I crash. Sore throats do not respond well to bellowing. I try to finish my Kölsch but it’s like drinking battery acid. We go backstage. I suddenly need to sit down.

‘How are you feeling?’ asks Paul.

‘Not on top of my game,’ I admit.

‘I’ll see if I can get you something.’

He goes off to negotiate with the barmaid and comes back with a hot honey and lemon drink. It does make me feel better, but I can’t help thinking it’s not very rock ‘n’ roll. I’m part of a featured band at a festival. I should be snorting cocaine from a groupie’s cleavage. But here I am with my hot honey and lemon. It’s ten o’clock and I want to go to bed. But we wander around for a while. We watch some other bands. The last act of the evening is Tom’s solo spot. He comes on at eleven and is supposed to do half an hour. So I have high hopes of going to bed at eleven thirty. At one o’clock, Tom is still playing and I’ll give him a lot of money to stop. His songs are very good. But, before each song, he teaches the audience the chorus. Then he teases them about getting it wrong. He plays the intro and decides it sounds like the intro to a famous song. So he starts singing the famous song. Some people join in. He cuts them off as soon as they’ve started and banters with them. He tunes up for a while. He starts playing the intro again. He breaks off to tell a story. He wastes so much time that a lot of people have lost interest before he actually starts singing. At one thirty, he does a song which, he assures us, will be the last. At the end of the song, Paul wants us to join him in calling for an encore. ‘We’ve got to shout: “Mow-er! Mow-er!”’ he says. I plead a sore throat rather than pointing out that I have no desire for mow-er. What I want from this guy is a lot lay-ess. Tom goes off and I wait for people to start drifting away. Nobody moves. The music’s finished, but there’s still plenty of beer behind the bar. The other guys in the band are having a good time. Paul’s talking to his friends. Gareth and Liselle know this might be their last chance to smoke in a pub and they’re making the most of it. They’re all enjoying the free Kölsch. I don't want to put a dampener on things, so I go backstage. I help one of the barmaids clear up the leftovers of the free food. Again, rock 'n' roll! I feel like the guy at a party who’s in the kitchen doing the washing up because no one wants to talk to him. When we finish, I find a window ledge and lie down. It’s hard, cold and too narrow for me to get comfortable. Even in my coat, I’m shivering. Every self-help freak knows what question to ask in this situation: ‘What’s great about this?’

‘I’m sick, cold and tired,’ I reply. ‘I desperately want to sleep. If I fall asleep on this window ledge, I’ll probably roll off and crash onto the concrete floor. The only people who could possibly find me a bed are determined to party until dawn. Apart from that, everything’s peachy.’

‘Remember, it’s not the events that determine how you feel,’ I remind myself. ‘It’s how you choose to respond to them.’

‘And I choose exhausted misery, OK?’

I can’t reason with myself sometimes.

At four o’clock, I can’t stand the window ledge anymore. I get up and go to find Paul. I tell him: ‘I need to sleep!’ The combination of sore throat and tiredness makes my voice a bit more Exorcist than I intended.
‘We're leaving in about an hour,’ says Paul, ‘then it's a half hour taxi ride...’ He sees that I’m ready to break down and sob at the prospect of being conscious for another hour and a half. He goes off and speaks rapid German to some people. He comes back with a young man. ‘This is Benjamin,’ says Paul. ‘His flat’s just round the corner, so you can go to bed immediately.’
There’s only one possible response to this. I lean in to Benjamin's ear and say: ‘I love you!’ As we walk back to Benjamin’s place, it occurs to me that I’ve got no idea who he is. We’ve just met and I’m going to spend the night in his flat. I try not to think of the news report: ‘The victim was last seen leaving the pub with a complete stranger at four in the morning. Why he did something so unbelievably stupid is not yet known.’ I try to reassure myself that he’s Paul’s friend, so he’s probably OK. Then I remember that Paul just introduced him with the words: ‘This is Benjamin’. At no point did he use the word ‘friend’. For all I know, Benjamin’s just some guy who was cruising the bar asking if there were any men who needed a bed for the night.

Benjamin’s flat is on the second floor of a tower block. He puts a mattress down on the living room floor. He takes a sleeping bag out of the cupboard. It’s one of those sleeping bags with a hood that zips all the way up to the throat – perfect for immobilising your victim while you get your knives in order and sharpen the axe.

Ever the gracious guest, I ask him if he wants to use the bathroom first. ‘No,’ he says, incredulously, ‘I'm going back to the pub!’ Like I should think anyone ready to go to bed at four thirty in the morning. He bids me good night and goes out. I leave one side of the sleeping bag unzipped so I’ll have a free hand to bat away the axe when he comes back.

I’m vaguely aware of him coming in at eight o’clock. He goes straight to bed, without pausing for murder or sodomy.

I wake up at ten o’clock. The idea is that we’ll spend the day looking round Cologne. Then, in the evening, we’ll go to watch the second night of the festival. I can’t cope with another night of staying up until four thirty. And the other guys in the band will get fed up of sickboy whining that he needs to go to bed. I want to be back in a situation that I can control. I want to be able to go to bed when I choose, without relying on anyone else. I want to be... in Paris. This is a strange feeling. Up to now, I’ve felt homesick in Paris. This is the first time I’ve felt homesick for Paris. I make a decision. I’m going back – right now.

I get up and wash. I figure Benjamin won’t appreciate being woken up so I leave a note, thanking him profusely for his hospitality. I pack up my stuff and slip out of the flat, closing the door softly. My plan is almost thwarted immediately. The main door of the building needs a key to open it from the inside. Fortunately, a girl comes running down the stairs. She opens the door. I give her a cheery ‘Grüß Gott!’ and she holds the door open. She doesn’t seem to care much about a stranger trying to get out of her building.

It’s a sunny Saturday morning. I feel better after some sleep but I’m still woolly headed. I walk down Benjamin’s street and ponder the question: how do you get from Cologne to Paris? I don’t fancy hitchhiking. I’ve already dodged one bullet when Benjamin turned out not to be a serial killer. I don’t want to tempt fate by getting into strangers’ cars. I don’t know if Cologne has an airport. And if it does, I’ve no idea how to get to it. Is it possible to go by train? I never went through the gap year rite of passage that is inter-railing. So the idea of getting on a train in one country and getting off in another is quite alien. Then I remember a song by Kraftwerk called “Trans-Europe Express”. There’s a line in it about ‘a rendezvous on the Champs-Elysées’. Kraftwerk’s a German band. That suggests it’s possible to get from Germany to Paris by train. Mind you, they’re from Düsseldorf, not Cologne. But it might be possible to get a train to Düsseldorf and get on the Trans-Europe Express there. But there’s a traditional rivalry between Cologne and Düsseldorf, so maybe there’s no rail link...

I stop and shake my head. I can’t believe I’m talking so much rubbish to myself.

At the bottom of the street, I see a tram stop. This looks like a good place to start. There should be a tram that goes to the station. But what’s the German for ‘station’? One of the trams promises to go to somewhere called ‘Hauptbahnhof’. That means ‘main station’, doesn't it? It’s worth trying. I get onto the tram. A fifty year old man smelling of beer sits down next to me. He starts talking. I think he’s telling me about last night and what a great time he had. He’s still drunk and he’s slurring his words. I understand one word in five. But I say: ‘Ja! Ja!’ from time to time and laugh whenever he laughs. This keeps him happy. I don’t give him my full attention as I’m looking for anything that could be the station. The tram stops at a large square building that looks like a department store. I ask my new friend: ‘Hauptbahnhof?’

‘Ja! Ja!’ he says.

I’m not sure how reliable he is but I get off the tram and cross the square. The signs are promising. There are more people with cases on wheels than you normally get at a department store. There’s a magnificent cathedral on my right, but I don’t give it the attention it deserves. I put my head through the door of the Hauptbahnhof. There are boards listing arrivals and departures. There are escalators leading off to platforms. I’d be very unlucky if this turned out not to be the station. But how do I get a ticket to Paris? I’m not even sure what ‘Paris’ is in German. It might be ‘Paris’. It might not. I do a slow three hundred and sixty degree turn, scanning the square in the hope of seeing something that will help me. And there, at the other side of the square, is an office of SNCF, the French railway company.

I go in. The girl at the desk welcomes me with a broad smile and a ‘Guten Morgen!’ I’m not going to try such a delicate transaction in my shaky German, so I ask her: 'Sprechen Sie Englisch oder Franzosich?'
She replies: ‘Yes, fatboy, I speak both. I can also piss all over you in Spanish and Italian, if you want.’

‘I need to get to Paris today.’

‘There’s a train in two hours.’

‘Great. Where does it go to?’

‘Err... Paris.’

‘I thought I’d have to get a train to Düsseldorf, then another one to Brussels. Then a taxi across Brussels. Then a train to Lille...’

‘Get on the train. When you see a see a sign that says “Paris – Nord”, get off the train. Do you want me to write that down for you?’

With a ticket in my pocket, I go to the coffee shop to feed my caffeine addiction. Then I look round the cathedral. I also see the Hohenzollern Bridge, where Hitler marched his troops into the Rhineland and showed the world what he thought of the Versailles Treaty.

On the train, a guy sits in his allocated seat next to mine for two minutes before going off to find another one. Do I smell? Yes, I do. My clothes and hair stink of cigarettes. My jacket smells like I've been cleaning ashtrays with it all night. But I actually regret being a non-smoker when the train stops. There’s something very European about getting off a train at Liège or Brussels and strolling along the platform with a cigarette.

The huge tower blocks in Soviet grey announce our arrival into the suburbs of the world’s most beautiful city. The area around the Gare du Nord does not give a good first impression of Paris. The walls beside the track are covered with street art words that don’t mean anything in any language. The grass on the embankments is scrubby green and brown. Some of the tower blocks have their windows facing away from the railway. All you can see are solid concrete walls. As we get closer to the station, the graffiti gets denser and more colourful. Some of the buildings look more Parisian – cream walls and attic room windows sticking out from grey roofs. The train pulls into the station and I see the sign that says ‘Paris – Nord’. A lot of work’s been done to make the Gare du Nord look like a thriving hub of international travel. But it can’t shake off a slight air of menace. Outside the newsagent’s, there’s a group of young men who are watching the passengers and their luggage carefully. It’s one of those places where I keep an extra tight grip on my bag and make sure my wallet is zipped up under several layers of clothing.

Even so, the station has a comforting familiarity. I know exactly where I’m going. If the Métro is working well – and it usually is, however much the locals complain about it – I’ll be back in my apartment in twenty minutes. It almost – almost – feels like coming home.