Zak Ferguson ✍ Authors Note: If the writing seems
different to the previous segment of my series of travel writing that is
because after the third day of journalising, I stopped writing altogether.
Why?
Well, it is because I lost focus and a need to write my thoughts in the moment of experiencing them was neglected in favour of shutting down that side of myself and finally settling into popping my holiday cherry.
The first three days abroad I wrote dementedly, fuelled by a sense of dislocation and annoyance at losing access to all my home comforts and being cast in my very own fish out of water motion picture. That and they only had a couple of TV channels that showed anything in English. SO, those first few days I wrote a lot, especially when travelling, and that of which is included in Part 2.
This segment/Part retains a lot of my journal entries, only they are now being appropriated as notes and will be written around and built upon.
So the following parts of The Holiday Virgin will read different from how it might have done if I kept to journalising day by day, much like the first part published by The Pensive Quill and Anthony McIntyre. My thoughts fell by the wayside and I allowed myself to enjoy it. That ease of letting go of all of life’s pressures, everything we isolate and pinpoint to a location, when we all know deep down the troubles of the world follow us, because a lot of it comes from up top, than external forces.
Now, I am back at home, and the flat is coming together nicely and I can reflect on the holiday rather than journalise day by day, like a diary entry.
I hope you enjoy my whittlings.
Day Two/Part Two
Being in Germany is no different from being in the UK. Well, that’s how it felt. From this perspective, where I was in a nicely ACed car (airconned car) you can't really say you've experienced Germany. But, I was trying, my utmost to find material to write upon. Only, the material that was forthcoming painted me, as you’ll witness, in a not so pretty picture. That of a plebian nitwit who caters and revolves his thoughts and reactions to the inherent biased, prejudiced nature of being a UK citizen.
♜ ♞ ♟
What I have deduced so far, by being out of the safety of Laura’s Nissan Qashqai is everyone hates each other in Germany, just as much as we hate ourselves back in England, and especially those we consider the other. The Other being foreigners. Though we may moan, rave about how our country is being infiltrated by foreigners and immigrants, our footing has far more grip than an outsider/tourist/immigrant (legal and illegal). We seem hard-pressed to come up with a reason for such an adverse reaction to foreign climes; yet, it is sown into our DNA, and I believe it is the nature of the beast, as to being British, to reinforce, or to loop ourselves into the worst aspects of our race; the human race, but, let’s just call it The Cuntish British Race. We always have to have borders and divides. Whether you’re Irish, Scottish, from up North or a Southerner, a Mancunian or Liverpudlian or Brightonian, there are caricatures, cookie-cut-out representations of British people, that we encourage, whether deliberately or not, and this is way before middle or upper middle or upper-upper so fucking upper-high/higher classes even get thrown into the conversation/mix. We all have a certain image of a race, a creed, a tribe, a folk, a native of this land or other. It is just how we have been programmed.
We are so fucking unintentionally racist, us Brits. (Some are intentionally racist, as proven by many mini-wars and revolts against our government and our shitty conquering attitude/or the belief we are peacekeepers, whilst coming in and fucking shit up, on the behalf of the revolt-ers or alongside said revolt-ers).
This is how our island’s culture, and society as a whole has reared us. To be biased, blathering, clueless idiots. And, I believe the same is everywhere you go.
We have biases toward the other, even if we speak the lingo, love the land and the folk, cook the food, love the ladies, love the men, the environment and cultural differences – comparisons to our genesis will always be made, from where we came from, and not the other. You cannot get away from it, like we can never get away from ourselves – it is seeded into us, and though many might react to it, these thoughts, like a person who has only just started paying attention to their own mind and what these dark thoughts are actually called (intrusive thoughts) we can either humour it, rationalise it, write or talk about it. That, or we can silently move on with our day. Some might grow obsessive, and try and shake things up by rationalising such thoughts by disingenuous actions (like going on Twitter and Facebook and taking up arms, all for the sake of hiding the fact that you had a biased, misogynistic, sexist, racist, maybe anti-this-that-or-the-other though/ warped idea, and you cannot quite escape it, like that gnat that follows you and pesters you, - it isn’t doing much harm, but you’re aware of it enough to make it a bigger issue than it really is – so small, infinitesimal, and shouldn’t have no bearing on your day, yet you still want it gone, squashed and made obsolete/dead/just fucking well gone; birthing in some a need to virtue signal to all around you what a swell individual and clued in guy or girl or they/them you are). Or, you go the wrong route and start by enacting upon these damned thoughts and make everything one hundred times worse for yourself and those around you, in a variety of ways.
We all share these feelings or the similar train of thought, to judge, to dismiss, to compare and deride the other. It is human nature to be judgmental and awful to one another. We have incremental aspects that cannot be cleaned from our minds. The stain is always there, because you know it used to be there, so there forever it remains.
Every country, whether France, Germany, Tokyo, they have their own issues, their own idiots, morons, their own warped ideologies and different factions of people, all up in arms about something or other, where politics is identity and identity is paperwork. Every other place has a Lizz Truss, or a Farage, and the little people that listen and believe and feed into this constant echo chamber of opinion and revolt and inanities- there are always those guys that feel like the other, and will make comparisons to their culture, their ways to the others. Only we aren’t clued into their politics - though oddly we are clued into our brothers, the American’s politics, far too deeply, in my opinion, but, then again, thinking on this, it’s a welcome distraction. That and it helps that they speak English (kind of) - which comes off like some fragment of an episode of Sky One’s once popular TV series 24, each time something goes down way over there and is reported excessively in our UK media channels, we take to it and gorge on it. I like to think I am apolitical, or generally so disinterested in the whole miasma of politics and public discourse, but that doesn’t mean political ideologies and attitudes haven’t been sown into my being.
We all have prejudices and unconscious biases, and I don’t think we need a survey online to help us break out of that. What we is to live and to learn. What we need to do is experience life as the other, to further ourselves and to better educate and alter our awful attributes when in relation to the other/the foreigner/the tourist. We need to be better, and as will become clear, you’ll be able to grow, but before then, you first must recognise the issue/issues that are inherent in oneself and his fellow man.
Germany Fatigue Boogaloo
It set in quick. A fatigue. I hate how out of place one feels when away from home. I feel like this even when going to a cinema that isn’t in my region. (The emotions one goes through to sit in an IMAX film, right?). There is no comedic titbits available, in our journey so far through Dunkirk, and various strands of Germany to get to our location of Bad Griesbach. The good should outweigh the bad, but it doesn’t, that is not being my nature; the reality we were on a way to experience our first holiday together, as partners, and my hymen having not yet been fully teared into and popped, were all neglected for thoughts such as, “I knew it! I knew the Germans would not take to us!” - as if me and Laura were the only two British people to have entered Germany since WW2.
In Germany, those first few days, I felt like I was in John Carpenter’s They Live, only we were the aliens, and not the humans, and sadly a reversal of roles was at play, where the aliens in question were not at an advantage, and in no esteemed position; you are spotted and caught, and we as the others are left powerless.
Spotted. Caught. Trapped in their gaze. And still we have no power (unless possessing the power of speaking the native language, which still never erases that sense of dislocation, no matter how well versed you are) but to abide, nod, try and fail at communicating/that or fall into dark, troubling thoughts. It is easier to hate than to like and love. Anger, and salty bitterness is easier and far quicker a response, than the slow spread of love and liking something in particular; that and you get a real high from it.
Germany isn't exotic. It isn’t the place it is sold as in the films. A lot of my favourite German based movies weren’t even filmed in Germany, so, consider me duped.
It is like the UK – it is a place with lush acres, that’re slowly infiltrated by concrete, tar, metal, and steel. Commerce! Commerce! Commerce! The German Dalek screams instead of Obey! Obey! Obey!
We were passing various infrastructures, or under various superstructures, like a hybrid hill that resembled the one in the Teletubbies kids show and as variety of Christopher Nolan-esque ultra-real science tech dotted here and there, and still it didn’t feel like the Germany I had envisioned. I was growing impatient and rather grouchy.
What I did realise was I wanted an excuse to vent, or to write. I wanted something to stand out, in all its glory, to warrant pages upon pages of my prose. Within these bored, eye rolling vistas of UK scenery that were currently being 360 degree projected for me, all based in Germany. I think I neglected the differences, the spatial discrepancies and luckily soon realised that their buildings are double the size, as those in the UK, yet, still, they are secular and erudite.
Freed of a bumble of surrounding infrastructure attempting to be the next big phallic symbol of capitalism and superiority. Everything was wider too, given room to breathe and not fight for space, and though in height and grandiosity, scale-wise, they were still spaced better, whereas in England everything has a piled on top of each other look/effect.
But, though this observation can open a whole new can of worms of dissection, and discussion and deep analytical sociopolitical and socioeconomical truisms, it hits me like the buildings do in the UK. Its only now after the fact that I can wax lyrical about the urban sprawl dotted around their lush pastures.
Then again, I bet even now you are thinking…Um, well Fergie, they’re just buildings, and nothing makes them stand out. And I agree, nah, not really, not when you’re there, it’s only after the fact. Where was the Germanic architecture and the culture shock? That’s what I wanted. I wanted my breath to be taken away. I was undecided as to what the issue was. Was I just not a holidayer, was I truly so deluded that I took everything around me as the hard cold facts as they were displayed. The metaphysical and whimsical and the hidden details were lost on me due to my own blindness and unwillingness to accept and relax? Or was I seeking too much out of what was always going to be autobahn, autobahns, autobahn.
The only shock was how poorly treated I had felt so far. All based upon a shitty late evening experience in Mainz Germany - in the heart of their busiest town, in their busiest of hours - where I felt me and Laura were mistreated.
Boo hoo, poor British punks.
The source of my brewing bias and shitty attitude towards the German population were stirred by ingrained preconceptions, and anxieties. The feeling of being unwanted, loathed, a(n) (un)necessary means to an (un)necessary tourist-y end(s).
Yup. So far, we had travelled…………………………………………………………………… far.
We passed buildings of various sizes that are used for a wide variety of reasons and obviously for different classes of business, that were sprouting from the Earth’s core or came off as if dropped from the skies above. Apart from the smoothness of the autobahn and possessing less potholes than any road I've ever been driven on, it was still so far, all the same…except the German's were going into this lane and that lane, jumping almost like tics, with no thought or care for the foreigner behind them, reenacting a scene from their obviously favourite film franchise, Der Schnell und Wütend.
It is manic, furious and fatigue inducing. I just wanted to get there or teleport back home and sort out my Funko Pops left piled on top of my Blu-ray case, messily.
We want photos
We want photos of your journey.
That’s all we got.
Not, how was the drive?
It was, You Not Taken Any Photos, What's Up?
Also it come across as if those enquiring/demanding photos was: Where is the proof, huh, huh, huh punk? We want photos. We want photos. And I agreed with them me too, me too, #MeTooButNotInThatSense.
I felt like screaming at Laura’s Grandmother, who was inundating us with comments on Facebook, and another fellow who loves to live vicariously through my Facebook postings wanting updates as if I were some special photographer friend who was there to cater to their vicarious obsessions. Fuck off, my camera phone is shockingly shite, ask Laura.
I wanted to photograph things, and I tried, having made a short comedic video, that lasted up to only an hour and a bit of our journey, and a little post-production when we finally reached our destination/German apartment. But we were going at such speeds that by the time you realised you had passed through Frankfurt or Belgium it was lost in the rearview mirror. And there are no U-turns on an autobahn.
So, for those that had asked for photos, I reassure you, there was very little to photograph.
We had yet to enter the Ye Olde Germany – and, by this point of people enquiring as to the lack of photographic evidence to our travelling abroad, it felt, almost as if this was one big lie.
What an accusation, Doreen.
As if it was all a setup. A mirage of lies and deception and a few hastily chosen google images to reinforce said lie, stating we were abroad for the mere sake of it (though some lunatics do have a habit of doing this for likes on their social medias platforms, the weirdos).
It bugged me. They wanted the goods, right there and then, and it also corresponds with our feelings, that yes, yes, fucking yes, yes we too want to get there, to our destination, our home for the next two weeks, to set up head quarters and go travel and seek new areas of Germany. We too wanted to get to Prague as soon as we could.
Like I have already mentioned, we had mainly been situated on autobahns, where we were only taking minor urban detours, and circumnavigating these environments, off and on – so for those that were calling for proof, yeah, you guys got me angry, agitated. All I wanted to do was open FB Messenger and hit my favourite icon, the Voice Recorder, and scream out:
I Want To Photograph Places People! I Really Do! I Do Not Want To Be Travelling In Near Forty Degree Heat In This Car For Nearly Fourteen Hours! Trust Me I Want To Pop My Holiday Cherry!
Instead, I wrote about it, occasionally signalling for Laura when was the right time to pull out, Left Side Passenger Goal: Unlocked.
German Mania
I love German culture. I love the reality and the ultra-reality. The ultra-reality being that of which you have fashioned for yourself. I wanted to be in 1930s Germany. I wanted to be in Quentin Tarantino’s Germany. I wanted to look at Germany through the eyes of Herzog. I wanted Klaus Kinski’s vision to take me over, his anger, his passion, and for his ghost to provide me a list of expletives in his home-tongue, so that I could shout in German and to form perfect Germanic-mouth formations and tongue twisting words, to prove I loved Germany, and to be delivered in such a grandiloquent fashion I could pass as one of their own. And like an incantation I kept on at myself to ease up, “Just stop getting angry. Stop picking apart the small tiny negatives and making a galaxy out of a mountain!” – and, to ultimately stop getting so worked up over macro-moments, and to sit back, enjoy the aircon, enjoy the journey and the experience of finally experiencing what it is like abroad. To no longer be The Holiday Virgin.
Though it was similar in nature to travelling between Eastbourne and Brighton, or Eastbourne to Cornwall, it was quintessentially different. It was abroad. Away from home; which, we never are, not any longer due to our mobile devices. It is always within reach. The reality and slew of home related issues, meaning UK news. But you get the point.
Europe was familiar, but estranged enough to be taken on from a vertiginous perspective.
Vast. Wide open. Speedy. Exciting. Just because an Italian Waiter was an asshole in Mainz, Germany, taking over forty minutes to even get to your drinks orders and seemingly flustering over German speaking customers and prioritising them, over you, yourself and your partner, doesn’t give excuse to fall into a parody version of your British self.
Laura ended up crying though, which fuelled my ire. We were hating how they seemed to be responding to us in that moment – shaken heads, pursed lips, eye rolls, shocked reactions that then turned into condescending faux-insouciance.
You got to factor in the long drive, the fatigue, the tiredness, and again the fatigue, the sluggishness, the need to sleep, the fatigue, oh and the fucking fatigue, that no wonder we were extremely receptive to things that probably didn’t exist and were distorted by such a specifically Germanic fatigue– we, the other, the aliens, the British, the scum, the colonisers – this needn’t be highlighted and scrapbooked and obsessed over, to the extent I was doing, yet, I had to, as that is just me.
Zak Ferguson is: Erratic. Emotional. Hyper. Annoying.
There were moments even then, in the worst moment of the holiday, the match that lit the fuse for my initial German-Fatigue and unease, like when I got up and moved my chair for an elderly lady and all five of her family members gushed over me, thanked me, as if this wasn’t a common gesture of decency in their homeland of Germany, that should have taken over space in my mind and cleared all of the preconceptions, and the supposed validity of “The Germans Hate Us!” paranoia; but, it didn’t.
And whilst you’re left smiling and unable to respond to them, the happy German folk, as they spoke at you, as that’s what it is, people speaking at you, you cannot hold onto this lovely moment because it’s easier to hate, be angry and feel justified in your unjustified preconceptions of a place and of a certain people. That’s how it felt. That’s how it just bloody well is, ladies and germs.
Right or wrong, we humans are fucked and flawed and we also fuck and love our flaws.
I jumped in and out of loving the people, and hating the people - the German folk as a whole. This isn’t a racist thing on my behalf, which I did work myself into a state of not being or perhaps portraying, to myself, and no one else - at some point, worried that I was everything I dislike in the world, subjecting myself to these attitudes, one’s I shouldn’t have in my head, waiting to be brought out from its dormant dark crevasse; as I know, deep down, that I am like this – brash, vengeful, angry - not only here, but also in the UK.
If one British thug annoys me and makes me feel out of sorts, I will hate on the UK as a whole. All UK residence are scum and need to die. I want to dial Putin’s private number and give him my approval for his eventual red button hard Touch Down!
Onset of German Mania starts with, the visions. As I was scouting for locations I might be able to photograph, I instead fell into fantasies. I convinced myself Johnny Depp lived in Germany and I would bump into him. Which I did, only on a poster advertising his band in. I was keeping my eyes open for some recognisable face in a crowd of faces.
Like?
The ghost of Fritz Lang, who is one of my favourite German film directors. I searched the clear skies, for his face, imagining certain photographs of himself plastered over the domed horizon. Spotting a darker cloud in the white wispy expanse of Fritz Cloud-Lang which would be that distinctive eyepatch. Hoping that when he lifted it up, the heavens would open and rain would cool our heated drive.
Well, it did, later on, only to evaporate as quick as it started to shower, and only encouraged out a dryness unlike any other. Encouraging the heat, the humidity, the weather to grow far worse in all of its post shower foreign mugginess, that foreign climes perpetuate and personify.
Maybe I’d spot a ranting, raving (same thing, only different when Uwe Boll does it) Uwe Boll - coming home to test the limits of the German's tolerance of mania, and bad taste in cinema, and hoping he might flip us the bird, seated in one of his fancy Jeeps stroking one of his dogs, repetitively shouting, “You retards!”.
Mostly I was caught in random visions - imagining spotting Christophe Waltz, in full Nazi Uniform, driving an Audi. I know, it’s not going to happen. Germany, it induces expectations and racially obtuse fetishes, all in thanks to film and modern media. You expect certain conversations to be had, with other fellow travellers about the war and Shitler, but, it never comes up. The world’s most well unkept secret, that is never breathed a word about. Which, I guess is standard. It isn’t like we go on about our UK monsters, like Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris (I hate that we were lumbered with him, he was an Aussie for Christ’s sake!).
Yet, what became known was, the war is as much a sore subject for the Germans than anyone else. It isn’t a subject they want to share and liberate and re-write. It happened, leave it be. The history, the taint, it is there, so leave it alone.
I was then falling into deep reveries based around the hilarious way Werner Herzog spoke the line, “I want to see the baby!” in the first season of The Mandalorian.
I wanted Werner to narrate our religious journey, instilling it with his wonder and whimsicality. I fell into the 1920s period and imagined everything around me, the autobahn, the cars, transformed into coaches, carriages – all horse drawn, some steam-punk styled, Metropolis like, film starches and blemishes layered over this scene, as F.W Murnau is somehow (at a slight 45mp speed) overtaking us, who are going at a hard 100mph (130 in German number) only to crash his automobile into a trike.
The German child smiles and asks for Apple Strudel and the PC police pull up and scold us for confusing Strudel with Germany, where at this point I am quick to correct them it isn’t Swedish, it is Austrian, yet, German’s are sensitive about Germany and Austria being related so I leave it well alone. This event is encouraging spectators on horse drawn carriages and carts to pull up, and view the fall of one of their pioneers of cinema - with German children giggling behind their hands, faces contorted like The Man Who Laughs actor’s eerie mush; witnessing Murnau’s demise. The Germans spread out, as cars speeding at 100mph flea-like jumps around them; hardly touching their ectoplasmic veils, that the Germans are concealed and quarantined in - their time zones, spherically captured, where my foot is half in and half out of - spectating, pursing their lips, surmising, “The modern era corrupted him greatly,” when a version of Nosferatu ends up popping up from out of the wreckage, metal and various 20 internal pistons fell from him, arcing himself, readying to jump into his silent movie mode - posing, extravagant in poise and expression, pushing the makeup to its fullest, until Doug Jones puts him in a headlock and drowns him in a sea of prosthetic latex.
Then it just stops. Like most travel-hallucinations do.
Am I Abroad?
It is the UK, all of this, everything we have done we could and have most likely done in the United Kingdom. Germany is Britain. The UK is Germany, that is… well, in that moment of time what it felt like. I was left feeling unimpressed… still mired in that shitty mood; thinking, so far, so Deutschland, and so Deutschland it was so far, so, so, like Britain; only I knew we were not situated in the UK.
Wie zu Hause, nur in Deutschland, except the drivers are crazier, and the rule of road-thumb is so red raw, and brutalised, it is unrecognisable, and you question where these rules were first written, and whether the Germans own credo was, "Scheiß drauf!"
I am still shocked that said thumb hasn't fallen off yet. My attitude on the second day of travel, the first half, before the curtains were unveiled, was…It's no different to the UK, as the many hundreds of miles we had taken didn’t throw naything out, only that service stations smell nicer and offer far more diverse, but still German centric dishes, that I didn’t go near, feeling bad as Laura is left out of the food tasting due to her celiac disease - and each service station we had used so far were very familiar.
There wasn’t any grand escapade or moment we could catalogue as inherently, Germanic. Exact replicas to the UK service stations, that’s all we had to go off of - only there was more German words than English, I had to give them that. Which, is a lie, only, said shitty mood wanted to downplay every different aspect to Germany, in a distorted sense to give reason and validation as to why a holiday was wasted on me and this whole sordid affair was just not necessary.
My holiday cherry didn’t need to be popped as I didn’t or couldn’t have cared less.
The mind, it is a fucking weird thing, even before we consider the mind as a mere construct.
Some of the stations were like palaces, pristine, worn in areas, but admirable in those worn in places, enough that they elevated themselves up from the mire of shit-stained-glory that the UK services are so renowned for, whilst others were not fit even for a nonce with a urinary problem to relieve himself.
It's like the UK, I thought, apart from different archetypal architecture - meaning it has pretty spots.
It's like the UK, I pondered, there are traffic jams. It’s like the UK, I kept on at myself, fighting inside not to be disappointed, in that the natives hate the outsider.
Back To The Bahn
The autobahn was like our motorways, except the side of the road one is driving on is firmly on the right, and the road signs aren't defaced or peeling/rusting away.
Theirs are printed with beautiful brown/black stencil art of the location/the iconographic signifiers to the location it is heralding, that we will, yes, sadly be bypassing, and not pulling up randomly, all to photograph and post online, and merely to satisfy those who seem to be getting a weird kick out of our European road trip. So, no Snow White jumping out of the treeline for us. Or the appearance of a big, beautiful Schloss. Joking aside, Germany so far had been hot. Moody. And very, very abrasive.
German Critique
Germany seems to be full of, well, Germans.
But the Germans that fit the stereotype we, and a handful of others have created for them over the centuries. The cartoonish, and maybe even a little racist version of them, spread throughout generations of art, cinema, literature, and popular entertainment.
I hate to be displaying bias, and the often-accused attitude us wholly right wing marinated British countrymen exhibit, especially when abroad, but, so far, we had been made to feel unwanted, and each bad experience left me feeling like stating, "No German is a good German!" - tic like. From that one experience, from that one guy I was tarnishing every single German person I had met or had yet to meet; a guy that wasn’t even legit German German, as he was that not so rare breed of being from so many places he takes on all those places politics, attitudes and biases that he just comes across as a nasty cunt; but when exhibiting such cunty behaviour, in Germany, how can you blame me for highlighting him as the worst example of the German people. Also, my inclination for inappropriate behaviour, and a need to "Sieg Heil!" was cut short, luckily by this generally Anti-Brit-Bündel; fearing either they might kill me for being so disrespectful, or out of fear that they'll scold me, only to later sidle up to me and whisper, in a German-accent, "Sieg-Heil!" in my easily waxed ear, whilst also patting my shoulder both in a condescending and bonding manner, slipping me the Third-Third Reich membership card.
I like to think we are accommodating in the UK, especially in my old hometown of Brighton - which is a medium sized city, one solely targeted and run by tourists, a place that one is often left feeling like it isn't our own pocket of dank British misery, but one taken over by trust funded teens from here, there, and where the fuck is that?
The caricatures were not in full Technicolour, or vibrant and heavily accented – not of that type of caricature, but a more postmodern variation of a German, one less bohemian, or Ye Olde, but that of the loud, abrupt, no-nonsense, impatient kind of folk, which had been on display so far in Germany for the likes of Laura and me, at that time.
The Germans who have zero tolerance for Jews, Brown Haired Devils, and anyone who can't say Shit in German.
Well, I can, so it must be because I am a Brown-Haired Devil.
They seem to want to reinforce their tropes, their countries clichéd ways as exhibited wrongly, or maybe accurately through modern media.
They barge. They cut in line. They seem inherently (fucking) crazy on the autobahns. They sense the Other like I can sense (no, smell) a Laura Marshall fart from a mile away – they seem to grow rigid. Which is very much fitting our British cultural preconceptions, except they're less beer-guzzling folk that have a fixation with spiced sausage and the disproportionate amount of love they have for lederhosen, whereas here, in this moment of modernity, in foreign climes, they're just displaying attitudes shared with any native of their concrete/pastoral land/jungle/country. Or, my shitty attituded-self liked to think and kept going over and over in the first two hours’ drive of the second day/the last hurdle towards our rented accommodation.
The defenders of their place and one's right of place was exhibited by their attitude. As if two Brits have any claim or possibility of attempting some colonising.
We don't like the alien, the intruder, and especially that of the foreigner. We lead ourselves to believe we are kind, patient and accommodating (as long as our swearing and eyerolls aren't seen by the offending...I mean visiting foreign friends, Dann ist alles gut, ja?) to visitors to the UK, but, are we?
Are we really?
I think not.
I Am An Alien, Please Hate Me
Being here, in the day and a half of travel and awkward engagements, some nicer and funnier than others, I realised, we all hate the other.
It is genetically sown into us.
Can we better appreciate the culture and ways, if only we had a modicum of knowledge and language, maybe?
Yes, yes and Bingo, ding!-ding!-ding!-yes!
But, still our biases, our estrangement, our weariness, our longing for the familiar is castrated and all openness to enjoy and to process that of an alternative reality, when visiting another country, seemed moot and lacking.
It is weird to come from a country that seems to be open for business for all, all except their own people. Where our government and local councils seem to make security and housing a priority for others, other than those born and raised in the UK, and to be treated in a way - whether this is actually factually or emotionally true - we are treated poorly, and as if we are an imposition and are below the migrants themselves.
These caricatures are more fitting the attitude the UK history teachers taught us, which was that the German way was of a hate for the otherness; a fascist state, the haters of all outsiders and the great intolerant.
You can't help but come in with these warped, and yes wrong impressions and preconceived notions. This feeling of dislocation and of the unusual also encourages the worst from ourselves. This was a new experience for me. I hadn’t been abroad since I was nine, and that was to Disneyland in Paris, and my memories of that was being unable to do anything due to hours’ long queues, and my Grandmother wanting to just stop at every cafe and have an Irish Coffee or a hot chocolate with all the sugary drippings/meltings. Also, I was young, Mum and Nan dealt with the language barriers.
Now here we were, me and Laura, touring Germany in a car, for two weeks (kind of) as adults, expected to do the adult things, that we as children didn't have to do. We didn’t have a smidge of experience to use, nor the knowledge to attain to see us executing plans and strategies to cope and make sure things go to plan. We didn’t even comprehend that we would be put in a position like the ones our parents struggled or excelled at when they took us abroad.
Our current journey had seen us only engage with our German buddies for a total of, perhaps only 2 hours, in the day and half we so far had travelled. And it left me wanting the UK, badly.
Is it the travelling, and length to get to our accommodation that is stripping the excitement, alongside the thought that it is going to be like this for two weeks, pure disappointment and German unease?
The feeling of being loathed, unwanted, and expected to cut short our jaunt/adventure was heavy in my heart and over-active mind. Over such a short period of time, in the presence of a kind of people totally polar to our British selves, it makes you feel bummed and burnt out.
All this travel and these small incremental moments seem to be slotting into a biased picture we hoped wasn't accurate nor true. And add to this being away from comforts and convenience, and amalgamated into something altogether uglier, and perhaps even unconsciously racist, from my inner most self, I'm left thinking: Am I myself unconsciously racist? No. I am just an idiot, a virginal idiot, who was/still is naive to what the world is truly like outside his/my own British bubble.
I love German films and foods, and the language is music to me. But, this is as an outsider viewing from a Perspex box, but when let out, and forced to no longer be an invisible spectator, I am feeling revealed. Thinking, fuck, they seemed so joyous, and free, and then once they got my sea salt scent they, the Germans, oh how they turned. They seemed, the German people, to sour, and convey a nasty aura. Or, again is this built out of unfamiliarity and my own insular anxious and uncomfortable self?
So far, those two hours on the second day journeying to our rented apartment, seemed to be enough for me to tarnish all Germany and its people. And all because the few we had been in contact with had made me into a scared, cranky, intolerantly British snob who wanted to stay in the car - with our English language music blaring, soothing my agitated self.
It seems that bias and the otherness of the self is viewing the good German people, as villains. Germans are always villains in popular media, and in the history books. It is just seeded into our ape British minds for us to approach them that way and to misread all of their interactions with us, their looks, stares, their overall selves. That they have hidden, some better than others, nothing but disgust for the British race. Struggling to hide their ill-concealed vendetta and personal bias towards our British selves.
The German experience up to that point had only reinforced such biases and misinterpretations, one’s so absurd and inherently wrong, that writing this, I feel sick to have had such thoughts; which thoughts? Oh, that that they still held themselves as the superior race – which is nonsense, utter nonsense, but you can’t help but have such twisted awful thoughts not pop into your noggin, and it would seem weird by not having such thoughts and ideas pop up, and if they didn’t you’d feel weirder for not having suffered from them. You wouldn’t be British unless you had such an childish response.
We have been indoctrinated for so long to think this way – or, I had, which do not be surprised, I come from racist stock, it’s hard to unshackle these intrusive personality destroying attitudes and ways, yet, I try and fail; these notions, simmering at the bottom come to the surface, goaded by one small unbiased event, reinforcing our inherently British and pompous self-important ideas of the German folk.
Look, this is all rather tongue in cheek, and I guess somebody will read what they want into my above statements, but, honesty is the best policy, isn’t it?
I am admitting that my approach and knee-jerk reaction, my inessential British self is displaying the “essential” parts of what make British people so…well, cunt-y, in way to illuminate that, I am better than the rest. Which is a lie, but, lets go along with that notion, okay dear reader.
I mean, it's their country, and they have as much right to look at us as imposters, but please, at least give us a little bit of leeway, look upon us as imposters new to the job and failing, as we the British think to ourselves, Do Not Do This To You/Them when in visiting our homeland/country. (If you can't detect my sarcasm, or need an emoji to convey my writing's tone, look elsewhere).
The initial thought that runs through our British minds is, well, they look at everyone outside of themselves as scum, filth, and a kind that needs to leave their vicinity and country... pronto. And, those that have so far stood out, far fewer than the ones that have been kind, speaking English (broken or not) are always the ones that taint and concretise our inherent, unconscious biases and attitudes.
That the other, that these Germans are mean sods.
All the good, all the contrary interactions fall to the wayside when the negative comes up, and its embellished by already seeded attitudes and paranoias. The Germans…They smell foreigners and tourists like we can't help hear them when they come into our country and give us headaches.
The Germans, they look at us as if to say, you didn’t win, you merely faked winning.
Winning what, exactly?
The war?
Winning in life?
Fuck knows, but these subordinate thoughts to making a decent human being are always running ticker-tape across your frontal lobe, and arcing backwards and then circling back around until the tape tears or you pull it apart yourself and just get your whacked out act together. Though, the noise, the ambiance of a strange tongue, and their volumes is pitched so loudly in Germany, you feel like some nymph; silent, agitated, courteous out of fear and not out of mutual respect.
You feel unheard, but heavily seen. Under a scathing scrutiny.
They're very brusque. Not at all inclined to smile back, which I do, as thanks, as acknowledgement I am an uneducated, English speaking toad; pity me, I am a mere fool in your godly presence - as that's when one clueless and one sole language speaking tit like me (who seems to struggle even with his native tongue) can't even get his mouth around danke-shum. I can't do anything but offer smiles, and body language, as that's all I have got. I can't speak the lingo, and I hoped my smiles, nods, could be interpreted.
Body language is powerful, but, it seems it isn't the universal language I had hoped it was. Because I'm either getting the complete wrong end of the stick, concerning our German buddies, and their feelings towards us bumbling sanctimonious Brit-tits or they are getting a weird reading from me.
Entering a country, that probably views the likes of us, the British with more disdain, and outright loathing than ever before (thanks to thankless fucks like Farage and co, and all those related to Brexit, giving off the impression that all Brits are like him, or worse, some shitty offshoot of Farage, like one of The Emperor's most recent failed Clone Tests, as seen in the recent reimagining of Star Wars lore) they are quick to make the humble foreigner feel small, insignificant, and unwanted.
German Mania
I love German culture. I love the reality and the ultra-reality. The ultra-reality being that of which you have fashioned for yourself. I wanted to be in 1930s Germany. I wanted to be in Quentin Tarantino’s Germany. I wanted to look at Germany through the eyes of Herzog. I wanted Klaus Kinski’s vision to take me over, his anger, his passion, and for his ghost to provide me a list of expletives in his home-tongue, so that I could shout in German and to form perfect Germanic-mouth formations and tongue twisting words, to prove I loved Germany, and to be delivered in such a grandiloquent fashion I could pass as one of their own. And like an incantation I kept on at myself to ease up, “Just stop getting angry. Stop picking apart the small tiny negatives and making a galaxy out of a mountain!” – and, to ultimately stop getting so worked up over macro-moments, and to sit back, enjoy the aircon, enjoy the journey and the experience of finally experiencing what it is like abroad. To no longer be The Holiday Virgin.
Though it was similar in nature to travelling between Eastbourne and Brighton, or Eastbourne to Cornwall, it was quintessentially different. It was abroad. Away from home; which, we never are, not any longer due to our mobile devices. It is always within reach. The reality and slew of home related issues, meaning UK news. But you get the point.
Europe was familiar, but estranged enough to be taken on from a vertiginous perspective.
Vast. Wide open. Speedy. Exciting. Just because an Italian Waiter was an asshole in Mainz, Germany, taking over forty minutes to even get to your drinks orders and seemingly flustering over German speaking customers and prioritising them, over you, yourself and your partner, doesn’t give excuse to fall into a parody version of your British self.
Laura ended up crying though, which fuelled my ire. We were hating how they seemed to be responding to us in that moment – shaken heads, pursed lips, eye rolls, shocked reactions that then turned into condescending faux-insouciance.
You got to factor in the long drive, the fatigue, the tiredness, and again the fatigue, the sluggishness, the need to sleep, the fatigue, oh and the fucking fatigue, that no wonder we were extremely receptive to things that probably didn’t exist and were distorted by such a specifically Germanic fatigue– we, the other, the aliens, the British, the scum, the colonisers – this needn’t be highlighted and scrapbooked and obsessed over, to the extent I was doing, yet, I had to, as that is just me.
Zak Ferguson is: Erratic. Emotional. Hyper. Annoying.
There were moments even then, in the worst moment of the holiday, the match that lit the fuse for my initial German-Fatigue and unease, like when I got up and moved my chair for an elderly lady and all five of her family members gushed over me, thanked me, as if this wasn’t a common gesture of decency in their homeland of Germany, that should have taken over space in my mind and cleared all of the preconceptions, and the supposed validity of “The Germans Hate Us!” paranoia; but, it didn’t.
And whilst you’re left smiling and unable to respond to them, the happy German folk, as they spoke at you, as that’s what it is, people speaking at you, you cannot hold onto this lovely moment because it’s easier to hate, be angry and feel justified in your unjustified preconceptions of a place and of a certain people. That’s how it felt. That’s how it just bloody well is, ladies and germs.
Right or wrong, we humans are fucked and flawed and we also fuck and love our flaws.
I jumped in and out of loving the people, and hating the people - the German folk as a whole. This isn’t a racist thing on my behalf, which I did work myself into a state of not being or perhaps portraying, to myself, and no one else - at some point, worried that I was everything I dislike in the world, subjecting myself to these attitudes, one’s I shouldn’t have in my head, waiting to be brought out from its dormant dark crevasse; as I know, deep down, that I am like this – brash, vengeful, angry - not only here, but also in the UK.
If one British thug annoys me and makes me feel out of sorts, I will hate on the UK as a whole. All UK residence are scum and need to die. I want to dial Putin’s private number and give him my approval for his eventual red button hard Touch Down!
♜ ♞ ♟
Onset of German Mania starts with, the visions. As I was scouting for locations I might be able to photograph, I instead fell into fantasies. I convinced myself Johnny Depp lived in Germany and I would bump into him. Which I did, only on a poster advertising his band in. I was keeping my eyes open for some recognisable face in a crowd of faces.
Like?
The ghost of Fritz Lang, who is one of my favourite German film directors. I searched the clear skies, for his face, imagining certain photographs of himself plastered over the domed horizon. Spotting a darker cloud in the white wispy expanse of Fritz Cloud-Lang which would be that distinctive eyepatch. Hoping that when he lifted it up, the heavens would open and rain would cool our heated drive.
Well, it did, later on, only to evaporate as quick as it started to shower, and only encouraged out a dryness unlike any other. Encouraging the heat, the humidity, the weather to grow far worse in all of its post shower foreign mugginess, that foreign climes perpetuate and personify.
Maybe I’d spot a ranting, raving (same thing, only different when Uwe Boll does it) Uwe Boll - coming home to test the limits of the German's tolerance of mania, and bad taste in cinema, and hoping he might flip us the bird, seated in one of his fancy Jeeps stroking one of his dogs, repetitively shouting, “You retards!”.
Mostly I was caught in random visions - imagining spotting Christophe Waltz, in full Nazi Uniform, driving an Audi. I know, it’s not going to happen. Germany, it induces expectations and racially obtuse fetishes, all in thanks to film and modern media. You expect certain conversations to be had, with other fellow travellers about the war and Shitler, but, it never comes up. The world’s most well unkept secret, that is never breathed a word about. Which, I guess is standard. It isn’t like we go on about our UK monsters, like Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris (I hate that we were lumbered with him, he was an Aussie for Christ’s sake!).
Yet, what became known was, the war is as much a sore subject for the Germans than anyone else. It isn’t a subject they want to share and liberate and re-write. It happened, leave it be. The history, the taint, it is there, so leave it alone.
I was then falling into deep reveries based around the hilarious way Werner Herzog spoke the line, “I want to see the baby!” in the first season of The Mandalorian.
I wanted Werner to narrate our religious journey, instilling it with his wonder and whimsicality. I fell into the 1920s period and imagined everything around me, the autobahn, the cars, transformed into coaches, carriages – all horse drawn, some steam-punk styled, Metropolis like, film starches and blemishes layered over this scene, as F.W Murnau is somehow (at a slight 45mp speed) overtaking us, who are going at a hard 100mph (130 in German number) only to crash his automobile into a trike.
The German child smiles and asks for Apple Strudel and the PC police pull up and scold us for confusing Strudel with Germany, where at this point I am quick to correct them it isn’t Swedish, it is Austrian, yet, German’s are sensitive about Germany and Austria being related so I leave it well alone. This event is encouraging spectators on horse drawn carriages and carts to pull up, and view the fall of one of their pioneers of cinema - with German children giggling behind their hands, faces contorted like The Man Who Laughs actor’s eerie mush; witnessing Murnau’s demise. The Germans spread out, as cars speeding at 100mph flea-like jumps around them; hardly touching their ectoplasmic veils, that the Germans are concealed and quarantined in - their time zones, spherically captured, where my foot is half in and half out of - spectating, pursing their lips, surmising, “The modern era corrupted him greatly,” when a version of Nosferatu ends up popping up from out of the wreckage, metal and various 20 internal pistons fell from him, arcing himself, readying to jump into his silent movie mode - posing, extravagant in poise and expression, pushing the makeup to its fullest, until Doug Jones puts him in a headlock and drowns him in a sea of prosthetic latex.
Then it just stops. Like most travel-hallucinations do.
Am I Abroad?
It is the UK, all of this, everything we have done we could and have most likely done in the United Kingdom. Germany is Britain. The UK is Germany, that is… well, in that moment of time what it felt like. I was left feeling unimpressed… still mired in that shitty mood; thinking, so far, so Deutschland, and so Deutschland it was so far, so, so, like Britain; only I knew we were not situated in the UK.
Wie zu Hause, nur in Deutschland, except the drivers are crazier, and the rule of road-thumb is so red raw, and brutalised, it is unrecognisable, and you question where these rules were first written, and whether the Germans own credo was, "Scheiß drauf!"
I am still shocked that said thumb hasn't fallen off yet. My attitude on the second day of travel, the first half, before the curtains were unveiled, was…It's no different to the UK, as the many hundreds of miles we had taken didn’t throw naything out, only that service stations smell nicer and offer far more diverse, but still German centric dishes, that I didn’t go near, feeling bad as Laura is left out of the food tasting due to her celiac disease - and each service station we had used so far were very familiar.
There wasn’t any grand escapade or moment we could catalogue as inherently, Germanic. Exact replicas to the UK service stations, that’s all we had to go off of - only there was more German words than English, I had to give them that. Which, is a lie, only, said shitty mood wanted to downplay every different aspect to Germany, in a distorted sense to give reason and validation as to why a holiday was wasted on me and this whole sordid affair was just not necessary.
My holiday cherry didn’t need to be popped as I didn’t or couldn’t have cared less.
The mind, it is a fucking weird thing, even before we consider the mind as a mere construct.
Some of the stations were like palaces, pristine, worn in areas, but admirable in those worn in places, enough that they elevated themselves up from the mire of shit-stained-glory that the UK services are so renowned for, whilst others were not fit even for a nonce with a urinary problem to relieve himself.
It's like the UK, I thought, apart from different archetypal architecture - meaning it has pretty spots.
It's like the UK, I pondered, there are traffic jams. It’s like the UK, I kept on at myself, fighting inside not to be disappointed, in that the natives hate the outsider.
Back To The Bahn
The autobahn was like our motorways, except the side of the road one is driving on is firmly on the right, and the road signs aren't defaced or peeling/rusting away.
Theirs are printed with beautiful brown/black stencil art of the location/the iconographic signifiers to the location it is heralding, that we will, yes, sadly be bypassing, and not pulling up randomly, all to photograph and post online, and merely to satisfy those who seem to be getting a weird kick out of our European road trip. So, no Snow White jumping out of the treeline for us. Or the appearance of a big, beautiful Schloss. Joking aside, Germany so far had been hot. Moody. And very, very abrasive.
German Critique
Germany seems to be full of, well, Germans.
But the Germans that fit the stereotype we, and a handful of others have created for them over the centuries. The cartoonish, and maybe even a little racist version of them, spread throughout generations of art, cinema, literature, and popular entertainment.
I hate to be displaying bias, and the often-accused attitude us wholly right wing marinated British countrymen exhibit, especially when abroad, but, so far, we had been made to feel unwanted, and each bad experience left me feeling like stating, "No German is a good German!" - tic like. From that one experience, from that one guy I was tarnishing every single German person I had met or had yet to meet; a guy that wasn’t even legit German German, as he was that not so rare breed of being from so many places he takes on all those places politics, attitudes and biases that he just comes across as a nasty cunt; but when exhibiting such cunty behaviour, in Germany, how can you blame me for highlighting him as the worst example of the German people. Also, my inclination for inappropriate behaviour, and a need to "Sieg Heil!" was cut short, luckily by this generally Anti-Brit-Bündel; fearing either they might kill me for being so disrespectful, or out of fear that they'll scold me, only to later sidle up to me and whisper, in a German-accent, "Sieg-Heil!" in my easily waxed ear, whilst also patting my shoulder both in a condescending and bonding manner, slipping me the Third-Third Reich membership card.
I like to think we are accommodating in the UK, especially in my old hometown of Brighton - which is a medium sized city, one solely targeted and run by tourists, a place that one is often left feeling like it isn't our own pocket of dank British misery, but one taken over by trust funded teens from here, there, and where the fuck is that?
The caricatures were not in full Technicolour, or vibrant and heavily accented – not of that type of caricature, but a more postmodern variation of a German, one less bohemian, or Ye Olde, but that of the loud, abrupt, no-nonsense, impatient kind of folk, which had been on display so far in Germany for the likes of Laura and me, at that time.
The Germans who have zero tolerance for Jews, Brown Haired Devils, and anyone who can't say Shit in German.
Well, I can, so it must be because I am a Brown-Haired Devil.
They seem to want to reinforce their tropes, their countries clichéd ways as exhibited wrongly, or maybe accurately through modern media.
They barge. They cut in line. They seem inherently (fucking) crazy on the autobahns. They sense the Other like I can sense (no, smell) a Laura Marshall fart from a mile away – they seem to grow rigid. Which is very much fitting our British cultural preconceptions, except they're less beer-guzzling folk that have a fixation with spiced sausage and the disproportionate amount of love they have for lederhosen, whereas here, in this moment of modernity, in foreign climes, they're just displaying attitudes shared with any native of their concrete/pastoral land/jungle/country. Or, my shitty attituded-self liked to think and kept going over and over in the first two hours’ drive of the second day/the last hurdle towards our rented accommodation.
The defenders of their place and one's right of place was exhibited by their attitude. As if two Brits have any claim or possibility of attempting some colonising.
We don't like the alien, the intruder, and especially that of the foreigner. We lead ourselves to believe we are kind, patient and accommodating (as long as our swearing and eyerolls aren't seen by the offending...I mean visiting foreign friends, Dann ist alles gut, ja?) to visitors to the UK, but, are we?
Are we really?
I think not.
I Am An Alien, Please Hate Me
Being here, in the day and a half of travel and awkward engagements, some nicer and funnier than others, I realised, we all hate the other.
It is genetically sown into us.
Can we better appreciate the culture and ways, if only we had a modicum of knowledge and language, maybe?
Yes, yes and Bingo, ding!-ding!-ding!-yes!
But, still our biases, our estrangement, our weariness, our longing for the familiar is castrated and all openness to enjoy and to process that of an alternative reality, when visiting another country, seemed moot and lacking.
It is weird to come from a country that seems to be open for business for all, all except their own people. Where our government and local councils seem to make security and housing a priority for others, other than those born and raised in the UK, and to be treated in a way - whether this is actually factually or emotionally true - we are treated poorly, and as if we are an imposition and are below the migrants themselves.
These caricatures are more fitting the attitude the UK history teachers taught us, which was that the German way was of a hate for the otherness; a fascist state, the haters of all outsiders and the great intolerant.
You can't help but come in with these warped, and yes wrong impressions and preconceived notions. This feeling of dislocation and of the unusual also encourages the worst from ourselves. This was a new experience for me. I hadn’t been abroad since I was nine, and that was to Disneyland in Paris, and my memories of that was being unable to do anything due to hours’ long queues, and my Grandmother wanting to just stop at every cafe and have an Irish Coffee or a hot chocolate with all the sugary drippings/meltings. Also, I was young, Mum and Nan dealt with the language barriers.
Now here we were, me and Laura, touring Germany in a car, for two weeks (kind of) as adults, expected to do the adult things, that we as children didn't have to do. We didn’t have a smidge of experience to use, nor the knowledge to attain to see us executing plans and strategies to cope and make sure things go to plan. We didn’t even comprehend that we would be put in a position like the ones our parents struggled or excelled at when they took us abroad.
Our current journey had seen us only engage with our German buddies for a total of, perhaps only 2 hours, in the day and half we so far had travelled. And it left me wanting the UK, badly.
Is it the travelling, and length to get to our accommodation that is stripping the excitement, alongside the thought that it is going to be like this for two weeks, pure disappointment and German unease?
The feeling of being loathed, unwanted, and expected to cut short our jaunt/adventure was heavy in my heart and over-active mind. Over such a short period of time, in the presence of a kind of people totally polar to our British selves, it makes you feel bummed and burnt out.
All this travel and these small incremental moments seem to be slotting into a biased picture we hoped wasn't accurate nor true. And add to this being away from comforts and convenience, and amalgamated into something altogether uglier, and perhaps even unconsciously racist, from my inner most self, I'm left thinking: Am I myself unconsciously racist? No. I am just an idiot, a virginal idiot, who was/still is naive to what the world is truly like outside his/my own British bubble.
♜ ♞ ♟
I love German films and foods, and the language is music to me. But, this is as an outsider viewing from a Perspex box, but when let out, and forced to no longer be an invisible spectator, I am feeling revealed. Thinking, fuck, they seemed so joyous, and free, and then once they got my sea salt scent they, the Germans, oh how they turned. They seemed, the German people, to sour, and convey a nasty aura. Or, again is this built out of unfamiliarity and my own insular anxious and uncomfortable self?
So far, those two hours on the second day journeying to our rented apartment, seemed to be enough for me to tarnish all Germany and its people. And all because the few we had been in contact with had made me into a scared, cranky, intolerantly British snob who wanted to stay in the car - with our English language music blaring, soothing my agitated self.
It seems that bias and the otherness of the self is viewing the good German people, as villains. Germans are always villains in popular media, and in the history books. It is just seeded into our ape British minds for us to approach them that way and to misread all of their interactions with us, their looks, stares, their overall selves. That they have hidden, some better than others, nothing but disgust for the British race. Struggling to hide their ill-concealed vendetta and personal bias towards our British selves.
The German experience up to that point had only reinforced such biases and misinterpretations, one’s so absurd and inherently wrong, that writing this, I feel sick to have had such thoughts; which thoughts? Oh, that that they still held themselves as the superior race – which is nonsense, utter nonsense, but you can’t help but have such twisted awful thoughts not pop into your noggin, and it would seem weird by not having such thoughts and ideas pop up, and if they didn’t you’d feel weirder for not having suffered from them. You wouldn’t be British unless you had such an childish response.
We have been indoctrinated for so long to think this way – or, I had, which do not be surprised, I come from racist stock, it’s hard to unshackle these intrusive personality destroying attitudes and ways, yet, I try and fail; these notions, simmering at the bottom come to the surface, goaded by one small unbiased event, reinforcing our inherently British and pompous self-important ideas of the German folk.
Look, this is all rather tongue in cheek, and I guess somebody will read what they want into my above statements, but, honesty is the best policy, isn’t it?
I am admitting that my approach and knee-jerk reaction, my inessential British self is displaying the “essential” parts of what make British people so…well, cunt-y, in way to illuminate that, I am better than the rest. Which is a lie, but, lets go along with that notion, okay dear reader.
I mean, it's their country, and they have as much right to look at us as imposters, but please, at least give us a little bit of leeway, look upon us as imposters new to the job and failing, as we the British think to ourselves, Do Not Do This To You/Them when in visiting our homeland/country. (If you can't detect my sarcasm, or need an emoji to convey my writing's tone, look elsewhere).
The initial thought that runs through our British minds is, well, they look at everyone outside of themselves as scum, filth, and a kind that needs to leave their vicinity and country... pronto. And, those that have so far stood out, far fewer than the ones that have been kind, speaking English (broken or not) are always the ones that taint and concretise our inherent, unconscious biases and attitudes.
That the other, that these Germans are mean sods.
All the good, all the contrary interactions fall to the wayside when the negative comes up, and its embellished by already seeded attitudes and paranoias. The Germans…They smell foreigners and tourists like we can't help hear them when they come into our country and give us headaches.
The Germans, they look at us as if to say, you didn’t win, you merely faked winning.
Winning what, exactly?
The war?
Winning in life?
Fuck knows, but these subordinate thoughts to making a decent human being are always running ticker-tape across your frontal lobe, and arcing backwards and then circling back around until the tape tears or you pull it apart yourself and just get your whacked out act together. Though, the noise, the ambiance of a strange tongue, and their volumes is pitched so loudly in Germany, you feel like some nymph; silent, agitated, courteous out of fear and not out of mutual respect.
You feel unheard, but heavily seen. Under a scathing scrutiny.
They're very brusque. Not at all inclined to smile back, which I do, as thanks, as acknowledgement I am an uneducated, English speaking toad; pity me, I am a mere fool in your godly presence - as that's when one clueless and one sole language speaking tit like me (who seems to struggle even with his native tongue) can't even get his mouth around danke-shum. I can't do anything but offer smiles, and body language, as that's all I have got. I can't speak the lingo, and I hoped my smiles, nods, could be interpreted.
Body language is powerful, but, it seems it isn't the universal language I had hoped it was. Because I'm either getting the complete wrong end of the stick, concerning our German buddies, and their feelings towards us bumbling sanctimonious Brit-tits or they are getting a weird reading from me.
♜ ♞ ♟
Entering a country, that probably views the likes of us, the British with more disdain, and outright loathing than ever before (thanks to thankless fucks like Farage and co, and all those related to Brexit, giving off the impression that all Brits are like him, or worse, some shitty offshoot of Farage, like one of The Emperor's most recent failed Clone Tests, as seen in the recent reimagining of Star Wars lore) they are quick to make the humble foreigner feel small, insignificant, and unwanted.
But, are they?
That's where I was at that moment.
I really hope to be proved wrong. And, I am happy to admit, I was.
🕮 Zak Ferguson is a co-founder of Sweat Drenched Press and the author of books like Soft Tissues, Dimension Whores and One Of These Days.
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