This Bogus Poetry

It’s a Friday night in October and we are sitting in the corner of a very small bar just off the Reeperbahn in Hamburg’s red light district. The bar was chosen somewhat at random as a place to shelter from the rain. As we sip our delicious bottles of Astra, we survey the following scene: The bar is mainly wood panelled. Periodically the barmaid will stand up on top of the counter and pour everyone shots. It’s a little bit rough and ready, in fact probably as rough and ready as is possible these days in the tourist friendly Reeperbahn area. At the bar, a middle aged German man seduces his wife by dancing very, very badly. She feigns mock disgust, but the hint of a smile around the corners of her mouth betrays the fact that she LOVES his bad middle aged German man dancing ways. Now of course, I am someone who cannot talk about this subject with any type of lofty position, but from what I’ve seen, German people dance quite badly. German dancing 101 The German style of dancing is very over...

Recently I went to collect a parcel. In Germany, this is not so straightforward. After trekking across town, we locate the Berlin DHL delivery depot, nestled in between a dual carriageway and a quite frankly scary looking building complete with gargoyles and an ominous sense of authority (that now seems to have been turned into the HQ of a German Radio station). Upon entering the building we were greeted by a scene that looked like a doctor’s waiting room. All the classic signs were there. Chairs in rows of five or six with that little bit of extra space between them to stop the spread of disease. People sitting on their own, or occasionally in pairs, nervously flicking through several month old magazines whilst repeatedly glancing at the clock and eying the person who came in before them. The occasional cough or shuffle. All it needed was some posters about herpes and the picture would have been complete. My partner and crime and I join the queue for the counter and eventually get to ...