Awoke to silence.

Lost hour.

Blackout curtains drawn.

No voice of jet lag in my head.

11:00 am local.

Awake. Well rested. Hungry. Sane.

Hello, Munich.

Munich on a sunny morning after a good night’s rest is so far beyond stunning as to be nearly comical.

From the aspect of an ignorant American who failed to read a single word about the country before boarding a plane for his first visit, it is easy to arrive with the impression of two Germanys.

Germany number one is featured in WWII movies.
Germany number two is featured in BMW and Mercedes commercials.

One knows, because one is not an utter idiot, that neither impression is accurate, but one hasn’t done anything to educate oneself about what the actual modern country is actually like, and so one touches down subconsciously expecting a cold machine-like, ultra modern megalopolis stretching from border to border, broken only by the swooping curves of the autobahn, upon which, one is has been reliably informed, there is no speed limit at all.

The alternative expectation of bombed out buildings and tank husks seems unlikely as one has also been reliable informed that WWII ended some time ago.

It’s not an expectation that rises to the level of awareness until one is wandering, clear eyed for the fist time in days, down a winding street where the ultra modern rubs against the old world in an unbalanced but still pleasing arrangement.

Oh, yes, here I am, in Germany. A place I know nothing about. How did that happen, me knowing nothing about this country? Odd. I thought I was educated.

A hidden platz behind the New Town Hall, lolling in the sun with my paper and coffee, a trio playing jazz somewhere on a side street, the woman next to me, nervous about an impending visit to the dentist, making conversation through her limping English and my ten words of German.

Me thinking, man, this is a great setting for a gun fight.

Segue to being introduced to Bernd Begeman.

Iconoclast is an overused word. And for all I know Bernd is a cliche of Germany: an amalgam of chanteuse, pop culture geek, humorist, intellectual, alt-cool taste maker and all around bon vivant. Picture Oscar Wilde and Lenny Bruce’s love child spawning with the equally illegitimate offspring of Elvis and John Waters, with Brigit Bardot providing the egg for that spermfest.

But to my eyes Bernd is a unique gem. Deeply flawed, and all the more precious.

Decked out in a suit with a style label that read: Scorsese Movie, Averna on the rocks with a lemon in his hand, Bernd took the stage with me in a Munich night club for the second reading of the tour.

To clarify, there is a nightclub/literary culture in Germany. A subcategory of cool. One attends readings in clubs, drinks coffee and or booze, then goes out for music, dinner, drugs, etc. There is no current parallel in America. Poetry slams are extreme niche and essentially theater. The reading culture in Germany is widespread, general, and involves people reading from works intended for the printed page.

Odd.

And cool.

If you like that kind of thing.

It helps to like that kind of thing if you’re accustomed to reading for fifteen minutes in front of half a dozen people, most of them staff, at a strip mall Borders. Contrast that experience with a rock venue audience of fifty to sixty politely attentive people who remain focused on the talking heads on stage for nearly two hours.

It’s another country, I’m telling you.

Alternating readings in English and German, Bernd and I managed not to get drunk, to stay amusing, and to get off stage before the energy in the room flagged.

Polished showman that he is, Bernd managed the evening perfectly, right up to and including his vocalizing on “Thank God I’m a Country Boy.”

A good time was, I believe, had by all.

The following night would find us in a small bar in the former East Berlin, having had too much to drink, flailing to keep our audience of a dozen half engaged.

But in Munich, we were tiny literary rock stars.

For a night.

NEXT STOP: Berlin.

-c