Munich 1983 - Eating lemons and looking at boobies.

Going to Hannover in 1985 wasn't my first exchange trip to Germany.  I went to Munich in 1983 when I was 15.  Again it was the same story, they came over here for two weeks in April, and we went there for two weeks in July.

The English half of the exchange didn't exactly run smoothly.  I had exchanged letters with my exchange partner Josephine, so I knew how tall she was, how many cats she had etc.  This was supposed to help with the ice breaking disaster that is speaking to foreigners when you're 15.

Oh No, they've sent the wrong German!

So in April about 30 Germans came pouring through the ticket barriers at Leeds Station, and one by one we identified our exchange partners and went home.  Eventually there was just one girl left, but it wasn't Josephine.  It took about 30 minutes of hand gestures and pigeon German / English to discover that Josephine had decided to stay at home with the cats and instead they'd sent a sub.  In my case it was Friederike Merdan (or Fri for short), a stripey trousered girl who not only was not Josephine, she didn't know any of the other Germans because she was in the school year above the rest of them, so taking her out in groups wasn't easy, as she didn't really have any particular desire to mix with people she didn't know.

Having fun on the way to Neuschwannstein - notice the bicycle bell balanced on top of a half eaten apple and a tennis ball

I managed to pretty much get by a whole fortnight just by introducing her to people who commented on her stripey trousers, and that was pretty much the end of the conversation, and on to the next trouser admirer.  I did my best with her, and so did my mum, but it was like pulling teeth out of a crocodile's head.

When I got to Munich I had the same problem in reverse in that she wasn't friends with any of the other German exchangers, so she didn't really want to meet up with them.

Eventually after about 3 days, I decided that I knew which U-bahns to take to get about, and so I would be fine going out by myself.  And I went off to meet some friends to see Tootsie (Dustin Hoffmann dubbed over in German).  I didn't have a bloody clue what was going on in the film.  Dustin kept dressing up as a woman and hanging around with Jessica Lange and going on the swings and stuff.  That was pretty much all I could figure out.  About halfway through the film, Dustin's roommate (Bill Murray) is talking to him, and he appears to be eating lemons off a plate.  Steve Hills leaned over to me, and he said 'That guy's eating lemons!'.  For reasons still unknown to this day, this was the funniest thing I'd ever heard, and the rest of the film I couldn't stop laughing.  Unfortunately I was laughing totally out of sync with the funny bits in the film, which the Germans were laughing at.  They kept looking at me, as if I was noodle doodle.  I was.

After the film, I went and got on all the right trams, but then when I got off at Schwabing station, I realised I didn't have a clue which direction to set off walking in.  Never one to give up easily, and without the phone number of Fri's house, I walked round and round and round for 2-3 hours, asking for directions in appalling German.  In the meantime, Fri had called the Police and they were out looking for an English boy in a stripey T-shirt.

I went all the way to Neuschwannstein but all I got was pictures of girls

After a process of eliminating every street in Munich one at a time, I found my way back to Fri's apartment.  She opened the door, gave me quite a lot of abuse, and went off to bed.  It was about 1.30 in the morning.  I should have been back by 11.  Her mum called off the police and I went to bed.

For the next 11 days I barely spoke to Fri, but having learned my way round Munich the hard way, I became happily self-reliant.  Although we didn't speak much, I did regularly see her naked body go past me in the river in the English Garden.  It wasn't officially a naturist resort, but every girl who wasn't English walked around topless, including Fri.  There's a fast flowing river in the Garden, and we used to go in it all the time.  You got carried downstream by the current, and then you had to grab onto a bridge and drag yourself to the bank to get out.  Once or twice I lost my Speedos during the exit from the water.  Unfortunately on one of these occasions I was seen by Helen Winn, and even more unfortunate was that in the cold water my penis had shrunk to the size of a peanut.  Not a good way to impress the girls.

Messing about in the English Garden - with all our clothes on

Unfortunately, on one of these river rides, Stephen Holliday hit his head on the concrete bottom of the river bed, underneath a bridge and he had to go off to hospital to get his nose fixed.  I just had an e-mail conversation with him this week, though, so I'm pretty sure he's over it now, although he's not quite got over being buried in potted plants whilst out of his tree on Apfelkorn in Hannover, but that's another story.

Here we are on the way home.  That's Steve on the left, with the broken nose

There was a German man in the English Garden, who used to go round the park completely starkers, holding two badminton racquets and a shuttlecock, and shouting quite loudly 'Wer spielt Federball?'.  I always tried to decline politely without making eye contact.

As well as dossing round the English Garden, we went on a coach trip to the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Castle at Neuschwannstein, which was incredible.  If only I had better pictures of it, most of the pictures I took were of Pamela Pirie and Emma Helliwell, although I don't know why I bothered.  I should have got more scenery in, because both of them would rather have seen me shot into space than go out with me.

Here's one with me in.  Can't believe I was ever that thin!

On the last night, I spotted Pamela snogging Darren Zimmermann in a doorway and I knew my chances had finally fizzled out to nothing.  Darren was about 3 years older, and he could dance and cut his own hair.  He knew I liked her, and he felt a bit bad that he swiped her out from under my nose, so he invited me out for breakfast in the English Garden the morning we went back to England, and he brought a picnic, and it was the most gentlemanly way for him to have handled being the better man, and I really liked him for that.

Gratuitous Picture of Pamela's legs - thankfully we can both laugh about it now

It was a fantastic two weeks.  I got to travel round one of the greatest cities in the world, completely independently at 15 years of age.  The weather was beautiful, and there were topless girls everywhere.  I even managed to totally avoid playing badminton with a naked man. 

At the end of the two weeks Fri gave me a lift back to the airport, and we parted on good terms.  I think she forgave me for sparking a man hunt, and if the truth were told, I think she'd quite enjoyed not having to look after me much.

It wasn't the perfect holiday, but it wasn't far off.