Friday, 5th October 2001.
Lager and an Indian

Lubeck. Alas there's not much for me to say about the place. It was the middle of Oktoberfest, and a striped marquee sat in the town square. A country band was pumping out the hits inside the tent, so I gave it a wide berth.

I headed back to Hamburg. As I sat near the Rathaus, wondering what I crazy hijinks I would get up to once darkness fell, a bloke with bushy eyebrows came up to me and started babbling away. He was speaking German, but with such an accent that he was barely intelligible. Being too polite to tell him to make like a tree and leave, he told me at great length about his social life as a young man in Spain, where he now works, the problems he has with his back, and a whole lotta other stuff that made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.

About two dog years later I returned to my room at the hostel, which was full of Englishmen! They expressed a profound desire for some Indian food. Well, after we'd indulged in some small talk and one of them had shown off the sex toy he had bought for his new girlfriend. I told them I knew where an Indian joint was, and managed to invite myself out with them.

Richard, Dave and Ash were their names. And in another example of how small a world we live in, Richard turned out to be good mates with one of my mates. We headed to the Schanzenviertel by taxi, although we were delayed temporarily by a torchlit religious procession.

The taxi dropped us off somewhere, and we sought out a drinking establishment. We passed a tattooist. (Dave: "I could get 'Man United' tatooed on my arse!" Me: "Best place for it.") We found ourselves a trendy bar (more by accident than design) and settled down for some imbibing. The girl at the bar was exhibiting a fair expanse of skin above the trouserline every time she bent over even slightly, and there was a hint of a tatt too. "You could land a plane on that!" "Wonder what the tattoo says?" "No entry!" "Exit!" Ho ho!

Having split our own sides with our witty jokes, we left in search of that elusive Indian restaurant.

A short walk later we found the eatery in question. It was a modest affair, ie it was a pokey little joint. Two tables and a few stools. "Your best table please!"

The meal was satisfactory, but our night wasn't over yet. We were ambling along, looking for another purveyor of fine ales, our course strangely coinciding with the course chosen by a group of young lasses. Out of nowhere a bloke clad in a ratty raincoat jumped out in front of the sheilas and gave them an eye full! They weren't impressed.

We found a genuine Irish pub cough splutter, which specialised in slow service. The young lasses didn't join us, probably because we didn't ask them.

Are flashers a universal phenomenon? Are there flashers in arctic climates? Would there be a danger of their dangly bits snap-freezing?