The second night in the Gulag was comparable to the first, and we agreed that we needed a room somewhere else pronto if we were going to survive our time in jolly Bayreuth with any sanity intact.
We redoubled our efforts at finding a room.
It was not going well. We found several places, most of which were a long way from the university. We didn’t want to be any more cut off and isolated than we already were. It didn’t really matter, as the landlords didn’t really want us either, due to the fact that we were only going to be there for four months.
We were getting truly desperate.
Then the one and only pair of jeans I had bought for my entire four month stay, split right across the arse.
It’s the little things really, but this just about finished me off. I didn’t have any other trousers to wear and it seemed like the end of the world. Kate very patiently took me on a shopping trip where I spent a huge sum of money on some jeans. The problem was that the fashion at the time in Bavaria, was for stone washed denim sprinkled with teddy bears picked out in Swarovski crystals. I could not do this to myself and ended up having to buy Levis, just to avoid the teddy bears.
My economy was in rough shape. At this point we were ekeing out our money by living off of McDonald’s burgers. Luckily we weren’t spending money on public transport because there wasn’t any.
We went back to the university for a crisis meeting. We were getting no joy from the Welsh end of operations. My mother, who is a terrifying woman when roused, had rung the head of English and ripped strips off her. She had said: ‘Oh dear’. She had called Call me Klaus and said: ‘Do something’ in a plaintive voice. He had ignored her.
Eventually someone introduced us to a woman called Gulla. She had a flat and had a room to rent. It was quite a strange flat and she was struggling to get people to rent it from her. She was about as desperate as we were. She agreed to take us for a few nights out of pity. We ended up living with her for the duration of our stay.
We arrived that evening with our stuff to find that the flat was at the top of an enormous, crumbling building topped by pediments on which wobbled knackered plaster figures of draped Grecian ladies. Several weeks into our stay, one of these plaster ladies fell down and nearly killed someone, missing them by a whisker and leaving a huge dent in the pavement. The whole building was like this.
Gulla’s flat was five flights of rickety stairs up. She shared a landing with another flat, whose owner we never saw. The toilet was outside the flat on the landing, in a cupboard. It was shared with the flat next door. It was very strange, and was the first time I’d ever seen one of those two tier toilets which leaves your pooh sitting on a little pedestal while the wee drains into the bit below. It’s amazing the things that stick in your mind when you are a world traveller.
Once you went into the flat you were confronted by a hallway in which nestled the bathroom sink, replete with mirror and tooth brush holder.
To the left was a lounge with an enormous half moon shaped picture window which was the entire end wall of the room. You could step out of it onto the world’s smallest balcony, where you could stand amongst the wobbly Grecian statues waiting to plunge to your death below.
Next to that was what would be our room. It was enormous, and empty except for some shelves and an oil fired boiler. The obligatory bare wires hung from the ceiling.
To the right of the sink was the doorway to the kitchen. In the kitchen was a small cooker, a sink, two cupboards and a gigantic shower. Yes. A shower. There was no bathroom in the flat and everything had just been put wherever it would fit.
Next to the kitchen was the dining room, and then Gulla’s room.
Gulla made it clear that she hated people. She hated sharing and hated being disturbed. It was only economic necessity that forced her into renting a room and she wasn’t happy about it. She told us that we could only stay if we were quiet, if we never disturbed her when she was sleeping, if we cooked every night so she had hot food when she got home from work, and if we walked her dog every day.
Bazi was Gulla’s dog. It looked like a shrunken version of Dougal from the Magic Roundabout and had the temperament of Goebbels. Bazi was on a strict diet and was not to be allowed to eat anything off the pavements or be given any snacks. He was also to have his poop scooped when we took him out. We had never heard of this before, and the thought was frankly horrifying.
We agreed out of sheer desperation and moved in.
Someone who had taken pity on us had provided us with a blow up air mattress, a regular mattress, two sleeping bags and a lamp.
We lived with these furnishings, and a table and two chairs someone else gave us later on, for four months.
