Week 12

As I sat in my oddly cool Bauhaus apartment in the posh bit of Cologne, on a day when the thermometers were due to hit 41C, I suddenly stopped to think. This is a very dangerous thing for someone like me to do and was never going to end well. Lo and behold, I was suddenly slammed in the face by an alarming realisation, „Oh my God, I am living abroad again. Oh fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuck. Fuck. OMG. Cocks.“

I started breathing heavily, and not for any reasons that might have given me a reason to finally use my dildo. Even the 1950’s lampshade Stefan had bought for my room was judging me, smoking a Guillause and sighing. The SS soldier I knew haunted the building had already made it clear he was sick of my whining and paralysis, and suddenly there was no one else to moan to. The reality of my decision to move abroad with no job, no plans and terrible language skills hit me hard. I had to do something and do it now, or I really would have to take up prostitution to pay the bills and that is not easy when you are 15 stone and have man boobs.

For reasons that are too long and complicated to go into, I decided on a whim to leave the UK. Brexit was deeply worrying me and I had not long before lost my job at what turned out to be the cult that was IKEA. I knew my time was up there when on a training session, we all had to sit around a fake campfire and sing „I-K-E-A“ to the theme tune of the slightly more exciting YMCA. Wondering if I had gone mad and really was in a forest, I freaked out and hit inside a MALM chest of drawers. Sadly not long after I was told I might be better off somewhere else and given a hotdog out of pity. That, along with my flat contract being up and a gracious Aunt who said I could have part of my inheritance early on account of the fact I looked like a pork pie and might die before her, led to me deciding to leave the country.

One Eurowings booking and a lot of delusion later, I flew to Cologne with two suitcases and a coffee machine. After an intriguing conversation with a very serious-looking member of the Bundespolizei, I was allowed in and then had my very first conversation in German with an actual live Deutschy. It was a homeless woman who had decided to make a little money by pressing the buttons on the ticket machine for people. The sad thing is, that she wasn’t that helpful and after a lot of confusion gave me the wrong ticket. However, I was rather impressed with her innovative was of trying to make money and it made me laugh. Homeslessness and poverty however do not make me laugh, and I was quite shocked to see that is was alive and well in Europe’s biggest economy.

So my first sight of Cologne was Barbarossa Platz. Well, what can I say? You fooled me once when I arrived and you are still fucking with me now, two and a half months later. That was where I spent my first night at a wonderful Ibis hotel that only took me an hour of crossing roads back and forth in the rain with suitcases and and a large helping of outrage to find. Barbarossa platz looks like a burnt-out Ford Cortina being pissed on by chavs before the riot police arrive. It is also crossed by two train tracks and a dual carriageway, making it fucking impossible to navigate yourself around. There are endless crossings and only the vaguist idea of where you are going.

Don’t try and cross at a red man you fool. Don’t be thinking you can save time and criss-cross your way around with your suitcases. It is illegal to jaywalk in Germany and even if the police don’t fine you, Frau Müller is always waiting nearby to shout from her balcony if she sees you setting a bad example to the children. So you wait. Look around, wait a bit more and then, look at your phone, wait, see there are no cars, wait even longer and then, wow the man turns green and you cross. Usually, and I can’t be completely precise here, but about half way across the road an SUV will usually try to kill you. Seeing the amber light cars are presented with, the angry man in the car thinks you are in his way and fuck does he push that peddle down. Germany, the land where crossing on a green man is more dangerous than when it is red. I was fucked off when I got to the hotel…

So, it is now 12 weeks, nine moves, friendships made and broken and an inordinate quanity of REWE Stuffed Vineleaves later and no, it has not remotely been easy; in fact it has been excruciatingly difficult and at times a little scary. This is my second experience of moving to another country and I have been surprised at how hard it has been to get started here, especially dealing with the beaurocratic contradictions and my appalling German language skills. However I am so glad I am here, and have been gifted by whatever power there is up there, by helpful people and endless quantities of Ice Cream in one of the many Eiscafes here.

In this blog, although this sort of thing has been done a thousand times already, I want to document my experiences of living in Cologne and my highs and lows. I want to put a comic spin on things where I can, and give accurate information to anyone else who wants to follow in my footsteps and set up home here.

Bis bald, und schön, dass du dabei bist.