Archives for category: Germany

THE ARABIAN NIGHT

December 18, 2014 //
2

From Irish Eyes To The Razzle Dazzle

Haresh Shah
haremgirl_2

The year before, Helga and Fred Baumgärtel (Mr. Playboy of the German edition – retired by then), Gudrun (Thiel) and myself  had gone to the Oyster Festival on a private trip. On the second day or so, Gudrun suggested PLAYBOY-Germany organize an Anzeigen-Meeting for next year’s festival. The participants, so she predicted, would sure be thrilled. I can still see her sitting by the portside, a glass of Guinness in her hand,  warming to the subject, as it were, while developing this wonderful idea. And so it happened.

Reminisces Andreas Odenwald – the editor-in-chief of Playboy Germany at the time. And I happened to be one of the dozen or so to join Germany’s top advertising executives who were invited with their partners to spend a long weekend in Ireland and experience the annual Oyster Festival. I don’t remember having eaten many oysters there, but drinking lot of Guinness to be sure.

We all meet up in Dublin and check into Gresham Hotel. That night Andreas and I stay up until three in the morning. Earlier, our guide, an attractive blonde, Clare Finnegan shows up and Andreas and I promptly develop incredible crush on her. That night sitting in the bar named Night Train, I hear a pretty and pretty drunk lady calling out: Hey handsome devil! Could have been for Andreas because he is certainly better looking, tall and handsome. The next day, it’s onto Shannon and Fitzpatrick’s Hotel. Late night again.

The morning after, Clare leads us to Galway and soon after we check into Ardilaun Hotel and  to the Oyster Festival. The day is cold and windy. The only way to stay warm is bar hopping. What I remember vividly is that I urged you all to follow me into the pub “King’s Head” the history of which had thrilled me the year before. Myth has it that the tavern was given by Oliver Cromwell’s people, to one Richard Gunning as a reward for beheading King Charles I in 1649.

When that’s not enough to keep us warm, Andreas and I pop into a clothing store and buy ourselves identical plaid flannel shirts – forming what I have come to call Plaid Brothers. We watch the Oyster Festival parade and admire the Oyster Queen Maeve. There is a gala banquet at Great Southern Hotel, which is where it all began back in 1954. Held there is the ceremony and crowning of the Queen. We have a Playboy table up onto the balcony. When everyone is properly fed and drunk, Maeve floats from table to table spilling her sweet smiles, hugging some of us. As she grazes my neck with hers, I hear her say: I would like to take you home with me. Wow! I am 53, and she is, what? Eighteen. I guess they grow them differently in Ireland!

It’s raining that night and it’s as late as the previous nights. Clare has plans to get us up earlier in the morning and take us to show another Irish landmark. We’re all dreading it. But she is duty bound and insistent. She offers sweetly to even be our wake up call. Still, we strike a compromise. It’s a no go if it’s still raining. We all go to bed praying for rain like the drought ridden farmers in India. The phone rings at seven. It’s Clare crooning softly: I’m singin’ in the rain.

Two days later, I am sitting in the restaurant Casserole in Munich with Andreas and his deputy Bernd Prievert. Andreas and I are still savoring our weekend in Galway and begin to talk about how we can do something similar the next year, but on a bigger scale to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Playboy in Germany.

Within three weeks Andreas is fired. Our partners Bauer Verlag replaces him with Wolfgang Maier. Sad, but that’s how the corporate roller coaster turns. I miss soft spoken and suave Andreas, who had also become a good friend. Now I am subjected to deal with loud and arrogant Wolfgang. Which is a bit difficult. Because he is pure and simple defiant.

He has a vision to turn back the tide of the declining circulation and the advertising revenues. Whatever his claim to fame, I haven’t seen one ray of hope in his ability to do that. His resume looks like hop, skip and jump. He has his own image of Playboy, which has almost no relationship to the magazine Hugh M. Hefner created forty years earlier. My job it is to make sure that each foreign edition, even in it’s diversity retains certain salient features of the mother edition.

Not that I haven’t butted heads with the others, but at the end of the day, we would have always managed to come to a mutually acceptable and satisfying compromise before moving forward with our combined ideas. Not so with Herr Maier.

‘I will make us all so much money that neither Chicago nor Hamburg (Bauer Verlag’s headquarters) would have any reason to complain!’ He once tells me condescendingly, as if handing a bag of candies to a little kid to pacify him.

By the time twentieth anniversary rolls in in August 1992, we have established some semblance of working relationship. The anniversary issue and its celebration is pushed off a month to accommodate the return of the Europe’s vacationing advertising executives. In the meanwhile, the event has been hyped and built up to be the happening of the decade – the self proclaimed BIG BANG affair.

For the first time three of us U.S. Playboy executives are going to be attending the party. So is the top brass from Hamburg. We are assembled in Munich’s newly opened City Hilton on Rosenheimerstrasse. I have just flown in from Chicago. Playboy’s Publishing Group President Mike Perlis and the divisional marketing director Henry Marks too may have already landed from New York and should soon be on their way in. Also joining us is Ivan Chocholouš from Prague.

This landmark anniversary means more to me personally than to anyone else present. As far as I can tell, I am the only one who was there as a part of the German team almost from the very beginning. Several editors and art directors and advertising directors have come and gone and as the reality of the corporate life goes, none of the past creators of the magazine have been invited.

The event is held in two of the big glass houses of Munich’s Botanikum. Set up in the Theaterhaus are various arcade games with pinball machines and the popular fuss Bal, the games room made in the image of Playboy Mansion West, but roomier and more dramatic with the multi-colored track lights beaming down from the ceiling high up above.

The adjacent Grashaus with the slanted glass roof and the glass side walls are lined with the panels of white fabric and is set up like an elaborate and lavish tent in the desert. The atmosphere in it is a bit more relaxed and is set up for mingling and eventually would serve as the dining room. It is decorated with tall potted plants, huge white cushions placed on the ground in circles around cloth covered very low square tables. The ground is the naturally grown lush grass lawn. Wafting from the piped in music are soft tunes and the chirping of the birds. It’s to be the Garden of Paradise  à la the Sheikhs and the Pashas.

Creation of Bettina and Heinrich Bunzel, the Botanikum is conceived to seamlessly blend together the humans, the art and the nature in an urban setting of North Western Munich. We too have good memories of the Playboy event in our green houses. It was one of our first big party at the Botanikum. Herr Bunzel fondly remembers, reminding me of the long forgotten details about the venue. The photos he was kind enough to send me shows how much planning and work went into preparing the two green houses for the events. The result is absolutely spectacular.

Invited are who’s who of the industry, pre-dominantly the top executives of Germany’s advertising world. The party is to impress upon them that the new & improved Playboy under Wolfgang Maier’s helm was just the right vehicle to showcase their luxury cars, higher end liquors and no-one can afford brands of watches, computers, electronic gadgets and other toys for the grown up boys.

We make our way to the venue, dressed formally in our evening best. The low tables and sitting on the pillows on the ground is not something we’ve anticipated. But the first hour or two are us standing, cooling our hands with the chilled glasses filled with champagne and other beverages. Scurrying around, serving drinks and appetizers are not the ubiquitous Playboy Bunnies, but equally as young, curvaceous and pretty women dressed in billowing multicolored loose and transparent pants, thin see through scarves wrapped around their heads like Gypsies and tight fitting tops over their bare midriffs like that of the belly dancers.  The band of them scuffling and delicately negotiating their prancing in the middle of us conjures up the image of the Houris – the sex slaves of the paradise, made to descend to the earth to entertain every whim of the men on earth and make themselves available in total submission. As Naomi Chambers describes in her article Houri – The Islamic Sex Slave In Paradise: When he (her master-husband) tells them to bend over – they must bend over. When he tells them to open wide – they must open wide.

They have hired professional models to do the job. The girls are obviously beautiful with near perfect bodies. Just like Ms. Chambers quotes from numerous Hadiths and Quran – whitish virgins, beautiful with tight transparent bodies, wide eyes, of the firm pointed breasts and permanently Brazilian waxed pussies. Their bling adorned curves make pleasantly soft jangling sound and throw back the blinding rays at the every move they make. There is a sudden hush in the air, appreciation even and wonderment. Probably because we are still in the process of deciding whether or not we like what we see. And if the tableau reflects what Playboy as a magazine and the lifestyle should project. Not to mention the misogynist message the event would communicate.

But we file away those thoughts because while we’re getting drunk without realizing and beginning to feel the chill in our bones, for the unseasonably cold air outside has permeated through the glass walls and it has suddenly turned cold and we’re all starving and yet there is no sign or whiff of the food wafting our way. They are having some logistical problems transporting our dinners from wherever and then having to keep it warm.

Now we are seated on the floor, cross-legged. Soon our legs begin to go numb and some of us begin to feel the cramps ripple all the way down to our feet. We wiggle and shift our weight from one hip to another – change positions. We try to keep each other amused for a long while before we see the Houris  parading down the aisles towards our tables with the large trays perched atop the palms of their hands. They are having hard time negotiating the open spaces and balancing the plates while trying to avoid tripping on the flowing fabric of their loose pants and managing not to be blinded by the scarves flailing over their heads. Absolutely amazing how they successfully avoid dropping one or more of the plates and gracefully place them on the barely two feet high tables.

We all take a collective breath of relief and like famished Neanderthals tackle the feed. Just to find out that the gourmet dinner was barely lukewarm. We gorge it down nevertheless – or could be that that we may have stopped at the City Hilton’s all night cafeteria and grabbed ham and cheese sandwich and beer? But I certainly didn’t.

By the time I make it to bed, it is four in the morning. Famished, disillusioned, jetlagged and absolutely drained, I immediately fall asleep. I have seven o’clock breakfast meeting with Mike and Ivan before I depart with Ivan on a several hours drive to Mariánské Lázně in Czechoslovakia and get ready for that night’s reception for Playboy sponsored fund raiser.

Charmed life indeed!

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

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Next

CHRISTMAS BREAK FOR TWO WEEKS

Playboy Stories to return on Friday, January 09, 2015

TENDER LOVING CARE

The winter of 1983/84 in Chicago was as severe as the one we had in 2013/14. The mounds of snow on the ground. Constant sub-zero temperatures for days on end. The cars wouldn’t start. Our radiator freezes and cracks. And one of my office plants is frozen stiff.

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Categories Corporate Matters, Germany, Memoire, Playboy, Playboy Promotion, Travel

SAILING THE QUEEN

May 29, 2014 //
0

The (Interim) End Of The Longest Cocktail Party

Haresh Shah

stork3

The night before the sailing, I have checked  into Hotel du Louvre in Cherbourg, France, right across the street from Gare Maritime – the port from where I would sail away on board the celebrated Queen Elizabeth II. Am I excited? Nah! It’s been hard, having to leave Europe. I would have liked to stick around a little longer, but my residence permit is to expire tomorrow and just the idea of having to deal with the German bureaucracy is painful enough to dissuade me even to attempt an extension. Might as well, because I have accomplished writing an entire book containing of 455 A4 size typewritten pages. It still needs to be edited and revised, something best done after a certain time lapse. Geographical distance wouldn’t hurt either. As for my charmed life at Playboy, to be honest, I am not sure how much longer I would have been able to take it. As abruptly as it has ended, it did on the right note and at the right time before I burned myself out.

Helga (Heilmeier), someone I dated for some months had often commented, du bist immer müde. And she was right, because the kind of traveling I did and the whirlwind existence I lead in a continuous loop was already beginning to take its toll.

It feels good to be free, looking out of the window of my hotel room and idly watch life happening around the harbor. Something about the waterfront I find soothing, just the way I do listening to the falling rain and the comforting feeling it brings after a long and scorching hot summer. Feeling nostalgic, I see the window opening up through which the events of the last few nights flicker pass.

It was ten days ago that I receive a phone call from Krystine. I haven’t spoken to her in months. Sometime I just feel like throwing myself into someone’s arms and say, save me. Exasperated, she cries out.  Our affair was short and intense and circumstantially doomed from the very beginning. You have come into my life at the worst possible time. I neither have time, nor energy to see her before I leave Munich. I resign to the fact that I won’t see her for a long time – if ever. And yet her tall frame, floating blonde hair and the pretty angular face still lingers in my memory.

The flickering image changes to the night I would sleep for the last time in my Johannclanzestrasse apartment. Gary (Wake) and Michelle (Davis) and I stand huddled together, our arms wrapped around each other and our bodies swaying sideways in unison in the subdued L shaped hallway. Michelle is dressed in black, her wrinkled tramp hat crowning her shiny long blonde hair. Gary looks as unkempt as ever, his shoulder length hair all tangled up in knots. I feel drained and we all are sad. Our shadows move with us. The flickering candles from the living room light our path to the door. We survey and take in each of the three rooms. The stark reality dawns on us that within hours of tomorrow morning, all the walls will be stripped bare, the floors deserted, the sound of my Quadrophonic system silenced!

There are twelve of them to see me off three days later, on the morning of my departure.

‘Let’s go for one last beer.’ I say, and we walk to La Torre and have one last glass of Löwenbräu. As I drive away, I am glad that Coja (Rost) is going with me to Paris. She is Marianne’s (Miller) best friend and is going through a rough patch with her boyfriend Jochen (Wanz). Marianne thinks it might do Coja good to be away from Munich and spend a few days playing tourist with me in the City of Light. I have been to Paris dozens of times before, but now that I see it at a leisurely pace, this is what I write in my journal – perhaps bit of a reflection of my own mood.

Fear of big city. Burdened humanity. Different kind of people. Singing, playing, begging in the underground. A hooker hiding her face. The café world it is: small round tables. Sweating, smelling people. Oily looks.

As much as I reveled in my longest cocktail parry and loved the people and the friends that made it happen, I feel content in being alone face to face with myself. You are a loner, aren’t you? Visiting Karen (Abbott) had said a couple of weeks earlier. Something my mom always said about me. A bit of contradiction in my personality trait, because I am the one who also had her always rolling dozens of rotlis for so many of my friends, as if rolling them for the eight of us siblings weren’t enough. True, I do like my own company. There are times when I just want to be by myself. I don’t have to be surrounded by people all the time. So it is right now. I watch the evening fall on the gleaming water and the swaying private boats anchored along the piers. I take a deep breath and empty my mind of all intrusions. Put myself in a meditative trance and center all my energy within.

The first thing I do the next morning is drop off my car to be prepped for it’s journey on the Queen. I come back to my room and watch the Buick lifted up not much below the height of my room on the fourth floor window. Held up by ropes slung around the wheels, it conjures up the image of an immaculately conceived baby on its way to be delivered to the waiting mother, wrapped in a sling dangling down from the long beak of a stork.  I see a man dressed in shiny rubber overalls hosing down the bottom of the car, a forceful jet stream of water pointed upward. To make sure it doesn’t carry with it infested European soil and contaminate the sterilized soil of America.

●●●

I am onboard and we have already began our westward journey of five nights and four days. The sea is calm and friendly. Gentle waves slushing several decks down below lapping the edges of the ship. Mild breeze caress my skin. I have walked all the way up to the observation deck. I am leaning against the rail, my eyes fixed on the darkened horizon which looks close enough to touch. A mirage in reverse. I take a deep breath and fill up my lungs with the fresh oceanic air. I jump up and down, walk to and fro from forward and aft of the ship. Finally, I sit down on top of the stairs.

I have left Elayne sitting all alone in the bar. One of the very few young and attractive women onboard. We dance for a while. The feel of her pointed braless large breasts on her slender frame keep reminding of Jutta (Kossberger). I buy her a drink and after the initial icebreaking ritual, neither of us have anything to say to the other. I excuse myself as politely as I could and escape.

As I sit up the stairs and let all the tenseness peel out of my body and soul, I try to think of an angle that would make for an interesting travel piece I am assigned to write by Playboy Germany’s service editor, Nikolas (Frank).  On the heels of the short fiction I have already sold, Nikolas is quite impressed at my ability to write and has asked me to contribute to the front-of-the-book short pieces about America. The magazine pays handsomely and sustains me for the early months of my not being gainfully employed. A major piece on QE II could open up an entire new frontier for me. The piece obviously has to conform to Playboy’s core philosophy of hedonism, romance and the pursuit of pleasure.

Judging from the first few hours of being onboard, I shouldn’t have much of a problem observing and describing and perhaps even experiencing the excitement and the multiple pleasures of crossing the Atlantic on one of the floating Shangri-La. There is no dearth of things you can do onboard. Being up until wee hours in the morning, eating, drinking and dancing. I don’t remember having made it even once in time for breakfast. You’re served hand and foot and spoiled rotten, even if you reside at the bottom deck.

Regular but staggered mealtimes allow you to play table tennis, swim, linger in the Double Room and ogle pretty service staff or just cavort with fellow passengers. Jog around the deck. Learn to dance and Yoga. Go to the movies or read that brick thick classic off the library shelf. It even has a radio station of its own, WQE2. The multiple bars and lounges featuring live bands and loud discos to keep you twisting and shouting. You can switch from one venue to another and not ever go to sleep, if you so choose.

The only problem is: I have never seen such a vast sea of grey hair roofing the leathery wrinkled faces. They are mostly rich and retired Americans. Heavily made up women wearing mask like faces, dressed in their double knit pantsuits clinging their flabby flesh. The men in their loud striped and checkered pants, also double knit, wide white belts tightened around their protruding waists, white shoes worn under their floods. Even I too had worn similar rags years earlier. But I am totally Europeanized. I am 35 years old and don’t see how to fit in with the majority of them. I would have as hard a time even now at 74!

There are some young people on board – most of them kids. But the lounges, the bars, the bands and the music they play are all oriented to American night club music, Lawrence Welk, Frank Sinatra – the kind basically patronized by the middle aged expense account executives. Not a pleasure or swinging stuff here for young and horny – sorry Nikolas!

The most exciting thing that happens on board is a harp recital by Mary Ann Sherman– an oval faced plane Jane with thick tortoise shell glasses, the teenager traveling with her parents. She is dressed up in conservative below the knee length navy blue velour dress, while her mother sits next to her in her black floral frock, assisting her with the score. Something probably arranged by her parents to show off their talented offspring. But the daughter doesn’t seem much into it and you can see how nervous she is. Good thing is; she has a built in appreciative audience in her co-voyagers. Sort of solidarity of the onboard community. In all fairness, what she plays is pleasant – especially in the backdrop of a spacious cocktail lounge. She is appropriately applauded.

But I am enjoying the trip. It’s stress free and relaxing. The ship isn’t full, though there are enough people onboard, whenever I feel like running upstairs. But I seem to prefer spending most of my time down in my cabin. Reading, writing or just doing nothing.

On the second night I join the group of young set. After initial exuberance and animated conversations, most of them drift away, leaving behind Elayne – the woman I had a drink with the night before. Tonight, she looks fresher and in her long cocktail dress quite appealing. To her tall and slender framed glamorous blonde, the brunette Amy is more down to earth. Both in their early to late twenties are the center of our attentions. That is, the remaining four of us males hovering around the two pretty females of the species. Trying to outsmart each other. To impress them. The girls seem to be enjoying our attentions.

The scene takes me back to my earlier days in Chicago. We are buzzing over the girls like moths over the flames, just to be zapped and fall. Or more like four dogs in heat. One of us just may get lucky! Trying to get them drunk and then make a move. Two of the guys are from the upper deck, angling for the tasty morsels to take back to their cabins, which they must feel they are more entitled. I find the  tableau all too familiar and sickening. Disgusted, I abruptly leave the lounge wishing them all good night! As I am climbing down the stairs to my cabin, I can’t help but think: Why don’t they just fuck and have good time instead of the same old bullshit?

The last night onboard, we dance and drink until four in the morning. I try to go to sleep, but while I am still tossing and turning, the night steward knocks on my door. We’re already in New York, U.S.A.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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NEXT – THE SEASON’S BREAK

As you already know, this is my 75th Playboy story. Do you believe it? When I first started this blog in November of 2012, I thought I had in me maybe about twenty five good stories to tell. I have done three times as many with a couple of shorter breaks. As much fun as I am having writing and publishing them, I suddenly feel that a little longer break might do me good. Give me bit of a breathing space and for a while do nothing or focus on other things I have already written or want to write. This is not by any means a good bye. Just a so long… an auf wiedersehen if you may. I don’t want to commit to an exact date, but I hope to be back with more Playboy stories in a couple of months – probably in the early fall. In the meanwhile, I want to thank  you all for staying with me for now almost two years. I am extremely appreciative and touched! Please don’t go too far, I will be back before you know it.

Have a great summer.

Haresh  

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Categories Germany, Memoire, Playboy, Sea Travel, Travel

THE KING OF COCKTAILS

May 22, 2014 //
0

The Beginning Of The Longest Cocktail Party

Haresh Shah

bottlecity3

Dieter (Stark) is tickled pink. He s standing behind the kitchen island, swinging the stainless steel cocktail shaker back and forth in his hands. Equally as handsome, he looks like Tom Cruise would behind the bar years later in his movie Cocktail. Surveying the scene and the mood of the night. He is feeling absolutely no pain. His face wears a glow of amazement at the mission accomplished as he looks down at all those bottles of booze lined up in front of him like miniature Chicago skyline. Most of them are half gallon bottles of just arrived Kentucky Bourbon, Scotch Whiskeys, Bombay Gin, Bacardi Rum, Absolut Vodka. There are smaller ones of the mixers containing of red and white Martinis, Crème de Menthe, Grenadine, Tonic water. Open cartons of orange juice, some Coke and 7-up bottles stand ready to be poured in whatever cocktail he would end up concocting. He must feel like a kid let loose in the liquid candy store. Innumerable possibilities, the night not long enough!

●●●

Dieter and I worked together as repro photographers for Burda Verlag in Offenburg, Germany. My early days living and working in the town of Offenburg in southern Germany were some of the loneliest. It didn’t help that I spoke no German yet and the little bit that I did, I misunderstood more than did I understand. I must give credit to the people I worked with in doing their best to communicate with me. But by and large, I was lost like a babe in the woods in that provincial south western German town that boasts of being the gateway to the picturesque Black Forest.

More than me, Dieter, who came from the town of Bad Dürkheim along the German Weinstrasse, some 87 miles (140 kilometers) north west of Offenburg, was like a fish out of water. The job was good. Burda was an excellent company to work for, but what would a young single man away from home do there after work? He hated Offenburg and called the town Apfenburg – the monkey town and often made fun of their dialect and accent. He hated the simple mindedness of the people whose lifelong ambitions he would sum up in three short sentences – auto kaufen, haus bauen und lotto gewinnen – buy a car, build a house and win lottery. I wouldn’t have known the difference and didn’t have any pre-conceived ideas about the place or the people. I was happy just to be out of London living and working on the continent. For practical purposes, both of us were outsiders and that’s what must have attracted him to me.

In the department full of camaraderie, lots of laughs and beer drinking, Dieter remained aloof and removed from such activities. Tall, his curly blonde hair cut short, easy going, soft spoken, Dieter believed in working hard, but not too hard. There was something very child like the way he spoke with his perpetually pouted lips. He could talk without really opening his mouth. Until you got used to his manner of speaking, you would think he was talking to you like one would to a toddler. In my case, it must have also been something to do with my lack of fluency in German and he wanted to make sure I understood what he said and punctuated his speech with the local gel? more often than did others.

Though he never learned to speak English, my German was getting better every day and we would somehow manage to communicate. He must have also taken liking for me, in that we would meet outside of work and he would regularly give me ride home in his flashy metallic gold Opel Record Sports Coupe to the village of Schutterwald, a six kilometer stretch. He maintained a small room in Offenburg, but come Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, depending on the shift we worked, he would be gone and spend the weekend with his girlfriend Uschi and allow his mother to pamper her only child. This left me to my own devices over the weekends – in other words an extended loneliness which I spent solo walking the streets of Offenburg or the forest, even the local cemetery – which was quite peaceful.

One of my fondest memories of our early friendship is his taking me along to Bad Dürkheim’s traditional Weinfest, known as Wurstmarkt – literally the sausage market. I got to meet with his widowed mother Annemarie and his girlfriend Uschi. His father apparently never returned from the war and was listed as missing up until they closed the books on December 31,1945, informing the family that he had died.

Around the same time as I left to come to the States, he got himself transferred to Munich. We stayed in touch on and off which had trickled down to once a year Christmas cards. Who knew that within short five years I would be knocking at his door? Not only we would end up living and working in the same city but that he worked for the repro house Weissenberger, who did lots of reproduction for Playboy and other Munich based magazines of our partners Bauer Verlag. And within the matter of months, his company moved from their original Leopoldstrasse location several block away to Augustenstrasse 10, right across the courtyard from Playboy offices in the front. Small world?

It took me a while, but when I finally located Dieter a couple of months after I had already been living in Munich, he realized how lonely I must have felt during the Christmas holidays. Suddenly he was there for me. Dieter took me along with him, his girlfriend Monika (Kunfalvi) and his Indian friend Kamal (Chanana) to everywhere they went over the weekends. Sometimes I found myself being picked up for breakfast and came home just to sleep.

My Buick arrived separately a couple of days earlier. When Dieter sets his eyes on it for the first time, he goes in his typical wry humor pout: Jetzt Du hast von zwei autos Park Platz we genommen. Now you have taken away two parking spots. In consideration of living in a big city, Dieter had gotten rid of his Opel Sports and bought himself a Volkswagen Bug. And when my stuff from Chicago arrived and he was helping me unpack, his eyes lit up like fireflies when he saw coming out of a couple of boxes half gallon bottles of the premium booze only partially consumed. All left overs from the going away party I had thrown for my Chicago friends just two days before the movers showed up.

In theory, the movers weren’t even supposed to pack them, it is illegal to transport alcohol across the ocean as a part of your household stuff. I had no time to give it all away to my Chicago friends, so I offered the four of them to take those bottles home with them. They politely declined. Considering that there was so much of it, they took pity on me. If someone asks, we don’t know about it. And let’s hope that the German customs isn’t as witless. Lo and behold, they didn’t even attempt to open the container, let alone any of the boxes inside. Seeing that I could practically open a small bar with all that liquor that was piling up on the counter, his face lights up.

‘I got an idea. Let’s throw a party. Moni, Kamal and I will invite all our good friends. You can invite some people from your work. We will have some beer and wine just in case, but I am sure they would all want to drink American cocktails – because they are “in” right now, but they are so very expensive here and you can order them only in exclusive places like Harry’s Bar. It will be a big hit.’

But the problem is, cocktails need ice. In Germany, not something you can run down to a nearby gas station or convenience store and pick up a bag or two. Dieter scratches his head and then snaps his fingers: “Jim”. His friend who once worked for the restaurant chain Mövenpick. Jim comes with a big bag of ice acquired from his bartender buddies.

Voila! It costs me ire of my landlady and the dirty looks from my ehrenwertes – honorable neighbors. Thus hastening my looking for another apartment, which landed me at Johanclanzestrasse 49. And suddenly I acquired all the friends I possibly could.

Some boxes still unopened, we set up my state of the art Fisher Quadrophonic sound system, spread out all the booze and my TWA set of cocktail glasses on the kitchen island – I pull out my Time Life book of Wines and Liquors which came with a small spiral bound booklet containing recipes for all the American cocktails – starting with basic Dry Martini to Manhattan to Whiskey Sour and Rob Roy. Dieter takes over the job of the bartender. Follows the recipes for a while, but for not too long. Now the Chicago skylined counter top looks more like a chemical lab than an in-house bar. He starts mixing them ad-lib, tastes them and then holds the mixing glass against the light to watch the kaleidoscope of colors they would create. Absolutely infatuated, he would try his concoction with different quantities of liquor the colors and the ice cubes.

The guests must have loved whatever concoction he is creating for them. The party is now in full swing and everybody is having good time. Every now and then when I am in the vicinity of Dieter, he would go guck mal Haresh, ist es nicht super? Probier mal doch! – look Haresh, isn’t that super? Here, try it! And then he would let out a hilarious laugh. And then stare at the swirling glass like an alchemist would at a test tube in awe of the clouds and colors and the taste he he has just created. I have never seen Dieter this giddy. He is having time of his life. And so am I.

The night is still young. It’s inching towards eleven and the party has just began to swing with the music and the dancing in the living room. There are people swarming every room and every corner of the apartment, experiencing various stages of happiness. Surrounded by all those people, mostly the friends of Dieter-Kamal-Monika trio and soon to be mine – suddenly I don’t feel lonely. From Playboy, I have invited Rainer and Renate (Wörtmann), and the photographer Jan Parik, who comes with his wife and some of his cool friends. Rainer is amazed at the fact that I have barely arrived in Munich and how quickly I have made so many friends?

As the night begins to wind down, there are still quite a few people scattered around the apartment while some of us are dancing in the living room. Jerry Butler is singing, Never gonna give you up. And I am dancing intimately with Hella, Dieter’s friends’ friends’ friend. We’re swaying ever so slowly in the middle of the floor and kissing, The lighting in the living room is already subdued, but Dieter decides to facilitate even more Hella and me getting into each other. He announces to the crowd: the host wants lights dimmed. Now we are left with only the light pouring in from the street and from the foyer. Dieter is thinking: What can be better for Haresh than for him to have a home town honey? Thanks Dieter! As it turns out, I never see Hella again, but in the real existential sense, that night we lived for the moment – the moment I still remember. As if in the spirit of the Munich fasching – and the carnival of Köln, both of which I would experience soon enough, during which one of the most oft played songs goes like:

Du darfst mich lieben für drei tolle tage      

Du muss mich küssen das ist deine pflicht    

Du kannst mir alles alles schöne sagen        

Nur nach dem name frag mich bitte bitte nicht        

(You may love me for three mad days

You must kiss me – it’s your obligation!

You can say all sorts of beautiful things to me

But please, please don’t ask my name!)

In fact I soon forgot what she looked like or what her last name was, and would certainly not recognize her if I were to run into her today. But Dieter had succeeded far beyond his expectations in throwing the party so I could make some friends in what would be my home for some time to come.

Thus began what I would term to be The Longest Cocktail Party. When it finally and abruptly ended two and a half years later, one afternoon when we sat in a beer garden with his visiting mother, feeling sorry for me, she exclaimed! Poor Haresh! He no longer has a job!

‘Mach dir keine sorgen Mutti. Haresh will soon land back on his feet!’ I couldn’t have said it better.

I am still touched by Dieter’s confidence and faith in me. I linger in Munich for five more months that ended with another big bash at my place. The movers once again packed me up – the remaining bottles of good German wines and all and took the container full of my personal belongings to the local storage until I finally figured out where I would end up living. I fill up my Buick with all that I would need until such a time and drive away to Paris and on to the French port of Cherbourg and drive up the ramp of the QE II. The Queen would bring me back to New York and to the United States.

As during my first departure, and my hiatus of three years in Santa Barbara, Dieter and I would stay in touch. True to his prediction, in not too far of a future I would land back on my feet. And before long, come back to Munich a couple of times a year to work with the Playboy people and of course meet up with Dieter and Kamal and his latest squeeze Irmi (Irmengard Rüttinger), whom he would eventually marry.

The evening I still remember very fondly is the time we went to the Oktoberfest, and how happy drunk we all were. I remember having dinner with him and Irmi at their home. Not too long after that, I got a letter from Irmi that my friend Dieter, after having struggled with the abdominal cancer, chemotherapy and surgery, had passed away on September 21, 1984 – at the age of 40. It all happened quick within two short months.

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, May 30, 2014

THE 75th PLAYBOY STORY

SAILING THE QUEEN

Once the initial shock and the feeling of insecurity wore off, it dawned on me, why was I in such a hurry to return to the States and begin looking for a job without giving myself a little break and regroup before I found something worth while to commit to? Why not first enjoy all that the beautiful city of Munich had to offer and then instead of rushing back on a nine hour flight, why not take my time and sail across the Atlantic?

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Categories Friendship, Germany, Memoire, Playboy, Profile

THE PEEPING TOMS

February 12, 2014 //
2

Paparazzi In His Own Backyard

Haresh Shah

peepers

It’s only once in a life time that you meet someone like FHG. The initials stand for Franz Hermann Gomfers from the little BIG town of Wachtendonk, tucked away near the Dutch border of Venlo in Germany’s lower Rhine region. He spoke only German in the Niederrhein with frequently punctuating with nicht wahr? And yet his house on Feldstrasse 29 would be bursting with smatterings of languages and the people from all around the globe. His curiosity knew no bounds, which was always topped with his patience with a common friend going back and forth between him and his new acquaintances, translating and interpreting. Something about him was fraulich,  in which he would dig out all the gory and juicy details from the person and would bring him or her to a confessional mode, with the seriousness on his face that would betray earnestness even that of Herr Doktor Freud. Because he is genuinely interested in their lives and what they have to say. And yet, he was a little boy like mischievous prankster to the core. The plotter, the match maker, the eternal flirt, frequently crossing his boundary to the utter dismay of his dear Lizbeth. And then getting away with a coy and guilty but a hearty laugh, just like not so innocent Tom Sawyer.
Among hundreds other, I feel fortunate to have known him for twenty five years until the moment he checked out of this material world at the young age of 67.  Madhu (Parekh) and I flew out to attend his funeral. We had the hardest time containing ourselves from breaking out in a loud laugh. It was absolutely incredible to see him lying there, down in the cold basement of the village church, decked out impeccably in his black tuxedo and all. But what I found the strangest was to see his hands neatly folded under his chest, clutching the rosary strewn around and across his waist. The rosary!! It seemed like a joke. Someone getting even with him for snubbing the church all his life. It felt so ironic and weird that I was expecting him to open one of his eyes for a split second and wink at me, and let one of his naughty smiles break out, as if saying: so ist es junge. Wenn du bist tod, bist du tod!!! – that’s how it is, when you’re dead, you’re dead. And then withdraw back into the world of the departed.

But there couldn’t be any regrets, for Franz Hermann lived his life as if every day was his last. The ultimate existentialist, living in the moment. As if everyday were an ongoing Karneval and Christmas and Sylvester. His life crammed with hordes of people. Mostly much younger than himself and many of them foreigners such as myself, Madhu and Nasim (Yar Khan). At some point it would seem to me that he had taken upon himself the mission of making us stay put in Germany, marry German women and live closer to where he was.

Comfortably affluent, he was the most unpretentious and downhome mensch, always drove Volkswagen bug up until after they introduced the Golf. But that was the extent of his luxury. Heilpraktiker (Healing Practitioner, described as an alternative and complementary health care) at the time when it wasn’t exactly in vogue. We joked with him that it was more of a hobby for him than a real profession. Plus in such a title conscious society as Germany, it afforded him the title of Herr Doktor. Gave  him an excuse to get in his car every morning to drive from Wacthtendonk to Krefeld – some twenty kilometers. His physician’s sticker gave him an excuse to speed, something he loved to do and did. When coming upon a slow moving vehicle, he would say out loud in his exasperation: eure idioten! Just because they have posted a speed limit!! And then he would shake his head in disgust.

Similarly, he had no patience and or respect for authorities. So very unlike a German. It’s the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and we are stuck in the middle of traffic thick as jungle. Everyone is out doing their last minute shopping before the shops close at two. Traffic is further thrown in disarray by a police car stopped smack dab in the middle of the square, trying to give a ticket. Fuming, Franz Hermann rolls down the window, sticks his neck out and yells at the cops. What you think you’re doing? Nowhere in the world you yell at cops like that, let alone in Germany! Unless, of course your name is Franz Hermann. Would you believe, the cop got into the car and drove away?

And I still remember when he visited me in Munich and we’re in Alte Pinakothek – the art museum. On one of the glass topped display cabinets is a cardboard sign mounted on a wooden stand, which says: VORSICHT! POLIZERIALARM. Just to see if an alarm would really go off, he is about to lift it when I stop him. Ah quatsch – nonsense, there is no police alarm! He grumbles, but then lets it go. A couple of hours later, when we are sitting in a café, what does he pull out of his coat pocket and put on the table top? The sign with the stand and all. Ein geschenk – a gift! And he smiles his knowing smile. I still have it.  

Uncrowned feudal lord of the grossstadt Wachtendonk, he could make things happen, such as when Madhu returned from India with his brand new bride, Uma in the tow, it was the front page news in the regional Rheinische Post.
Politically active, locally and nationally, Franz Hermann was the supporter of the liberal FDP (Free Democratic Party), and hobnobbed with big boys such as the foreign minister Hans Dietrich Genscher. Deathly afraid of flying, he never set foot on an airplane, with one noticeable exception when he flew to Turkey with Wilhelm Dünwald, then the German ambassador to Turkey, as part of his delegation. Beyond that it was in Wachtendonk that he would bring the oceans and the mountains from far away. A big opera fan, mezzo-soprano Mignon Dunn, when in Germany, she hung out at his home in the little BIG city of Wachtendonk.

After Madhu emigrated to Canada, I remained behind in Germany. Soon I too would go west. Those few months cemented our friendship and we even allowed ourselves to be called familiar Du. As with Madhu’s departure, he was sad for me to go too. But then when Playboy brought me back to Germany, we picked up the threads and let our friendship grow and flourish. It gave him boasting rights that I had returned with such a plum job and that I held an important position at none other than Germany’s top quality zeitschrift, Playboy.

Though Munich wasn’t exactly hop-skip and jump from Wachtendonk, Essen was where we printed the magazine and I maintained there a second apartment. This natural proximity allowed us to see each other and to splurge frequently and share stunde der wahrheit – many hours of the truth, with Nasim whom he had practically adopted and when Madhu came for one Christmas – just like in good old days.

Of the several girls I photographed during that phase of me hunting for Playmates, Barbara was already scheduled to be published (July 1975), while I had just done some initial tests of another Playmate candidate – a petite Eurasian beauty, half German and half Japanese, an army brat, Karen Sugimoto.

Other than the home where Franz Hermann lived with his family, he owned a summer home just a short walking distance from the main house, which everyone called Flieth – a German version of the Russian Dacha and the Czech Chalupa. A ranch style low structure cozy dwelling stood at the farthest end of the front gate and the garden path that lead you to the house fronted with a small round pond and a fountain springing out of a large millstone as its centerpiece. The property was secluded by the sheer fact of ten minutes walk from the stadtmitte, the “center” of Wachtendonk. The further privacy was lent by the high fences covered with ivy, hedges and the dense tall trees. A gentle ribbon of the river Nette flowed behind the house under the dainty wooden bridge. The grounds lit by the old fashioned romantic street lamp posts painted white. An ideal dream like location to shoot a  Playmate.

When I asked Franz Hermann, he was tickled  pink. Aber natürlich, he enthused. Karen and I  would spend the weekend at his home. I would shoot during the day and we would visit at night. Only slight concern we had was the weather, because it’s already November. But we’re in luck and Karen is game. If it does get colder, we can always duck in and out of the house.

The only snag is – and a delicate one at that.

‘Don’t you need an assistant? I can help you with things around the house.’

This doesn’t come as a surprise, so I am prepared. I tell him that this is something that’s just not done. An outsider on the set makes every one nervous, especially it’s not fair to the girl. As much he tries to convince me that he would make his presence barely felt, seeing that I am firm, however reluctantly, he gives up. He takes us to the house, which I am quite familiar with, and goes through the motions of showing us around and then retreats back home.

‘Call, if you need anything!’ He winks at me and I see him slowly walking back to the main house like a dejected spoiled little kid.
It’s a bright sunny day and warm enough to shoot. But there is bit of chill in the air, so we are in and out of the house. Karen is a good sport and really gets into placing her natural self in the backdrop of the landscaping and blends in. We end the day with some truly beautiful shots. She has dropped her shyness and is not being as uncomfortable as she was in the photos I had shot of her in Munich.

Everyone in the office loves the shoot and the exotic Eurasian beauty of Karen. She appears as November 1975 Playmate.

●●●

Long after I have returned back to the States and am visiting Franz Hermann during one of my trips to Germany and when one evening we’re sitting around after dinner, sipping on his stash of Rheinhessen, his long time friend and the gardener Egon stops by. After we have drowned a few glasses, they begin to reminisce about the day I photographed Karen in the Flieth.

When I think back on it, I should have known better. Franz Hermann is not the kind who could have sat still at his home all those many hours when I was in his sunny Flieth taking akt photos of this gorgeous and exotic young thing. I could just imagine him sitting at home, constantly wiggling in his chair like a year old baby, crossing and uncrossing his legs back and forth, rubbing his palms, pressing his thighs together as if in pain, imagining me with Karen in his other house, focusing my lens on various tantalizing curves of her anatomy. He couldn’t just sit there and do nothing but twiddle his fingers, waiting for us to return.

‘And you remember Haresh rubbing ice cubes on her nipples?’ One of the tricks of the trade when the nipples don’t pop up on their own. And they kept at it, giggling like two teenage girls.

Would you believe he teamed up with Egon and climbed up one of the farthest and the tallest trees with his camera loaded with a long telephoto lens and zoomed in on us? Just like something Franz Hermann would do! And you know what? You can’t get mad at the man!

© Haresh Shah 2014

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, February 21, 2014

THE EARTHY AZTEC BEAUTY

The poster on the wall of the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles read: So close and yet so different. And you see the difference right away as soon as you cross the border from the United States into Mexico. The Mayans and the Aztecs had long defined the country way before the Spaniards ever put foot on the continent. You see the colors of the ancient cultures in the people who call themselves Mexicans, and even more so in their beautiful women.

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Categories Friendship, Germany, Profile

IN PRAISE OF MY BUICK

October 30, 2013 //
2

Haresh Shah

You Are What You Drive

buickcrash3

“That damn Buick of yours. As much as we have paid to transport it all over the world, the company should own the damn thing.” Exclaims my boss Lee Hall. So it should. The company could have even bought two of those damn things. But what was I supposed to do?

I had applied for a job at Playboy at the same time as I did Time. I have had a perfunctory interview with the production boss John Mastro. Nothing came out of it while Time offered me the job in Chicago. Now four years later when John does offer me the job, its over the phone – the one that would take me to Germany. And wouldn’t you know? He wants me yesterday.

Its Thursday October 26th 1972. This is how the conversation goes.

‘When can you start?’

‘As soon as I could.’

‘Can you leave in a couple of weeks?’

‘That might be a bit tight. I still have a job, I need to give them notice first,’

‘You need two weeks for that. If you give them your notice tomorrow, which is October 27th. You should be free by November 10th. Can you leave on November 11th?’

‘But I also have a whole household and the lease to worry about.’

‘Let’s not worry about all that now. Once you have done the next issue, you can find a window of time and come back to Chicago for a couple of weeks and wrap things up’.

‘And I have just bought a brand new car!’ It just slips out of my mouth. I hesitate to mention the woman I was in love with.

‘We could ship your car along with your personal belongings!’

Wow! Though I don’t say it. I am tongue tied. It would be something to drive around in a big flashy American boat of a car in the cobblestoned streets of the city of Munich. Well, why not?

This is my first new car and I have madly fallen in love with it. I have dreamt of her sleek, sexy and streamlined shapely body for sometime now. It’s a bit shorter than the long phallic Oldsmobile Cutlass I owned, but somehow classier. I can still ill afford to buy a new car, but one fine morning I find, or more accurately, don’t find my metallic gold  Olds on the street twelve floors below my South Shore apartment on the 67th street and when it’s determined that it’s irretrievable gone, I have no choice but buy another car in a hurry. My job at Time is totally dependent on my ability to drive. So I decide to take a plunge. And as long as I am buying a new car, I decide to buy its top of the line model in gleaming white color and the mottled chocolate-brown vinyl top. Air conditioned and with factory installed AM/FM stereo, rear defroster – automatic transmission of course, slippery sleek beige vinyl interior, power steering, white walls and all. The only thing I miss out on is a cassette player. Eight tracks are barely out of the door and the cassettes are just about to make their tepid entry into the market, having one installed in my car  doesn’t even occur to me. Something that would soon sting me. But not even having to consider leaving behind my Buick makes me enormously happy. It also means that Playboy does things in style!

So on Saturday October 11th, I check into Frankfurt bound Lufthansa flight and arrive in Munich on Sunday the 12th. Work on the Christmas issue, make a short detour to Milan, Italy and return back to Chicago to wrap up my life of four years, bid farewell to all my friends and board another trans-Atlantic flight and return to Munich.

When my stuff and the Buick arrive in January, my friend Dieter (Stark) rolls his eyes and calls it a tank. Dieter’s swanky Opel Sports was my envy when we worked together at Burda in Offenburg, five years earlier.  Dieter now lives in Munich. Amazingly, he works in the second wing of the same building on Augustenstrasse for the graphic reproduction company that does Playboy Germany’s color separations. He rolls his eyes again, pouts, and adds, so ein lastwagen! What a  truck! And then when we would drive around, amazed at my parking skills, he would go, jests du hast zwei parkplätze weggenomen! Now you have taken away two parking spots. But as skeptical as he is, he gets used to my tank-truck, while now he himself is driving a Volkswagen Bug. A perfect city car. But when you’re in love with your chariot, you don’t think of minor details like ease of parking!

My Buick is also talk of the town in our office building where they have given me a parking spot on the lower tier, which when the upper parking ramp is lowered, leaves only about an inch or two of space between the trunk of my car and the bottom of the metal ramp. Why they didn’t consider giving me the upper tier, I don’t ask, because somewhere along the line I see it as a challenge to be able to park my car just so, to keep it from crushed under the rough bottom of the ramp and the weight of the car up above. Soon my sassy American car becomes a sight to behold in the home town of the mighty BMW.

●●●

Another person I reconnect with in Munich is Marianne (Thyssen-Miller). Someone I had only met once years earlier in Krefeld and on whom I had developed an incredible crush. She too is now living in Munich. That gorgeous summer afternoon, she has invited me to join her and some of her friends to a picnic at Perlacher Forst – a forest preserve not too far from the center of the city. Marianne has given me very specific directions on how to get to the picnic grounds. I make it out of the city and reach the general neighborhood of where they had all gathered. And then as it often happens. I must have taken one wrong turn or missed a single direction, and after more than half an hour of going around in circles, and finding myself at the same crossroads for the third time, I am now feeling frustrated and quite frazzled. There are no other cars to be seen, no people walking around, no one I could stop and ask.  I look left and I look right and I look straight and then on impulse decide to turn left.  Right in front of my big hunk of white pointed metal, a Volkswagen Bug seems to have materialized out of nowhere.  By the time I see it coming towards me, it’s too late.

I see a very old couple occupying the front seats. They look scared and totally disoriented  behind their tiny windshield. I jump out of the car and run to make sure that they are okay.  There is no visible physical harm done to them, shook up, the woman keeps saying “it wasn’t our fault, it wasn’t our fault.”  “No it wasn’t”, I try to calm her.  I tell her that the most important thing is that they are okay, that it was my fault, and that I have proper insurance to take care of whatever damage the accident may have caused.

The couple must have been in their late sixties or even early seventies.  They are driving in from Dortmund to spend some days with their daughter who lives in the Munich area, not too far from where we have collided.  The loud thud of the collision has brought out the people living in nearby houses.  The old woman calls her daughter from one of the homes.  A few minutes later, a balding young man – their son-in-law shows up in his big boxy Mercedes Benz.  He introduces himself to me as Rudolph Geisler. I am bracing myself for his outburst and anger. I am in Germany and the cars mean a lot to the people. And they are attuned to doing everything in very official way. I am preparing myself psychologically to kiss my picnic goodbye. And the hopes of breaking away from the group in the evening and ending up at some cozy romantic restaurant alone with Marianne.

But the wonder of all wonders, instead of being angry and irate, Rudolph begins to apologize to me for the accident, telling me that he has often told his father-in-law that he was too old to drive, but he just wouldn’t listen – but this would teach him.

I re-confirm to Rudolph that I have international insurance and everything should be taken care of, that maybe we should call police and make a report.

“Let me just get my in-laws home first and then we will worry about that.  Let me give you my phone number and let me have yours and then we will work it all out.” This is very highly un-German way to behave. But haven’t I been told that the Bavarians are different?

We together move the Bug out of the way. There is hardly any damage done to my car, except the driver’s side of the door has shifted back a couple of millimeters, making it hard to open it completely, in contrast, the front end of the little Volkswagen looks like a battered bellow of an  accordion. Rudolph gives me proper directions on how to get to where I was going. He throws a perfunctory glance at Buick, as if saying: nicht schlecht! – not bad, and off he is on his way with his in-laws tucked safely inside his Benz. Sure enough, the picnic grounds aren’t far from where I am. I meet up with Marianne and her friends and join the fun.

I call Rudy the next day.  I tell him I have reported the accident to my insurance agent, and he  has assured me that everything will be taken care of.  Rudy doesn’t seem in the least concerned about the details.

“Listen, we will be busy the next few days with my in-laws.  I really don’t think the old man should drive anymore, so we will just put them on a train on Friday.  Why don’t you come over to our house over the weekend and we can settle things over a nice Bavarian meal?  I am sure Uschi, my wife will enjoy meeting you.”

So I go for the dinner. Uschi has cooked delicious Schewinsbraten with Knödel and sauerkraut.  I no longer am in touch with them, but they become very much a part of my social circle for as long as I still lived in Munich.

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, October 08, 2013

IN PRAISE OF MY BUICK PART II

My move from Chicago to Munich happened so fast that there was no time to consider the practical aspects of taking my Buick along across the Atlantic. Had I known, what I was up against, I certainly would have sold the car and bought myself a new one in Munich. Probably my favorite Audi 80. But there are also rewards for having done just that.

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Categories Automobile, Germany