Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 21
Part 2 continued
1956–1966
Even though we were no longer carting our canoes around in their shapeless bags, we decided to hitchhike separately and meet up in Hamburg. For some crazy reason I did not bother to ask Alan for any money, believing perhaps that we would reach Hamburg the following day. Alan was holding on to the remains of our sale of the canoes and had also received a few pounds from his family in Namibia.
For a few days I experienced the sheer horror of having no money with which to buy food or drink. Since leaving the privations of wartime England, my appetite had increased exponentially. Fortunately, there was plenty of water at the Autobahn service stations but my tummy kept on reminding me that I had not eaten anything. Despite our optimism, getting lifts was extremely difficult. Towards the end of the second day, I spotted an uneaten half loaf of bread on a table outside a café. I swooped on it and for a short while found that slightly stale, unbuttered white bread was delicious – if you are hungry enough!
The following day I got lucky. A new model Mercedes stopped near where I had been waiting at the service station. I had been refused five times that morning, but on this occasion a well-dressed, middle-aged man and a youth of about my age looked up at me as I approached them. The older man spoke no English, but the youngster addressed me with a German accent mixed with strong American overtones. Having discovered that I was heading for Hamburg, the young man spoke in German with his companion, who nodded. The youngster turned to me. “Sure. Get in.”
The young man, whose name was Rolf, would not stop talking to me in his German/American accent, no doubt delighted to find someone with whom to express his skill with English, or at least the American version thereof. I asked him if he had lived in the States, and he shook his head. “My American accent comes from listening to the US Forces radio station here in Germany. I taught myself the language as well by listening to Elvis, the Everly Brothers, even the Beach Boys.” I could not make out the relationship between this flamboyant young guy and the prim and mostly silent driver. Eventually I discovered that Rolf, like me, was a hitchhiker and the man had accepted not one but two of us as his passengers.
Having earlier experienced a gay middle-aged man trying to pick me up in Switzerland, I wondered whether my ride may come at a price! Fortunately, nothing like that occurred but the driver was a strange fellow. After driving for a few hours, he suddenly turned off the Autobahn, drove through a tiny village and eventually stopped on the edge of an open field with a swimming pool close to its edge. He then proceeded to get undressed down to his Jockey underwear, whilst speaking to Rolf in German. Rolf then turned to me. “He says we’re welcome to join him for a swim. It’s OK to swim naked here.
We both declined the offer. He left the car and spent about twenty minutes swimming lengths of the pool. He was a strong swimmer. Returning to the car, he produced a towel, dried himself and discretely removed his underpants under the towel before putting his clothes back on. He then drove off without any further comment about his swim. I had hoped that we may get at least a coffee and a sandwich but no such luck.
As we drove the last stretch to Hamburg, Rolf asked me what I intended to do once I reached the port. I explained that I would be meeting up with my travelling companion Alan and we would either seek some work in the city or continue on to Denmark where Alan had friends. Rolf gave this some thought and asked, “D’you mind telling me what kind of work you do?”
I replied “No. In France I was a laborer on a building site. In England I worked on a pile-driving team and later as a night watchman.” He chuckled. “Have you ever done anything that may be … not totally honest?” I shrugged. We had stolen from orchards along the river Loire and had even pinched a few items from the pantry in the youth hostel in Lyon, not to mention the stein jugs from the Oktoberfest in Munich, as well as a huge unpaid-for meal in the Munich youth hostel’s canteen. Hardly professional criminals but not exactly paragons of virtue!
“What do you have in mind?” I asked. He looked at me quizzically. “We need innocent-looking guys like you to take some stuff aboard ships in the harbor.”
“What kind of stuff?” I asked thinking of drugs that I certainly wasn’t going to touch. He shrugged. “Mostly cameras and other electronic stuff. We Germans make the best in the world, nein?”
My common sense told me to say “thank you but no thank you.” My innate sense of curiosity and desire for adventure told me to play this along for a while. I told Rolf I was interested but needed to know more. He told me to meet him with his boss the following night at a certain café. I took the details and wondered what in the hell I was getting into.
To my surprise, when I reached the Hamburg youth hostel, Alan had not yet arrived. I had to spend some time convincing the warden of the hostel to let me book in without paying up front. He finally relented and I couldn’t think that Alan would take more than another day to get there. However, I had hoped to get him to come with me to the café where I was meeting for the smuggling job. I was increasingly worried that I had made contact with a serious criminal gang and that I could be in real danger. Fortunately, I got chatting with a tough-looking New Zealander at the hostel. I explained my predicament and he offered to sit at a table nearby in case things got ugly.
Alan arrived just after lunch the following day. He had been unlucky with lifts. I asked the New Zealander if he wanted to pull out and let Alan take his place. He was so obviously disappointed that Alan said he would be happy to get an early night and remain at the hostel.
Just after dark the New Zealander and I set off for the café. On arrival I saw my hitchhiking friend Rolf sitting with a rather chubby but elegant man dressed in an expensive dark suit and smoking a cigar. Just behind him was a frightening-looking swarthy man dressed entirely in black except for a white tie. He had a badly broken nose and the coldest eyes I had ever seen. It was like a Hollywood gangster movie. Rolf was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, and it soon became apparent that he was also nervous.
The boss man indicated I should sit down, which I did with an anxious glance at the New Zealander at the nearby table. He was clearly excited by the scene in front of him and later he confirmed that he too thought it was straight out of a Hollywood movie. Rolf spoke in German to the boss, who listened without expression and without taking his eyes off me.
The enormity of my situation suddenly dawned on me. These were hardened criminals. If I took the job, I could easily end up floating in the Hamburg docks after delivering the goods. If I refused the job, I could still end up with water in my lungs, simply for wasting their time. If things got violent, I doubted whether these guys were unarmed. Although both the New Zealander and I were probably physically tougher than the Italian-looking guy, no doubt Rolf would side with them. I was also certain that at least the bodyguard was armed. Overcoming guns or knives with our bare hands was only something that happened easily in – you guessed it — Hollywood movies!
The boss held up a hand and Rolf stopped talking. Mr. Big then turned to his bodyguard and spoke to him in Italian. Although I never studied that language and I only had a few words of German, out of sheer terror I got the sense of what he was saying. The boss felt that I was wrong for the job and could easily crack under pressure. He was probably right. After further words between the three of them, Rolf turned to me and shook his head. “Sorry, the boss doesn’t think you’re right for the job. He says that you must understand that you never met us, and you’d better tell Mr. Muscles at the next table to keep his trap shut too. Sorry, pal.”
Never had being refused a job application ever produced such a feeling of relief. I left their table shakily and left the café. A few moments later the New Zealander appeared grinning from ear to ear as he asked, “So did you get the job?” I could have killed him!
The next day, Alan and I set off together for Copenhagen. He had listened to the tale of my brush with gangsters, laughed but warned me not to be an idiot. I think he decided that we should travel together in case I got another rush of blood to my head.
We were lucky with lifts and reached Copenhagen by mid-afternoon after a four-hour journey. Our driver did not know the city and dropped us off near the main railway station. Alan had his friends’ address but no idea how to get there. We went into a butcher’s shop and asked the friendly man behind the counter if he could tell us how to find the place. He looked at the address and shook his head, saying in excellent English that it was complicated, and we should just wait a moment. He disappeared into the back of the shop; we could hear him talking to someone else in Danish. Moments later he reappeared putting his jacket on and telling us to follow him. To our amazement, he headed for his butcher’s delivery van and invited us to get in.
It took us over half an hour to find the address in an obscure road on the outskirts of the city. I shall never forget that act of kindness. The man even waited while Alan knocked on the door, spoke briefly with a tired-looking woman at the door and returned to the van shaking his head. “They moved six months ago and never left a forwarding address.” We apologized profusely to our friendly butcher. He shrugged and asked what we now planned to do “Is there a youth hostel near your shop?” I asked. He shrugged. “Not very near but get in. I can’t leave you here.”
I think and hope that the butcher wanted to practice his English. He was also very proud of his nation and said it was in the nature of the older Danes to be helpful to others. He added that unfortunately the youth were now so full of drugs that they did not extend the same courtesy to strangers.
A few years later, I happened to visit Copenhagen again and was forcibly reminded of our helpful butcher’s words. I went into a bank to draw some money. I stood in a queue waiting for a teller to serve me. When I was next in line to be served, I was talking in English to the person behind me when a young man entered the bank, heard me speak English, pushed past everyone and stood at the teller’s window in front of me.
Furious, I tried to edge past him, but he resisted and snarled at me “Foreigners must wait!” I turned to the lady teller and began to protest. She cut me off with, “If you don’t like it go to another bank.” This was during the years of the sanctions against South Africa; I figured that if I made enough of a fuss, I could get myself deported. Fond memories of early years when not only our friendly butcher but most others I met in that city were warm and helpful were erased in an instant by this discourteous act. I waited until the man was finished and took my turn at the teller. As he left, he looked at me and grinned. It was not a friendly grin.
Despite this incident I still like Denmark. The fact that my ancestors were Danish way back in the 1300s doesn’t hurt either!
As we approach the launch of ExoBrain I realize that we will encounter both friendly and unfriendly customers. We must cultivate the friendly and convert the unfriendly. Because of the uniqueness of the ExoBrain system, I believe we will soon convert even those who are at present diametrically opposed to our success. ExoTech becomes more and more irresistible by the day!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.