We made it to Paris in fine shape, largely due to the wonderful flood of fine wines and liquors that that excellent carrier, Air France, was so generous with. During our nearly two-hour layover at De Gaulle airport, John had his first cultural collision. He ordered a club sandwich without mayonnaise, which of course he didn't get. As is well known, in France everything that can possibly be served with a sauce on it, is. More than a hundred years ago, in his "Devil's Dictionary," Ambrose Bierce defined mayonnaise as "one of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion". John's sandwich, true to doctrine, looked like a model of Mont Blanc, with snow-white ooze virtually cascading from every crust. For one who loathes mayo as much as John, this was almost an act of political aggression, but to his immense credit he remained calm; there was no bloodshed nor any need to call the American Consulate, and we made it safely onto our plane for the last leg of our flight to Berlin.
Our arrival at Tegel airport was chaotic, to say the least. The moment we passed through customs (where again Joe Meo had his shoes inspected, this time -- even more to Joe's kinky delight -- with Teutonic precision by a towering Valkyrie of a security officer) and entered the waiting area, we were collared by a number of young men and women bearing placards that read ZAPPANALE. It turned out that they didn't speak much English, so we had to figure out what was going on as best we could with only Eric's science-textbook German to assist us. The general idea seemed to be that we were supposed to assemble in front of the entrance to the terminal, where theoretically several vehicles would collect us and transport us to Bad Doberan, the festival site, some 200 kilometers distant. However, it may also have been that we were to assemble several 200-centimeter vehicles and disport ourselves in some undisclosed location. The worst thing of many about the German language, we rapidly learned, is the shifty and treacherous future-imperfect "werden". It never means what you think it means; depending on the context in which it appears, it can indicate "later," "eventually," "perhaps in the future," "should have happened but didn't," "could happen but won't," etc.
While Eric was struggling with these potentially disastrous vagaries of language, Paul Adamy, our bass player, had discovered that his briefcase, which contained all our charts as well as many of Ed Palermo's, had not made it onto our connecting flight and even worse, at that very moment was sitting on the tarmac back in New York. He went off to remonstrate with the baggage claim department, which, seeming to combine Gallic indifference with German stolidity, would only promise that the briefcase would arrive in Bad Doberan sometime the following day. This of course was a disaster; Paul had to perform with Ed's big band the following day, and Lennon-Tabacco-Zappa also needed to rehearse some time in the next 24 hours, before our gig the day after that.
Just when things seemed bleak indeed, our tuba player Jay Rozen came staggering towards us, white as a sheet. His tuba, it turned out, was also reposing somewhere between Berlin and New York. Due to its unconventional homemade case, made of old cardboard boxes and held together with duct tape, the whole liberally plastered with hand-lettered stickers, it had evidently aroused the suspicions of security personnel and had been confiscated for inspection. It too was to be delivered "werden" in Bad Doberan.
Clearly, we were off to a shaky start. Our party mood evaporated, we silently slunk into several 200-centimeter vehicles, tucked our knees under our chins, and steeled ourselves for the run to Bad Doberan...or some undisclosed location.
NEXT: Lost in the Krankhaus
