We arrived in the town of Bad Doberan a few hours later, a bit sore and grumpy from being squeezed into vehicles too small for us, and breathing with some difficulty on account of the secondhand cigarette smoke we'd been gulping...it seemed as if all the drivers (like most Europeans, as I was to learn) were chain smokers.
Eric, Candy, and I proceeded to check in at our hotel, only to discover it was a hospital. Not a horrible, menacing, brick edifice, bristling with ominous chimneys and full of dark passageways from which muffled screams could sometimes be discerned...but a Krankhaus nonetheless. It was called the Klinik Moorbad, and it was a spa (Bad Doberan's name literally means "Doberan Spa", or "Bath Doberan", and it had been a spa town for a couple of centuries at least; East German folks had always gone to the area to take sea baths even though the ocean itself wasn't exactly in town, but a few kilometers away on the coast, where oceans are supposed to be). We soon learned that there were a number of old, abandoned "Kliniks" in the area, some of which we passed on our peregrinations around town. Most of them were early 20th- or late 19th-century buildings, eerily quiet and empty, their huge, rubble-filled bathing pools, vast echoing hallways, and broken windows a sad testament to an earlier age when regaining one's health was a simple matter of rising at dawn, marching uphill several times daily, and "taking the waters" in various temperatures, along with strictly following a "miracle" diet of grains, vegetables, and cold mineral water. Times had definitely changed, and left the Kliniks behind.
Now, in the 21st century, hypochondriacs went to places like the Moorbad. It was another sort of Krankhaus entirely: modern, full of reflective, easy-to-clean surfaces, and best of all from my point of view, it had large windows with pleasant views of lush greenery from the upper stories. During our stay we often saw the clientele (they weren't referred to as patients), middle-aged East German ladies in variously ill-fitting swimwear or workout clothing, taking the elevators to the therapeutic pool, the aerobics classes, or the juice bar. It was a far cry from the old-time Kliniks, where self-discipline was a critical component of recovery. The Moorbad now billed itself as a spa rather than a hospital, sort of a cross between a resort and a sanitarium. But it was still a hospital, even if not for seriously ill people. The hallways were wide, providing space for wheelchairs and, dare I say it, the occasional gurney. And the front desk was clearly not a hotel desk; it was a nurse's station. German efficiency nothwithstanding, most hotels don't keep their guests' records in metal file folders.
As we unpacked in our sun-filled room on an upper floor, I wondered why we had been given a room here instead of in a pension or hotel. The band members were all staying in a picturesque pension in town, down the hill from the Moorbad. (This was to pose a horrendous communications problem, since as it turned out, there weren't any phones in the band members' rooms.) Perhaps the parodical nature of my tongue-in-cheek comments to the Zappanale promoters about the middle-agedness of most of our band members had been lost in the translation. At any rate, there was nothing to be done about it, as lodging in the general area was booked solid due to the festival.
We were to soon discover that staying in a hospital had its problems. The first night we were there, we naturally wanted to check out the Galopprennbahn, the horse-racing track where the festival was being held. The promoters had retained several drivers for the duration of the festival; the theory was that if a festival participant needed transportation, you called one of these drivers on his or her cell phone, and they came and picked you up and took you where you wanted to go.
After we had recovered somewhat from our travels, and had met with Wolfhard Kutz, the festival's head promoter, we decided to go from the Moorbad to the festival site. It was around 9 p.m., and Project/Object, with Ike Willis, was about to perform. We had been looking forward to hearing them.
I picked up our room phone and tried to call for a ride, only to find that the phone didn't seem to be connected. So Eric and I headed down to the lobby to ask the management about the problem...and promptly learned that the front desk was closed, the lights were off, the front doors were locked, and we were grounded...locked in the Krankhaus.
Following an hour's worth of futile attempts to locate an employee, we finally gave up, determined to straighten things out in the morning, and popped open a bottle of Wild Turkey that had somehow evaded detection by customs and security guards at three airports in as many countries. Oblivion soon descended; we slept fitfully, half expecting to be awakened by a gruff orderly and given a sleeping pill.
NEXT: The Legend of St. Francis the Noseless
