Bordeaux 1 / soccer and prostitution
I was visiting friends in Bordeaux, France, June 5-14.
Via friend Jess we got to have invitations for a garden party at the German consulate in Bordeaux to watch the opening game of the Football World Cup. Well no, we had invitations for Jess and her friend Katharina, me and another friend Bonifaz from Kenia weren’t really invited. Still we thought we’d give it a go.
Arriving an hour too late at the consulate we found, that there was a demonstration going on of around 100 serious “Bordelaises”, against prostitution during the world cup in Berlin…
Uhm.
We managed to slip into the consulate after almost ten minutes of repeated door belling.
They let us in, some underskilled security person metalscanning us.
The two women had invitations saying they could bring a guest, but that wasn’t approved then.
Friend Bonifaz was very darkskinned (as always, and grinning) and got looked at like that, i looked like an old Hippie (as always, and grinning) and got looked at accordingly aswell – but finally and after we had left our passport details we were approved to enter the party.
We slipped into the garden behind the consulate building, there was 5 minutes left of the first half of the game, the videobeamed picture was awesomely bad and 150 visitors got ready to “enjoy” the announced “buffet”...
Well. Imagine you are in the world’s capitol of wine (and probably food aswell), Bordeaux, France, and someone official invites you to enjoy a buffet. Wouldn’t you expect the unimaginable?
Well it was.
It was unimaginably bad.
The food: Bockwurst (some cheap kind of german cooked sausage in rolls with mustard) and some kind of herring salad (another German “speciality”, definately overflown with mayonaise..,)
The wine: No wine. Instead: beer. Warm. Some juices aswell. Finally a single bottle of okay-type sparkling wine, still closed. The woman behind the table of beverages looked at me suspiciously, when i asked for a glass… and finally agreed to serve me the sparkling stuff, warm again, of course.
We watched the game, amused, attended a tombola afterwards giving away world cup t-shirts and footballs aswell – and left.
Funny how Germany exposes its mean non-excellence to the rest of the world in such official environments aswell, and I wonder what the invited French officials thought that afternoon.
They looked grim.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jane is K.O. aka jayrope is a Berlin-based composer, producer and musician.
More info: jayrope.com
höhö, funny story.