I said, "Well, don't worry Roland, you wont get it from that, you can only get it from doing her."
"Yeah. I think I did that too!" He said.
Roland was always worried about girls. Mostly that he wouldn't have one actually. But we'll get back to that later...
We landed in Munich, which I'd never been to, in fact, I'd never been out of England upto then. I was 21. We took a train to the main station, Roland was still trying to get over the flight. He wasn't scared or anything, he was excited like a little boy. Before we boarded the plane (which he reckoned he'd flown in twice before) he grabbed my camera. When I developed the pictures later, I had about 32 pictures of the aeroplanes left wing, 2 of a field you could barely see, and 3 ½ of his clean underpants (to show to girls).

Roland put up his finger, as we know from previous episodes, this means he has an idea.
"I know," he said, "let's stay in Munich."
Well, this he actually said after realizing the trip to Salzburg didn't take 15 minutes as he said but 2 hours and cost more than 20 pence.
So he started looking for a locker for his backpack full of clean and dirty underpants. But he didn't have much success, because, after asking 30 people, one of them was kind enough to inform him that he'd actually been asking where the beetles are and not the lockers.
So, Roland couldn't actually speak German either the way he said he could...mmm.
After finding a locker for our backpacks, we went out into the big wide world, well Munich anyway.
It was 31. August 1987. Strange to think I live in that city now. (Since 1998).
Roland liked smiling. So he did.
"What's up?" I said.
"Lets's go to the beer garden!" he said - he actually tried to say this in German which I couldn't speak then, but it was so bad I understood it anyway.
So off we went up the road to the "Augustinerbräu" - a beer garden not far from the main station.
Roland talked non stop all the way (it wasn't very far luckily) pointing to things, telling me what they are, spewing up short funny stories about what had happened to him, explaining to me that he was wearing clean underpants just in case.
When we got there I saw a beer garden for the first time. There is room for about 3000 people in the Augustiner. For those of you who have never witnessed this, let me explain to you what a German beer garden is.
Imagine a giant area, bathing in the shade of beautiful chestnut tress, under which someone has played the game of trying to fit as many wooden tables and benches into one place as possible. Imagine a rowdy, drunken, "funny" crowd consisting of people of all ages and walks of life each with a Mass (1 liter=2 Pints) beer attached to his right hand and a brezen (strange kind of bread thing) in his left, shouting "Servus Hans" (Allright Hans) and "Wie geht's dir dann, sauf dir eins nieda" (How are you, have a drink...roughly). Imagine woman, looking like a cross between Stallone and Schwarzenegger running around carrying upto 12 of the afore mentioned beers. Imagine lederhosen, sausages, sauerkraut, singing, the table number 13, where no one should sit, the "Stammtisch" (regulars' table) where only people that have been coming to the beer garden for over a 100 years are allowed to sit, and if you (unknowingly) sit there, all 3000 people stop talking and look at you like some kind of Klaus Eastwood, old men that look like they may be dead already, old woman that probaly are, little kids tugging at there parents' arms to buy them another beer, people that actually seemed quite normal turning into giggling or agressive monsters, only to regret it the next day at work in the bank, a man weighing about 200Kg filling up one glass after another 40 years long, again and again and again and being proud of it. And then imagine the worst place you would like to go to when you're feeling a bit down and fancy an evening alone at home....mix this all up in a big pot, throw in some mustard, and voila, you got a German beer garden.
And, that's where we were. !Well this is something different,“ I thought.


We started looking for a table, pushing through the small gaps between the Hansies and Grettles, trying to avoid treading on any children, wondering why we ever left England, nearly made the table no. 13 mistake, got saved by a drunken iron maiden, and then, there it was, a table, no one there, a free table, round and wonderful, waiting for us it's arms wide open.
So we sat down, put down our instruments, Roland his violin, me my guitar, and waited. Mrs. Schwarzenegger came and took our orders, shouting something at us as if it was easier to understand German when it was louder. I must tell you, in case this all ever happens to you, that in a lot of German beer gardens, you have to go and get your beer yourself, but as I said in this one, there were the Stallone/Schwarzenegger droids.
She came back, shouting numbers, with 2 big beers. We paid the numbers as good as we could (we'd picked up some German money at the main station), said "Cheers mate" and started drinking, which considering the sitation and where we were, seemed like the best thing to do - I always say that.
There was a man on another table, looking over suspiciously. He was with about 12 other people. He smiled sometimes, I thought we'd just seen our first German homosexual, but things turned out different. He came over.
"Hello, zo wont zu plaiy?" "Zu kann plaiy iff zu vont to."
I looked at Roland
"Wot he say Roland?"
Roland said:
"He said: "Hello, zo wont zu plaiy?" "Zu kann plaiy iff zu vont to.""
I said, "Oh, right."
The old guy had his own table - a Stammtisch, which meant he'd been coming there for over a hundred years - he knew all the people and he said:
"Eiye haf a Stammtisch, eiye noiws all ze peepal herre, zu kann plaiy if zu wont too."
So, we played. Which is quite rare apparentely, being allowed to play like that in a German beer garden. People started giving us money, we played all we knew in about 3 sets talking to the old man and his crew in between, it was getting late, people were thinning out, some romantic men wanted us to play romantic songs for their romantic girlfriends to get them into a romantic flat and do some romantic stuff with them, so we did, at 10 marks a piece. Guitar and violin is apparantely very romantic.
The old man had the same sirname as me, which brought us nearer, and he asked if we wanted to play at a party at his house in a few days:
"Zoo wont too plaiy ad a barti ins my hause in z few daiys?"
We said yes and made the arrangements...

We were drunk, made our way back to the staition, and then looked for another pub, which we found without a problem. We had earnt quite a lot that evening, and Roland wanted to go to McDonalds. But it was already 2 in the morning, so we got in a taxi and told him what we wanted.
Basically, we drove a bout 30 minutes with the taxi, paid, got out, went into the all night McDonalds, ordered some burgers and stuff, ate it, were both sick (German food) ordered another taxi and got back to the station at about 3:15. That was actually quite an expensive way to eat.
We got our stuff from the lockers and layed down our sweet heads in the station, for about 10 minutes, because the police threw us out. We ended up sleeping in our sleeping bags in the entrance to an office. In the morning the people going to work kept saying "Guten Morgen" as they went into the building, which was quite strange really.
Coffee. Now.
We found a cafe and got our coffee, Roland went into the toilets and changed his underpants just in case.
A few hours later we were awake. It was time to make a plan. So we did.
We decided to go to the "English Garden" - this is the biggest City Park in the world as far as I know, and it's pretty big, right in the middle of Munich. That's where Roland's fresh underwear was important, because as we were playing street music there, he picked up a Japanese-Californian girl that said she played recorder. She had some friends too.
In the evening, we got drunk, the girls we met lived in a student home where we slept.
Roland wanted to wash his underpants, so he did. He always felt better afterwards.
Life went on like this a few days, playing in the english garden, sleeping at the girl's place. I found out the Japanese girl was into all sorts of things too.

Roland met an old man in a beer house, he was about 90 and he said he had a room to rent. Roland and his girl moved in, and then moved out 2 days later after finding out the man (who claimed to be Hitler's gardner) had been watching them through some kind of peep hole. The Japanese girl thought that was cool, Roland didn't - he didn't like having witnesses.
It was time to do the party as arranged, so we took the train (S-Bahn) to the station the guy at the beer garden told us to. We were picked up by a black Mercedes with chaffeur, no shit! He tried to sell us some cokes on the way to the house, but we send no which he didn't understand.
The house wasn't huge, but nice, with a swimming pool and stuff. There were about 25 high-society people there, but unfortunately only pairs and no single women.
Erik - the old man from the beer garden was there:
"Halo, kum inz und haf somfing too drink."
So we did, cocktails, beer, everything - we played too, but not much, they put the hat round, each of them gave quite a lot - we were rich again.
Later the chaffeur took us into own and we met up with the girls.
The next day we went to the beer garden again where we had met Erik. Roland starting worrying he had AIDS at this point.Roland said:
"That bitch [the Japanese girl] survived 3 months in Spain playing the recorder, and she can't play recorder. That means she is probably a prostitute and has AIDS. Now I have AIDS and will die soon. Shit, I did her about 50 times, I must have it. Let's get out of here, let's go to Salzburg."

I didn't know going to Salzburg could heal it, but maybe Roland knew something I didn't.
Roland couldn't stay in one place for more than a week or two, he always had to move on. AIDS or no AIDS. (He didn't have it anyway).
So, the next day we were sitting in the train to Salzburg in Austria. Roland took some photos of some cows and churches on the way.

Erik died in 2004, I saw the orbitary in the local paper.