Can't decide? Let fate take over

It's been a fun couple of weeks. Visits from foreign lands and a couple of musical treats worth recounting here.

The first a taste of luxury, the second a taste of Frankfurt's oft-overlooked alternative underbelly. Both tales, weirdly, take place in the entirely uninteresting little brother of Frankfurt, Darmstadt, a city known here for being utterly, and justifiably, unknown.

My piano teacher, being a professional concert pianist (!), had a concert a couple of weeks ago and told me that although the concert had been sold out for a couple of weeks she could get me a ticket if I was interested. The programme was a mostly uninteresting collection of super-light 'hits from the films' called, hilariously, "The Magic of Movie III". What could be more tempting? Needless to say, we were treated to the Star Wars theme and Moon River (Breakfast at Tiffany's) but the main event was Rhapsody in Blue (justified by its use in Woody Allen's 'Manhattan'). The feeling of sitting in the best seats in the house (middle-middle) in an unpaid-for seat watching my piano teacher playing a fun, inventive and totally wonderful version of one of my favourite pieces of music is not something I'll forget in a hurry. Marvellous. I was sitting next to another of her 'free tickets' who turned out to be an Austrian and also the chattiest person I've ever met. She was warm, crazy and as unlike Arnold Schwarznegger as it's possible to be. After the show she insisted on dragging me backstage for a private congratulation of the star (despite my very English protestations) and we all went out afterwards for a beer. Turns out that my piano teacher's German boyfriend is not the grump I first took him to be, but actually has a super-dry and unassuming humour. The kind of person who's eye-twinkle you can't believe you originally didn't notice, once you have.

My second trip to Darmstadt in as many weeks was the result of a spontaneous "right, I want to see live music right now. What's on right now!". A San Fransisco band were playing here, a crazy old Gothic mansion converted into a student arts centre, covered in hip posters and graffiti and entertaining the local kids. Such a thing could somehow just never be allowed in England. We prefer to leave our crumbling old buildings empty and unloved, out of respect. Spontaneous decision-making is great but it does tend to leave one a little short of time. The buses and trains we'd need to get to get there were all a bit awkwardly timed so we decided to take my car. Sounds like a great alternative right? The only problem with this car is that it had only been driven once in the last 3 months (and had since been covered in snow for a week on several occasions), it was massively falling apart on several fronts, and I was uninsured to drive it. So far so bad.

Things really came to a head though when we got off the Autobahn on the outskirts of Darmstadt. The brakes failed. I managed to stop us at the traffic lights using a combination of the handbrake, the automatic gear box and about 300 metres of happily empty road but things were not good. We were in the middle of nowhere in a car that had gone from old friend to total death trap in seconds. We decided to hobble on, driving slowly and using what brake capacity still functioned (I found that by pressing the brake pedal in a certain way I could, on one occasion out of two, slow the car down). We were lost. All was not well.

To cut a long and sweaty-palmed story short, we made it to the Gothic mansion and immediately checked out the bus/train solution that would get us home. The car was to remain in that old, forgotten car park outside the crumbling Gothic mansion forever. We travelled home in security and the car remains there to this today.

In the meantime, getting the train meant we had to miss the main act, but saw a brilliant support from Frankfurt Kinks/Beatles psychadelic four-piece BEES. They were as tight as Brian Wilson in a John Lennon costume and twice as tuneful. We will be seeing them again (somewhere closer to home!).

In other news, I've arrived in Dubai alive and well. It's hot and deserty here but we've already swum in the sea once, and had a cocktail on a hotel roof terrace. A long way from the icy ostend of Frankfurt...

Next time pictures of camels are guaranteed.

Rob