modelled on the church of San Vitale at Ravenna, and all that remains of a palace complex mostly destroyed during the Second World War. The cathedral was small and dark but exquisite, with its domed roof, its striped bands of contrasting marble and its stained glass, so rich that it seemed almost liquid. It must have been cramped even in Charlemagne’s day – it couldn’t seat more than a hundred or so – but every inch of it was superb. It was one of those buildings that you don’t so much look at as bathe in. I would go to Aachen tomorrow to see it again.
Afterwards I passed the closing hours of the afternoon with a gentle stroll around the town, still favouring my sore ankle. I looked at the large cobbled Marktplatz and tottered out to the preternaturally quiet residential streets around the Lousberg park. It was curious to think that this pleasant backwater was once one of the great cities of Europe, the seat of the Holy Roman Empire, Charlemagne’s capital. I didn’t realize until I turned again to Gilbert’s history of the Second World War a day or so later that Aachen was the first German city to fall to the Allies, after a seven-day street battle in 1944 that left almost the whole of it in ruins. You would never guess it now.
In the evening I went looking for a restaurant. This is often a problem in Germany. For one thing, there’s a good chance that there will be three guys in lederhosen playing polka music, so you have to look carefully through the windows and question the proprietor closely to make sure that Willi and the Bavarian Boys won’t suddenly bound onto a little stage at half-past eight, because there is nothing worse than being just about to tuck into your dinner, a good book propped in front of you, and finding yourself surrounded by ruddy-faced Germans waving beer steins and singing the ‘Horst Wessel Lied’ for all they’re worth. It should have been written into the armistice treaty at the end of the war that the Germans would be required to lay down their accordions along with their arms.
I went up to six or eight places and studied the menus by the door but they were all full of foods with ominous Germanic names – Schweinensnout mit Spittle und Grit, Ramsintestines und Oder Grosser Stuff, that sort of thing. I expect that if ordered they would turn out to be reasonably digestible, and possibly even delicious, but I can never get over this nagging fear that I will order at random and the waiter will turn up with a steaming plate of tripe and eyeballs. Once in Bavaria Katz and I recklessly ordered Kalbsbrann from an indecipherable menu and a minute later the proprietor appeared at our table, looking hesitant and embarrassed, wringing his hands on a slaughterhouse apron.
‘Excuse me so much, gentlemens,’ he said, ‘but are you knowing what Kalbsbrann is ?’
We looked at each other and allowed that we did not.
‘It is, how you say, what ze little cow thinks wiz,’ he said.
Katz swooned. I thanked the man profusely for his thoughtfulness in drawing this to our attention, though I dare say it was a self-interested desire not to have two young Americans projectile-vomiting across his dining-room that brought him to our table, and asked him to provide us something that would pass for food in middle America. We then spent the intervening period remarking on what a close shave that had been, shaking our heads in wonder like two people who have stepped unscathed from a car wreck, and discussing what curious people the Europeans are. It takes a special kind of vigilance to make your way across a continent on which people voluntarily ingest tongues, kidneys, horsemeat, frogs’ legs, intestines, sausages made of congealed blood, and the brains of little cows.
Eventually, after walking some distance, I found an Italian restaurant called Capriccio just around the corner from my hotel on Theaterstrasse. The food was Italian, but the staff were all German. (I could tell from the
Afterwards I passed the closing hours of the afternoon with a gentle stroll around the town, still favouring my sore ankle. I looked at the large cobbled Marktplatz and tottered out to the preternaturally quiet residential streets around the Lousberg park. It was curious to think that this pleasant backwater was once one of the great cities of Europe, the seat of the Holy Roman Empire, Charlemagne’s capital. I didn’t realize until I turned again to Gilbert’s history of the Second World War a day or so later that Aachen was the first German city to fall to the Allies, after a seven-day street battle in 1944 that left almost the whole of it in ruins. You would never guess it now.
In the evening I went looking for a restaurant. This is often a problem in Germany. For one thing, there’s a good chance that there will be three guys in lederhosen playing polka music, so you have to look carefully through the windows and question the proprietor closely to make sure that Willi and the Bavarian Boys won’t suddenly bound onto a little stage at half-past eight, because there is nothing worse than being just about to tuck into your dinner, a good book propped in front of you, and finding yourself surrounded by ruddy-faced Germans waving beer steins and singing the ‘Horst Wessel Lied’ for all they’re worth. It should have been written into the armistice treaty at the end of the war that the Germans would be required to lay down their accordions along with their arms.
I went up to six or eight places and studied the menus by the door but they were all full of foods with ominous Germanic names – Schweinensnout mit Spittle und Grit, Ramsintestines und Oder Grosser Stuff, that sort of thing. I expect that if ordered they would turn out to be reasonably digestible, and possibly even delicious, but I can never get over this nagging fear that I will order at random and the waiter will turn up with a steaming plate of tripe and eyeballs. Once in Bavaria Katz and I recklessly ordered Kalbsbrann from an indecipherable menu and a minute later the proprietor appeared at our table, looking hesitant and embarrassed, wringing his hands on a slaughterhouse apron.
‘Excuse me so much, gentlemens,’ he said, ‘but are you knowing what Kalbsbrann is ?’
We looked at each other and allowed that we did not.
‘It is, how you say, what ze little cow thinks wiz,’ he said.
Katz swooned. I thanked the man profusely for his thoughtfulness in drawing this to our attention, though I dare say it was a self-interested desire not to have two young Americans projectile-vomiting across his dining-room that brought him to our table, and asked him to provide us something that would pass for food in middle America. We then spent the intervening period remarking on what a close shave that had been, shaking our heads in wonder like two people who have stepped unscathed from a car wreck, and discussing what curious people the Europeans are. It takes a special kind of vigilance to make your way across a continent on which people voluntarily ingest tongues, kidneys, horsemeat, frogs’ legs, intestines, sausages made of congealed blood, and the brains of little cows.
Eventually, after walking some distance, I found an Italian restaurant called Capriccio just around the corner from my hotel on Theaterstrasse. The food was Italian, but the staff were all German. (I could tell from the
Similar Books
