An excerpt from Thomas-Wolfgang Rohan’s memoir stories, Got a Cigarette? Like the Camel straights the author formerly smoked, this tale of his first visit to Germany is UNFILTERED.
Mega Bright in Germany…
I once ran away to Germany for a while to live with a girl I had never met…
but wrote to via letters, with a pen and paper. She lived in Lippstadt Germany with her sister and her nephew. It was a challenge to say the least, but it was certainly an adventure in impulsively pursuing the craziest whims of my youth. I was playing heavy metal in a band in Northern California, and I needed a break. I’d flown over from America with my Carvin LB-75 maple top 5 string bass, a small travel case, and had long blonde hair. I had two layered leather jackets on, 3 pairs of Levi’s 501 jeans, two cartons of American Spirit cigarettes, my cigarette case, a zippo lighter, and about $1500.00 cash. It was 1995, and Germany had Deutschmarks, not Euros.
It was pre-EU and pre-Markel migration madness of 2016, so Germany was almost 100% German when I arrived. There were the usual immigrants from Turkey and other Eastern European countries, but it was extremely clean, safe, and beautiful everywhere I traveled. I used to smoke weed and cigarettes, on a daily basis, so I was prudent not to bring any Humboldt County “Northern Lights” with me. Northern Californian Lights bud was a solid packed, seedless bud covered with purple and red hairs, which were respectably coated with a white sticky resin, and was so dense, smoking a small amount required a “torch” lighter. A normal lighter would fail to light the bowl.
You would have to use tweezers and scissors (always a part of your bong/pipe smoking paraphernalia) to cut and place a piece of this powerful NorCal weed. The smell is unmistakable. It smells like pinecones and bubble gum mixed together, and one bong hit of this amazing marijuana will keep you seriously high for about 6-8 hours…of course I didn’t bring any with me to Germany, I would ask about getting “something” while I was there. I was informed that hashish was very easy to get, and not to worry…but was also strictly told absolutely not to buy any hash around the train stations on my way up from Frankfurt.
My adventure took me from SF to Vancouver, Canada (where I was promptly searched thoroughly and asked if I had any drugs or weapons on me): I guess I just “had that look” about me, plus I’d just flown in from San Francisco, California. After my security search in Canadian customs, I had a 4 hour wait to board my 11-hour Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.
I spent the entire time at the bar drinking with some friendly Canuck construction workers getting ready to fly over to Japan to work some post-earthquake repairs-they were going over for 6 months and were trying to drink as much Moosehead beer as possible before their flight. I joined in and did my part to help. I was a heavy metal Californian bass player drinking with a bunch of Canadian construction workers, laughing, telling jokes, and really having a wonderful time with an American Spirt hanging out of my mouth. After 3 hours, I was ending each sentence with “eh??”
I just love the Canadian people.
Four hours later I boarded my Lufthansa 747 and collapsed into my plush seat. A very busty blonde super model walked up to me dressed in some type of military outfit and offered me a pillow, then she asked if I would like a Bavarian Hefeweizen. I answered in perfect German, and realized she was just a Lufthansa stewardess. It was 1995. All the stewardesses looked like Claudia Schiffer, Anna Nicole Smith, or Pamela Anderson with heavy German accents.
I love the Germans!!
It was German women that the Barbie Doll was modeled from, and that pretty much says it all. German women are some of the most drop dead, gorgeous women on Earth, and that’s just a fact. My flight was smooth, luxurious, and relaxing. My dinner and breakfast were served with real silverware, I had limitless wine, beer, coffee, or hot-chocolate, I was given a warm towel for refreshing after 8 hours of flying and of course I could smoke my cigarettes anytime I wanted.
Upon arriving in Frankfurt am Main, I found out you could pretty much smoke EVERYWHERE, unlike California. The only areas with smoking restrictions were Hospitals and Elementary Schools. Amazing.
I boarded my train directly from the airport which took me over to the massive main station, where I transferred to my link which traveled north along the Rhine Valley next to the Romantic Rhein River. Compared to the smartly dressed German gentlemen and incomprehensibly well-dressed women, I looked like a homeless bum traveling with my bass guitar case and carry-on luggage. I dozed off from my jet-lag, safely surrounded by professional commuters, housfraus and schoolgirls as my train galloped along the track north to Düsseldorf, then a transfer at Dortmund, then out to Lippstadt.
It was the beginning of November and getting colder by the minute. There were many shady characters hanging around the train stations asking if I wanted to buy some hash. I listened to my German friends’ advice and ignored them—continuing on to my destination. I guess I looked like someone who would’ve been a good customer (and I really was)! I was picked up by an incredibly beautiful dark-haired German girl driving a beat-up Opel car…it was my girlfriend and her nephew ‘Chopper.’
When we got back to her apartment, a Cold war, 20 story, ugly cement structure, that looked like it was designed by an industrial company, her nephew asked me for a cigarette and how much hash I wanted. I simply said, “Ten Deutschmarks worth.” Chopper smiled and gave me a wink and said “Ausserordentlich!”
Thirty minutes later he returned and tossed me a brick of hash the size of a full deck of cards. My jaw hit the floor. It was wrapped in brown wax paper, sealed with a red wax stamp, and when I broke the seal, there was a gold foil wrapped, solid hash brick stamped with the same seal as the wax: A lone camel standing on a sand dune, with the crescent moon and star. The hash brick was jet black and weighed 16 ounces. I was holding the best of Lebanese hash, the crown jewel of the middle East, the Holy Grail of stoners around the world…the kind of stuff that would give a 70-year-old hippie a boner…enough hash to easily last me more than 5 years, and I just paid around $19.50 American for it! I just love the Lebanese people in Germany!
My German girl-friend Manuela was a strange bird indeed. She had invited me to come to Lippstadt, only to find multiple ways for me to pay for things. Apparently, she assumed all Americans are extraordinarily rich. Either that, or she was just a selfish, petty, bitch that just thought men were made to exploit; both conclusions were very possible.
I did bring a substantial amount of cash with me, but that was just to be on the safe side and of course it is customary to bring gifts to a German household which I did in the form of American cigarettes, and some new Levi’s 501’s. At that time a pair cost around $35.00 in America, but in Germany they sold for around $150.00, I don’t know why, but Levi’s and cigarettes were a great thing to bring over to Europe in the 90’s. This was also right after the Berlin Wall came down so there were a lot of Eastern Europeans fresh out of Communism and extremely excited about Western products. I heard of a guy from the USA that traded a pair of new Levi 501 jeans for a used Fiat car in East Germany. No joke.
I gave these as a gift, and they were well received. The cigarettes were like Gold though…I could get a couple of 1 litre beers for one smoke! Very cool. American Spirit cigarettes were not sold in Germany. The main brands were Marlboro and Camel, but there were only 19 in a box instead of 20. I thought that was odd.
A pack of Marlboro or Camels cost 5 Deutschmarks as well, which was about 7 bucks American…so not cheap either considering it was 1995. My girlfriend, her sister, and her nephew smoked like chimneys. They were what one considered HEAVY SMOKERS. We were once walking together, and when I finished my cigarette by normal standards, I threw it on the sidewalk and stepped on it (this was normal back then). They all three had a look of horror on their faces. She chided me for being a wasteful American by not smoking my cigarette all the way down to the filter! “Holy fucking shit,” I thought, “these Germans are damn hard-core about their cigarettes…” After a while I began to reconsider my host’s “hospitality” and made plans to return to Santa Cruz, California—the sooner the better.
However, I realized there was NO WAY I could ever smoke that much hash by myself, certainly wasn’t going to ditch it, and so I would embark on another adventure: Making friends with the German stoners in Lippstadt!
A Norwegian Wood in Germany
There’s a certain affinity between Metal-heads and Punk rockers. Both are hard-core fans of music and culture who have been looked upon with a certain disparity and disgust, while also attracting some of the most talented and intelligent people Western Civilization has ever produced. Most punk rockers and metal-heads are very well read, insightful, creative, adventurous and despite their veneer of violence and brutality, extremely kind, generous, and honest. You can not be a poser, in other words “fake”. One can not “fake” being a metal-head or a punk-rocker, just like a fish can’t fake being a lizard…it would take mere seconds until the natural environment would kill it once upon trying to do so. It’s the same in the Punk-rock and Metal-head world.
Another aspect of these two cultures is a very strong bond of love for one another. Very strong. If you see a Metal-head or Punk…. ANYWHERE, it matters not what language they speak, what country they’re from, what sexual-preference or identity that they may have…nothing matters EXCEPT they’re FAMILY. You are both part of some form of planetary brotherhood and sisterhood. You will fight, drink, party, and possibly even die for each other when it comes to defending the sacred bond of Metal and Punk. Both branches of this tribe have NO PROBLEM throwing a hard punch to the face, but given the choice both would rather get high, or get drunk and fuck rather than fight…maybe it’s some type of genetic trait of Alpha Males and Alpha Females that pulls some of these people towards Metal and Punk, and yet so many of its tribe are the worst abused, weak, and vulnerable of society who also find a place in the family that ensures they are jealously protected and cherished by their family of Metal heads and Punks.
I was in Westphalia, Lippstadt, Germany, just another California Metal-head, and was embraced and taken into the home of two wonderful, happy, fun Punk-rockers. He had a black spiked collar, with a huge green spiked mohawk, and she had a matching pink spiked mohawk, with about 8-inch spikes protruding from the back of her head to the front. She wore a black latex mini-skirt and massive thigh-high laced black tanker boots with spikes on the heels and a tight black leather jacket.
We had two things in common: Music/culture and we wanted to party. I had a good amount of hashish and they offered to introduce me to a wide variety of local German beers and a new way to smoke hash. I first I had to agree NOT to leave until the next morning because we were about to get “Mega bright” the local slang for “really, really high”. Being the kind and considerate punks that they were, they were concerned about my safety. They didn’t want me stumbling across town completely wasted, trying to find my girlfriend’s place in a city I’d just arrived in. Even though Lippstadt was quite safe, and rather small, they still insisted I stay overnight so there was no reason for concern, just how wasted I got.
They brought me into a room with posters of European Punk Rock bands, some comfy chairs, and a small sofa next to a white painter’s bucket full of water. There were ashtrays everywhere for cigarettes, and she came back from the kitchen carrying a large wooden crate full of 1.5-liter bottles of beer. I thought to myself, “My God that’s a lot of beer!” We sat down around the bucket of water, and I pulled out my small brick of hashish which we preceded to cut into small, tiny slivers and place on a small silver tray. I was interested in how this was all going to work. Then she produced a one-liter plastic bottle that had the bottom cut from it, on top was a Cup shaped bowl that they preceded to put black Turkish tobacco into. Then using some tweezers, they cut the slivers of hashish and mixed it in to the tobacco.
I thought to myself, “Holy shit, I like to smoke cigarettes and I like to get high but doing both at the same time seemed really, really, intense.” He lit the top of the bowl, pushed the plastic water bottle to the very bottom, so the water was just underneath it, placed the bowl back on top of it and slowly pulled it up, sucking air through the hashish and tobacco, and filling the litre bottle full of dense, light blue smoke. This was a gravity bong. Then he took the bowl off and told me to come over and take a ‘hit of smoke’ as he slowly pressed the bottle back down into the water.
The combination of hashish and tobacco was like a steam train hitting my lungs at 190 miles an hour. I was not used to the tobacco and THC combination and for a moment saw millions of black spots fill the room, I got so dizzy I thought I was having an out of body experience. I collapsed down into the comfy couch and recovered from a head rush that was so gnarly I was absolutely convinced there was nothing I could do to even leave the room let alone find my way back to my girlfriend’s apartment. They opened me an ice-cold German beer and I relaxed ‘The German way’ for the next 12 hours.
We talked a lot about music and the cultural differences between United States of America and in Germany. It was really nice and relaxing to have such genuine hospitality from two strangers I’d just met a couple of hours ago. The next morning, I woke up on the couch covered in a warm Dachstein wool blanket and a soft goose down pillow underneath my head. I got up and thanked my German hosts, then headed back across Lippstadt in the early morning.
As I got half-way across town, I realized I’d left my cigarettes and went back. When my Punk rock stoner friends opened the door to their 500-year-old Bauhaus I was greeted by a neatly dressed gentleman wearing a pink cashmere sweater, under a houndstooth business jacket, tan wool slacks and brown alligator wingtip shoes. My friend had transformed into his Monday-Friday attire to go to his bank manager job. His hair was combed neatly into a black side part.
He casually mentioned that his girlfriend worked as an Intensive Care Surgical Nurse, as she emerged transformed into a professional looking fraulein, with the pink dye washed out of her long blonde hair. Her hair was braided into a long ponytail, and she was wearing brown leather shoes, belt and a matching purse and wristwatch, all wrapped up around her short pink wool skirt. She looked like a model from Vogue.
I was flabbergasted at their transformation from Punk-rockers to Professionals. They simply said they’re Punk rockers, when they want to relax away from their work, and Professionals when they must go to work. “We work very hard, then we relax very hard,” he simply stated. “It was great to meet you and have spent time with us,” they both said and handed me my cigarettes. Schuss!
Got a Cigarette? is an “inspirational series of short stories that reveal a method of overcoming negative physical and mental addictions with practical and effective methods that have been proven to work from the authors personal experience. Serious, funny and sentimental real-life experiences from all walks of life.” Kindle Amazon 95pp. $9.99 at this link: Got a Cigarette?
Writer, Thomas-Wolfgang Rohan was born in Northern California. He studied at two Universities in Colorado (the good ones). His professors encouraged his colorful language and creative mind to write a book, it took him a while to finally do so, as he thought being a writer was for “older people.”
After numerous positions as executive chef, genetic scientist, and river rafting guide, he is now an ex-pat from the Golden State, living in Nevada at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Lake Tahoe. Rohan has been a bassist since age ten and has written, played and recorded with many bands and artists in California.