Station to Station

 

As far as trains go, I’m rather “admire from afar”. I never did Interrailing in my youth. And while I’ve nodded off on a few train journeys, I’ve never travelled in a sleeper car. The only times I’ve slept properly on a train were under a table on the way up to Aberdeen from London on a night train. And in an absolutely charming little restaurant/hotel in Germany whose name evades me - but this was a few repurposed dining and sleeper cars from an old train - a delightful experience.

Other than that, my mind has a romanticised Wes Anderson-esque view of night trains, fuelled by Agatha Christie films and the gorgeous Auden poem “Night Rail”, above.

Normally when I hear about something new from a “Berlin-based startup” I assume it’ll be something techy and not relevant to someone making serious thoughts about retirement. 

But.

Maybe by 2027 I will indeed be retired and very keen to give Nox a go. 

What a splendid thought - overnight trains across Europe with 100% personal rooms - for the price of a cheapo airfare. The plan is to connect over 100 European cities by 2035. I’m already dreaming about Budapest, Vienna, Linz and now Györ (which I had to look up) - the connections already shown from Frankfurt.

Wishing Thibault Constant and his colleagues all the best with getting this on the road - I mean tracks. 

Potemkin Perfection

 

I don’t often read recently-published novels. Probably due to my weird penchant for living in the past, and I often think the old stuff is going to be more enduring. But now and then I have a go at something new, and, in the case of Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, I was pleasantly surprised.

Here’s what I made of this tale of two digital nomads set in the first two decades of the 21st century:

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This is a brilliantly observed novel, describing in detail the life on- and offline of a young couple, from the early 2000s to 2019. I say “the life” in singular, as Anna and Tom, digital creatives, are written mainly as one entity. The pair are originally from Italy, but find their way to buzzy Berlin at the time of the digital boom and the rise of social media.

Reading the first few pages, you wonder if you’ve stumbled into a talking IKEA catalogue or similar. The style is unemotional, descriptive, rather flat. This is curious initially, but soon mesmerising as you drift into a curated, algorithmically determined world where the public persona rules supreme and reality is “stuffed away into huge, clear storage boxes.”

Of the couple, the author writes: “Anna and Tom had grown up with the notion that individuality manifested itself as a set of visual differences, immediately decodable and in constant need of updating”. Their Instagram world of curated ephemera includes vintage clothes, cupcakes, crystalline coastlines, airy apartments, flowers and book covers. And “they would find themselves utterly mesmerised by the apartment, kale salad or kitten of someone living two blocks or two continents away. They would get worked up about silly fights between strangers.”

Offline, Anna and Tom live in a similar bubble, together with kindred ex-pat creatives. They frequent trendy clubs, Instagrammable restaurants and edgy art exhibitions. This bubble is like a 21st century global digital version of a Potemkin village - curiously flat and lacking in substance.

Gradually, the pair recognise a lack of purpose or fulfillment and attempt to rectify this via volunteer work in a refugee camp. But their digital creative skills cannot be usefully deployed here.

As the years pass, the couple sense the pain of a generational change and leave Berlin, returning to Southern Europe. Although the ending hints at a new stability, one cannot ignore the date - 2019. My mind continued to tick over when I’d finished the book, wondering what happened to Anna & Tom (and their ilk) in the pandemic.

Insightful, thought-provoking, well-written and translated, “Perfection” evokes the spirit of the early 21st century in Europe (almost) perfectly.

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And even though I’m a little older than the protagonists, I had several ouch-been-there-done-that-moments.

Needless to say. I read Perfection on my Kindle, as is my wont these days. I still hanker after real books, to be honest, yet this was the perfect book to read on Kindle, which enhances that flat, Potemkin village feeling. 

Just as I’d finished the book, though, I saw a wonderful sight just down the road which could just be the start of the way back to real books. It’s kind of the opposite of a Potemkin village - an inside-out bookshop - Bruchköbel’s very own bricks and mortar brand.

Our relocated local bookshop, the Rathaus Buchhandlung, designed by the Artbau Gruppe. Congratulations to all concerned, and much success with the new shop. 

 

RETROWURST: Kik June 2007

 

What surprised me the most about my article about the fashion discounter Kik, back in June 2007, was the Creative Director asking “who?” Blimey, I thought our echo chambers were bad enough now!

Anyway, here’s how the wonderful world of Kik looked 18 years ago:

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This month, it is the turn of one of Germany’s fastest-growing retailers to be the subject of Extrawurst. A couple of weeks ago, there was a comment on one of the Brand Republic blogs about the brands “loved by metrosexuals” that seem to creep into every seminar and conference like the usual suspects. Brands like Apple, Nike and Innocent. The author called for celebration of Unfashionably Brilliant Brands such as Argos, National Express and Travelodge. Well, you will be forgiven for not being familiar with the brand I’m going to write about if you live in the UK, but I was a little worried recently when a creative director here in Germany had to ask “who?” when I mentioned this brand, so far away as it is from the world of advertising agency folk!

 

In fact, it is funny that this retailer should be a candidate for being Unfashionably Brilliant because it is a fashion retailer, Kik (www.kik-textilien.de ). Obviously the fashions that Kik sells are not really de rigueur in the creative departments of Hamburg and Berlin but no-one can deny that Kik is one of the few home-grown success stories of recent years in a somewhat lacklustre market.

 

If you have never experienced Kik, I can only say that, being kind, it is rather like a market (Wembley, if it still exists, rather than Camden Lock) or one of those “everything a pound” bazaar places. Being unkind, it is a depressing sort of jumble-sale with fashion mistakes from the last few years served up in sizes up to 6XXL!

 

Kik started 12 years ago in Bönen, Westphalia and now has over 2,000 stores with sales of around €1.2 bn (2006 estimated). The objective of the retailer is to get to 2,500 stores by the end of 2007. As Lidl has 2,750 stores here, you can get some idea of the size of the operation. The stores were originally in out-of-town locations, on bleak industrial estates but Kik is now going increasingly for city-centre locations.

 

The concept is incredibly simple: do what Aldi and Lidl do for food, but for clothing. But before you start thinking that this is a sort of German Primark, please stop. While Primark has some aspirations to fashion, style, service and even shopping experience, you can forget all of those with Kik. Kik is deliberately cheaper and no-frills-er than anyone else in the business. There are no shop-window displays or dummies in Kik. There are no bags unless you pay for them. There are no nice carpets or luxurious changing-rooms. There are a couple of mirrors in each store and a couple of tiny basic cubicles (without mirrors) should you want to try on a bikini. Generally, trying-on is discouraged as Kik worry that seeing yourself in an orange, purple and turquoise kaftan in the cold light of day could put you off purchase. On the other hand, they make a big thing of their “exchange without discussion” policy: being cynical, they probably think that, at these prices, people won’t bother to bring something back.

 

Kik relies on the impulse additional purchase. The way to the till is via a bazaar-like collection of bargains: toys, sweets, make-up and perfumes, greeting cards and wrapping paper and household goods such as rubbish bags and batteries. Most of these items sell for €1 or less. And the clothes are amazingly cheap: a T-shirt at €1.99 is cheaper than buying a pack of 8 toilet rolls!

 

Although the quality is not first-class, it is reasonable, especially for the price. Kik has some “minimum standards” ensuring that, while most of the clothes are produced cheaply in Asia, child labour is not used, nor are there any dodgy chemicals in the clothes. Although one gets the feeling that no more questions are asked than necessary about suppliers, Kik does make some effort in the direction of CSR with the “Help and Hope” Foundation, formed in 2005 to help children in poverty. However, it is not one of the top places to train or to work: there is a large turnover of staff and these are not really trusted or well-looked-after in the way that IKEA, for example, does.

 

But, going back to the clothes, one can’t really argue with the prices. Kik proclaim that you can “dress yourself for under €30” which they can certainly live up to. T-shirts are €1.99 and jeans are €7.99 – with no price increase since May 2002! Three pairs of socks will set you back a mere €1.99 and children’s jeans can be had for €4.99. In the non-clothing lines, the look-and-smell-alike perfumes are €2.99 and greeting cards and gift wrap €0.49.

 

Advertising and promotion are loud and cheerful, as you’ll experience if you click on the website link. Kik do a roaring business in outsize and there is no pussyfooting around here with size 14/16 models – the guys and girls that model the XXL collections are BIG!

Kik have found a very upfront and prominent form of promotion in terms of football tricots. As well as a number of major teams in the Bundesliga, Kik supplies kit to all manner of local and junior teams. And, when you can kit out a complete team (with a bag and ball thrown in) for a mere €99.99, who is to argue?

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Interesting that Kik foresaw and acted on the whole Plus-Size models thing - a pioneer of inclusivity if ever there was one!

In 2025, Kik are still plying their wares, successfully - with 4,200 stores across Europe. Sales have doubled to £2.4 bn since 2006. I haven’t been in there recently, but I had a quick look at the website and the usual suspects are all present and correct - paper plates with rainbow princess unicorns, sequinned denim jackets, garden gnomes. You can still get jeans for under €10 and a T-shirt for €3.49.

There was even a phase when Kik parties were a hip thing to do.

Kik have even more competition these days - not just from Aldi and Lidl - but there’s a whole army of discounters for textiles and bits & pieces - from TEDi to Takko. We’ve got a new Woolworth opening up round the corner, too.

One thing I omitted to mention in my original article is where the name comes from - it’s an acronym for “Kunde ist König”.

The customer is king (or princess). And maybe that’s less about a seamless customer journey/unique branded experience or whatever the latest buzzwords are, and more about a constantly-changing range of cheap and cheerful tat that’s within the reach of anyone’s wallet or pocket money. 

 

Heads or tails?

 

I got the sad news yesterday that the headmaster of my first school passed away recently - although he did achieve the grand old age of 96. There’s a Facebook group for ex-pupils of the school and I spent some time browsing old black and white school photos. These were taken on a summer lawn, in front of the rhododendrons, many moons ago. 

The photos were usually arranged so that there was a group of taller, wholesome-looking girls standing in front of the prize cups and trophies. A combination of being small for my age and slightly precocious as far as learning went meant I was never destined to stand behind the cups. I’m somewhere off to the side - in one photo with a badly concealed snigger. I was prone to giggles about absurd and puerile things in those days. Still am.

When I reached secondary school, the teachers were probably relieved I didn’t seem quite as oddball as my brother, who was rumoured to "drink ink and play his trumpet in the toilet.” I was never the out-and-out rebel, bad girl or geek, but I did have a slight dusting of eccentricity and subversiveness. 

Bookish and useless at most sports, I never really wanted to be like David (or Davida) Watts, in the words of The Kinks’ song (performed here by The Jam). When I got to the Sixth Form, almost everyone was made a Prefect. I was one of the few that wasn’t. That changed when I passed the Cambridge Entrance exams, though. I think the head of sixth form even invited me for a glass of sherry in his office. But I shrugged off the smarminess for what it was, played the game and wore my Prefect badge with apparent pride. Although I was more likely to have my nose in something like Colin Wilson’s The Outsider than be patrolling the corridors during Prefect Duty.

I did manage to collect a couple of “Head” titles during my career. I was “Acting Head of Market Research” during our boss’s maternity leave, then later “Head of Planning” at Saatchi Frankfurt. But along with this, I can remember at least one telling-off from a (female) boss about my dress sense. I sat there wearing a long yellow-gold jacket, leggings and pointy black shoes with gold embroidery, like some sort of gender-fluid member of Showaddywaddy. If I’d been tarty or scruffy, it would have been easier to deal with. All the boss could come up with was that the outfit didn’t convey “corporate gravitas” or some such. Again, I shrugged and smiled. Weren’t we an ad agency? Not bloody McKinsey?

But there were plenty of colleagues who did tow the line. Stick to the agenda. They were safe pairs of hands who’d probably stood behind the cups in the school photo. I note that a lot of the women I worked with in the past are now OBEs and Dames. Of course, there were the out-and-out rebels, too - and they were celebrated accordingly.

But I was always a "neither-nor" case. A bit of a chameleon, fitted in when it suited me. Had my independent thoughts but often kept them to myself. 

I found this blog post about “Head Girl Syndrome” a few years ago. It’s a little dated now and has a rather bitter tinge - and something of that "either-or" binary. But a lot of it resonated with me. A Head Girl is “a good all-rounder - pretty, popular, sociable and well-behaved.” The description has never fitted me particularly well. The long yellow-gold jacket was better. The author points out how the Head Girl type is favoured by committees, peer review processes, voting and anything that favours consensus. And how “modern society is run by Head Girls, of both sexes, hence there is no place for the creative genius.”

There is a place for the creative genius, of course, but it’s not at the top of a government or commercial organisation. 

Since 2013, when that article was written, we’ve seen yet more dumbing-down and risk aversion in politics and commerce as these are further driven by frameworks, processes, ideologies and dogma. There's a distinct lack of emphasis on independent thought. And it’s pretty obvious that the advent of AI will advance all this normalising and homogenising further despite a lot of noise about neurodiversity. Head Girl CVs are a very attractive catch for AI.

This is a brilliant article by James Marriott of The Times (sorry about the paywall) in which he bemoans the “normie-doom spiral”. In essence:

21st century Britain is beset by mediocrities who rise to the top not by doing anything right but by not doing anything wrong.

Now, I’m certainly not dumping all ex-Head Girls and Boys in with this. I’ve come to terms with my own lack of Head-Girlness. Nor do I hold myself up as a some sort of wronged and unrecognised creative genius. 

I certainly haven’t got all the money that David/a Watts has got - but I’m not a “dull and simple” lass, either.

I’m the Tail Girl. Wagging most of the time, doing the stuff I like, rather than being a nodding dog. 

But I have a sting tucked away, too.

Tell it like it is

 

Having (potentially) two Mothers’ Days (the UK Mothering Sunday in March and yesterday’s international Mother's Day) is a bit like having two passports.

When all’s going well, you get the best of both. But, more often than not, you end up sitting on the fence and not really getting much of either. 

Mothers’ Day in Germany was a bit of a mixed (old) bag for me this year.

My one offspring was not around, having absconded to Helsinki on a spontaneous jaunt with a chum. But he did deliver a couple of very fine bottles of wine before he flew off.

I didn’t receive any flowers, but I did get a delightfully kitsch heart-shaped strawberry cake, which was delicious and quickly gobbled up.

No lie-in for me*, as we had an early morning band rehearsal for our Spring concert. Two of the band’s young mums turned up, one wearing a “Beste Mama der Welte” T-shirt and the other with two small boys in tow. She spent much of the practice dealing with snacks, drinks, a few squeals and shrieks that weren’t on the manuscript, as well as at least one nappy change. 

Mothers’ Day isn’t really like this - probably not even for Meghan:

  

Amid all the kitsch and chocolates, flowers and fake smiles, it was refreshing to see this ad for the Aldi Süd brand (creative from Antoni99). 

Now, Mothers' Day and Fathers’ Day (which is Ascension Day) are always pretty close to each other in Germany. This means a film about parents and children makes a lot of sense. 

This film speaks for itself - it’s a kitsch-free yet moving look at the relationship between parents and children over a lifetime. It’s based on a powerful insight - or what we used to called a Simple Universally Recognised Truth (SURT) - “because all parents are also children.” It ends with some genuine photos of generations that Aldi customers have sent in, showing the love between parents and children of whatever age.

Now that’s what I call authentic.

*By the way, I didn’t draw the shortest of short straws - it was my husband who valiantly got up at some unmentionable hour to drive the offspring to the airport for his Finnish jaunt.

RETROWURST: Apples May 2007

 

It’s the merry month of May and apple blossom time - and 18 years ago, my Extrawurst article was all about apples. The varieties, the orchards, the cakes, the juice and that Hessian speciality, Apfelwein.

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Around about this time of year, on the gentle hills around Frankfurt, the orchards are in full bloom, which brings me on to the subject of the German – or more specifically, Hessian, love-affair with the humble apple. Although the Germans are only fourth in the European league of apple-growers, behind Poland, France and Italy, they are passionate about their apples, particularly in the Bundesland in the middle of Germany, Hessen, where I live.

 

Some 1,500 apple varieties are grown in Germany, but only 30-40 of these are widely available or commercially important. The number of varieties in general is declining with fewer and fewer home-grown varieties available in the supermarkets. The traditional way of growing apples, the Streuobstwiese, where a mix of different fruit trees of different ages co-exist in an orchard, together with typical fauna and flora, is also on the decline, being taken over by more formal – and efficient, from a commercial view – plantations. The decline of the Streuobstwiese is of concern, not only to environmentalists, but also to honey producers and many average Germans. Especially in the area around Frankfurt, it is not uncommon for people to own a few trees in such an orchard and to sell the fruit off in the autumn to one of the local producers of Apfelwein, of which more later! In almost every village there will be an active Apple or Fruit Tree Club, whose members vigorously undertake such projects as reviving old apple varieties or giving technical demonstrations of tree pruning to local schools!

 

Apples are a mainstay of German cooking and baking. The average German recipe book will give you more recipes for Apfelkuchen than you could have dreamed possible. There are apple crumble cakes, apple sponge cakes, apple strudels and even cakes made with Apfelwein! In addition, Germans munch through litres of Apfelmus, which is like apple sauce, or baby food, depending on how you look at it, every year. Apfelmus is available in huge jars in every Supermarket and, instead of a couple of spoonfuls with the Sunday roast pork; Germans ladle it over yoghurt, pancakes, quark and specially made potato fritters, or Kartoffelpuffer.

 

Moving on to the subject of juice, the Germans are a pretty thirsty nation when it comes to fruit juice, slurping through 41litres per head per year. Of this, 11.7l is apple juice, followed by orange juice at 9.8l. Apple juice mixed with mineral water (Apfelschorle) is the acceptable non-alcoholic drink for adults and the standard for children whose parents don’t want to fill their little ones with additives and nasties. The apple juice available ranges from the “industrial” fizzy drink end to the “artisan” organic end of the market.

 

At the “industrial” end is the Coca-Cola brand, “Lift”, which is a sparkling apple/water mix and sold in 1.5l Coca-Cola bottles. On the website, www.lift-schorle.de, you can see the rather alarming TV ad for Lift: it gave me bad dreams, anyway! At the gentler end of the market are a lot of more “authentic” products, often produced by smaller, local producers. Visiting the websites of these, you can easily overdose on total fruity wholesomeness! One example of a fruit juice producer local to me is www.rapps.de, another is www.beckers-bester.de.

 

Rapps also produce Apfelwein, the “national drink” of the Frankfurt region. Apfelwein is a very tart form of cider with 5.5-7% alcohol. It’s said, even by locals, that it takes at least two or three glasses before it begins to taste OK! Apfelwein is the official name, but there are almost as many different names in dialect for this drink as there are producers, centred on Franfurt in mid- and south-Hessen. Apfelwein was first recorded in Frankfurt in 1600, but there was already a Reinhaltsbestimmung (Purity Charter, similar to that for beer) in 1638, which producers still have to follow. And although too much Apfelwein can be a disaster for stomach and guts, it rarely gives you a headache!

 

Apfelwein is available at most pubs and restaurants but there are also Apfelweinlokale, marked by a green wreath over the doors, which specialise in the drink and traditional hearty Hessian food to accompany it (N.B: not recommended for vegetarians or the faint-hearted!). The rituals surrounding Apfelwein are many and strictly adhered to, even after a number of glasses! The wine is brought to the table in a large blue and grey earthenware jug, called a Bembel, which keeps it cool, and is drunk out of diamond-patterned glasses called Gerippte. It is said that these glasses come from the time before cutlery, when fingers greasy with boiled pig fat would be more likely to be able to hang onto a glass with a texture to it, especially after the second Bembel!

 

The famous Apfelwein producers in and around Frankfurt include www.possmann.de, who also run the Ebbelwei Express, a brightly-coloured tram that tours Frankfurt while the guests enjoy a glass or two of Possmann’s best. The largest producer is www.hoehl-hochstadt.de . There are many smaller producers around and many of the juice producers also make Apfelwein. One such is www.kelterei-heil.de, where the website reflects the image of the apple to the Germans: a kitschy country idyll. You will be disappointed to see that you have missed the Apfelblütenwanderung(“Apple Blossom Hike”) on the 1^st May, but you can still enjoy the photos of hearty and wholesome German folk yomping through pretty orchards on the site.

 

However, hidden within this website are signs that the humble German apple may be getting subversive in its old-age. Kelterei Heil has launched a new product called Fichtekranz. Actually, on closer inspection, it is clear that it is not a new product at all but some sort of sheep in wolf’s clothing. Fichtekranz is none other than good old Apfelwein mixed with water or with lemonade but bottled with a minimalist, trendy label. The strap line actually translates as “from happy apples” (meaning, hopefully, that it is organic, rather than injected with any dubious substances!). There is a chance for hip young things to participate in the brand, by designing their own label for it, in return for a bit of word-of-mouth promotion. Fichtekranz is available in Frankfurt’s hipper clubs which would never have dreamed of serving anything as rustic as Apfelwein.

 

So, maybe this is the way forward for a traditional drink: to use the tactics of Bionade and move Apfelwein away from the boiled pig legs and into the “see and be seen” clubs of the big city.

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As I expected, the Apfelwein producers have been busy getting a bit of modern marketing in the whole mix. The Walther family live in our street and they, for example, are constantly launching new variants based on Apfelwein to increase its appeal. There’s a rosé variety and an Apfel Secco, reflecting trends in (mainly female) wine consumption. And there are special editions, too - for example made from Braeburn apples. The design and idea has a bit of a “single malt” vibe.

But it’s not just about hip and trendy. The interest in regional, local and authenticity has given Apfelwein a boost, I suspect. Provenance and history are now something to be celebrated, not disguised in the latest cool outfit. Apfelwein culture was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2022. A former colleague of mine has opened the Apfelwein Galerie in Frankfurt, offering tastings as well as art and photography. And just down the road, in Hanau, we now have an Apfelwein Museum.

I’m hoping that in eighteen years, our harvest from Carlos (our very own apple tree) will be more impressive than last year’s ;)

BREXILE: Passport Palaver

 

I’m doing it like this. 

Brexile-related activities only every other day, for the sake of my blood-pressure and family harmony.

This is one I’d been dreading, and was actually on the cards, Brexile or no Brexile. 

The joy of passport renewal. I kept putting it off because the fiasco of 10 years ago is still horribly fresh in my mind. In those days, you could get the whole process speeded up by taking everything to HM Passport Office in person (and paying a wad of cash for the pleasure).

I braced myself, with some professionally-taken biometric photos in tow that cost me a good few €s. And all was going smoothly until my expensive photos were rejected:

My pleas that it was cream or greyish and not Persil-white were to no avail. I was shooed off to the convenient photo booth where a combination of trying to take a picture without my glasses (which are for moderate-to-severe myopia, not for vanity), no makeup and unwashed hair resulted in a passport photo that looks like a corpse dredged up from the murkier parts of the Thames.

I’m not sure it’ll be any better this time. Renewals, from overseas too, are done online. And there’s no way of telling what you’ll need to answer or find or indeed pay in total without starting the thing onscreen.

It’s not a blinking exam, for goodness sake!

Now to my favourite topic: photos. Two options were presented: go to a proper photo shop or booth, and you’ll get a nice convenient code which will speed everything up.

Or mess around doing a selfie - and woe and betide you if you take this ill-advised option.

Unfortunately it has not occured to the UK passport office that professional photographers abroad e.g., in Germany, can do proper biometric photos but haven’t heard of this code system.

I struggled on.

Next issue - I owned up to having 2 passports (maybe unwise) and learned that I had to - in addition to the soon-to-expire British passport - send either my current German passport to the UK (no way!) or get a colour photocopy of all 34 pages. Including blank ones.

My colour copier has long since been deemed incompatible with my laptop. And the local copy shop closed down many moons ago. The local stationer's came to my rescue and gave me a discount - 60c instead of 80c per sheet. So much for sustainability, though – I could have sent photos or a scan but it seems that the UK passport office prefer to waste paper.

 

My day of fun was completed by a trip to the only remaining local post office, contending with roadworks, only one woman on duty, a queue of disgruntled people …  

Can’t wait to hear that it’s all been lost in transit.