'Bad Things Done to Good Movies' or 'Ruling Hamburg by Housecoat'

David and I were invited to a Big Lebowski night at one of the bars in the Schanzen neighborhood. We received clear instructions that housecoats were recommended and there would be white Russian specials along with a showing of the classic Coen brother's movie. This spurred a trip to the Deutsches Rotes Kreuz (German Red Cross) store to look for a good, used bathrobe for David. We were in luck as we scored a nice, heavy bathrobe that David is lounging around in as I write this - for the bargain price of 10euro (about $15). I know it's high for second hand, but that's how Germany rolls. I also picked up a pair of jeans (used, mind you) for the low low price of 20euro (about 30 bucks). I normally don't pay that much for new jeans. But then again, I didn't take the warnings of outrageously priced denim seriously before we came here and figured 1 pair of jeans for work would be fine. They are nice jeans anyway.

But that's not the point of this story. On Saturday either David asked me (or vice versa) how high we thought the odds were that the Big Lebowski would be shown in German. You see, Germans dub everything - from movies to TV shows. It's such an epidemic, I'm a bit surprised that they don't dub music while they are at it. We agreed that the chances were pretty high and both grumbled about watching such a great movie overdubbed with strange voices - it would be like old Godzilla movies, I imagined.

But, we tried to be good sports and so David put on some tan scrubs (too cold for shorts), a white v-neck t-shirt and the 10euro housecoat and away we went. As we walked into the train station, we noticed that people were looking at David. This is to be expected, right? I mean some guy walking around in his bathrobe looking for all the world like Arthur Dent is bound to attract a few glances in any city. But this was pretty over the top. One theme we noticed almost immediately is in addition to the stares, there were lots of approving smiles, thumbs up and (I swear) dropped jaws (this one from a girl on the train as it pulled away from us on the platform). I'm not sure why an innocuous blue housecoat had such an effect, but David was digging it. Some guy actually said (in English) 'good night' to David as we got off the train, I assume implying that David was heading off for beddy-bye time.

It turns out that the white Russians were at least of high quality. A necessity given the liberties taken with the Dude's voice. I wasn't sure whether laughing or crying was the order of the day, so I drank another white lady to numb the pain. Funny too, were the three stylized German characters in the movie. We asked our friend if he knew that the directors were sort of making fun of Germans. He knew. But I don't think the translated version was nearly as funny. The outlandish German accents meant to emphasize the joke were replaced with, well, oh never mind. One thing we learned in all this is that Germans are just mad for the Dude - our friends and everyone in the bar loved the movie and had seen it about 100 times a piece.

The bar we were in started getting awfully crowded with decidely un-Dude-like people, so we decided to head somewhere else. Walking down the sidewalk, David got more wide-eyed stares and approving grins. It was like he had hit a happy nerve with the folks of Hamburg. The very best part was at the last bar of the night. We walked in and in looking for a seat we walked by a table of people, who our friend Melanie overheard saying (while pointing at David) 'He must be an artist.' As you might imagine, David was growing pretty keen on the whole bathrobe idea and seemed amenable when I begged him to do this on a regular basis (maybe like once a month or something). It's so much fun watching people react positively and I swear, David could just about run for office. Or at least ward councilman in St. Pauli. As long as he did it in his housecoat. With a white Russian.

We had a few flurries tonight - winter is settling in and the weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Markets) are just around the corner. It's very festive, although we'll have no Thanksgiving next week - boohoo. But we are going to get a Christmas tree and string it with popcorn and any other brick-a-brack we can find laying around.

Of course, I still love Hamburg and David loves his housecoat!