Freiburg

1. W.’s favourite question, that he likes to ask and be asked, ‘When did you know you were a failure?’ When was it you knew you had intelligence enough to appreciate brilliance, but not enough to be brilliant yourself? When was it you knew a great book from a merely good one, and knew you would never write neither a good book nor a great one? When was it you knew you’d never have a single thought of your own – not one?

Yet we still the desire to to think, I say. Still a kind of reflex to try to think, and to write a good book. To do what you cannot do – that for which patience will never be enough, and learning about the history of philosophy will never be enough. That which the brilliant can do and you cannot. That which is effortless for them and remains the greatest of effort for you.

‘What’s your IQ, do you think?’, says W. – ’83. I was tested. But it’s going down, year by year.’ – ‘What is it now?’ – ’77.’ – ‘So you’re an imbecile?’

2. We are travelling to the city of phenomenology, and standing at the bar on the train. We like the rowdy Germans around us. They’re playing ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ on their stereo and smoking. We’re on the train! In Germany! And off to the city of phenomenology!

On the last such jolly, I wore Hawaiian shorts, W. reminds me. That was Poland, a few years ago. All day on an old European train, being brought cheap beer and snacks, we arrived half-drunk and rowdy, like children who need looking after. This time, we’ve organised the trip by ourselves. Or rather, W. has followed me in booking flights and a hotel. It’s all going to go wrong, we know it. Still, we’re off to the city of phenomenology! Imagine that!

W.: ‘What are your impressions of Europe?’. – ‘Very flat. Very green. A lot like England.’ – ‘And what are you going to bring to Freiburg? What will be your contribution?’

That night, we wander through Freiburg. ‘It’s lovely.’ We feel ashamed and dirty. Then we come across restaurant tables in an alley. For the first time, I eat sausage, sauerkraut and mustard – it’s marvellous. W. knows how happy eating makes me. I’m a little dizzy. And then he has me try some German Sekt. A new world opens to me. ‘It’s like Cava – but nicer.’ And so it is. Like dry Cava.

Where are the others? Have they arrived yet? But W., grim faced is determined to find an internet cafe. Up and down the streets we go, until we find one in a Burger King. The keyboard is metal and its keys are sunk into the table. Hard to use your fingers. The emails come out wrong. But we are happy to be in contact with the world. Now we can go back to find them, the others.

Our friends arrive the next day – X. and Y., and Z., too, who knows W. X. insists we have to go to the reception. So up to a lobby where we are charged for drinks, and then a big, round room where food is served. It’s ghastly. ‘I want to go.’ But we have to stay. On a big screen, photographs of previous conferences. ‘This is horrible.’

Later, in the lift, I become mildly hysterical. It’s too much! It’s all too much! All of them, all the others! Later, we calm down over drinks. Here we are in Freiburg! The home of phenomenology! And what are we going to bring to the city?

3. In dead time, travelling from here to there, I try to provoke W. with my sociobiological musings. What nonsense posssesses me! Pure streaming of nonsense! Sometimes, W. talks to me very seriously of love. It’s not based on fantasy as I seem to think, he says, but is an ethical act. ‘But you’re not capable of that, are you?’

Trains and buses, across Germany. We have to get out of Freiburg. It’s stifling. Our friends A. and B. have a hotel outside the city. I write down in our book of lessons, ‘never book to stay in the conference hotel’. And then another lesson: ‘Never attend receptions. Or anything.’ We are determined to learn.

At one cafe, our Polish waiter urges us to get away. ‘This is the wrong part of town. It’s too expensive here.’ He touches his heart. ‘It hurts me here for you.’ So we wander off, our whole party, to another part of town. Where should we go? We’ve no idea. So back to the ’emergency scheisse bar’ for caiperenas. These will save us.

Now we are jolly and light again. Freiburg falls away around us. We see a rat scurrying by our chairs. A rat! But what does it matter! We have our caiperenas! In the city of phenomenology! We’ve brought nothing here but British drunkenness and British lairiness.

4. A. makes a trip to Todnauenberg. ‘Did you shit in the well?’ You can’t get near the hut, apparently. Hermann, the son lives up there. Later A. meets him. Hermann says his father turned down the Rectorship twice, and only accepted it as a favour to a friend.

So we walk up the observation tower outside the city instead. There it is, all of Freiburg! Phenomenology’s city! And who are we, who have come only to soil phenomenology and the memory of phenomenology!

5. In the bar after our paper, we drink ‘Lady Velvet’: Sekt mixed with Guinness. The barman plays The Smiths because some of our party are for Manchester. In the urinals, tiny goals with balls you can move with the stream of your piss. It’s football season, the world cup. When Germany win some game or another, the Freiburgians are as loutish as the British.

When we return from Strasbourg, Pina Coladas in an Italian ice cream bar. We’re desperate. ‘Why did we have to come back?’ X., Y. and Z. are long gone; and now it’s time to say goodbye to A. and B. Back to the hotel bar, then, once again. The hotel bar, where we ended up every night!

Then a terrible spectacle: up comes X, whom we all want to avoid. There he is! In person! I stand and shake his hand. I simper – that’s W.’s word, after. Yes, for my shame, I simper. I handle it badly, simperingly. ‘You know about my problem with authority’, I say to W., afterwards. ‘And besides, I have to make it up to him – the beer, I mean.’ I’d spilt beer on his stetson. Beer on his velvet stetson! That was years ago, but I remembered his anger.

Do you think he remembers me? He remembers everything, I’m told. So I simper. I curry favour. It’s grotesque – my worst feature. W. is disgusted. I’ve let myself down again, he says. For his part, he handled the encounter well, laughing, and keeping his distance.

6. Initially, we are excited about our breakfasts at the hotel, and plan what we’re going to eat the night before. Gradually, it wears us down: the poor coffee and the heavy, farmed salmon, and take to leaving for a cafe in the square which does Orange Peking tea (is that what it’s called). We sit and drink our overpriced tea, and I always imagine we are right by a river.

What joy when we discovered the concrete channels cut into the road which let shallow, narrow streams of water run along the street between pedestrians and traffic! I marvelled, then and later – and especially when we found that alleyway where the river itself passes through the town. Later, when we took X. and Y. there, it was not nearly as exciting. We learnt not to try to repeat our experiences. ‘Write that down in your notebook’, W. tells me.

7. Conversations on trains, in bars, when there’s nothing left to say. ‘So what’s your next magnum opus going to be about then?’ Laughter. Or I will make pans for future papers and collaborations. ‘You’re never happier than when you make plans’, says W., ‘why is that?’

We grow tired of drinking, and of German sausage. Our visit to Strasbourg soothes us. We speak hushedly, and I enjoy hearing W.’s gentle French. Exquisite Alsatian wine, the finest I’ve ever drunk. Then the cathedral, and the river, which we follow along. So many beautiful buildings, one after another! It’s too much – but at least they are really old, and not faux old as are the rebuilt buildings of Freiburg.

We find one square, then another. Water, then espresso – the first good coffee we’ve had in a while. Yes, we are in Strasbourg, and carefree. Our souls expand. When we return to Freiburg we tell everyone to go there. ‘You have to escape Freiburg. Then everything will make sense again.’ We all agree: we’ve been here too long; every thought has been driven from our heads. Who of us has read a book, or even tried?

Sitting out with a beer outside the hotel, I try to read, but there’s no point. Later, in my room, which looks out from five stories over the town and to the hills and mountains, I manage to read three essays. This is an achievement. I feel slightly more real. I’m coming into focus. But then I grow blurred and hazy again. I’ve lost all hold on myself, I tell W. So’s he. But at least he has music. We listen to mp3s on his laptop. The world comes together again.

8. One day, the clouds parted, and I could delude myself there might be something to our collaborative projects. ‘Do you think we have a position?’ At least, for a time, the illusion of having one. We have a view of this, and that.

It was a moment of clarity, such as we had on a few occasions during our trip. ‘Write it down’, says W., ‘write down our findings.’ But I’ve no notebook with me; all that’s left now is the certainty that, for a time, we were certain about things. What luxury! It was the espresso, I tell W. It was caffeinated certainty.

9. In downtime, I like to exasperate W. by my musings on diet and on sociobiology. Then I like to trace grand philosophical motifs through the Greek and the Latin. Sometimes, we speculate on what makes our clever friends clever. W. likes to work out their IQs. ‘What’s your IQ’?

You’re never witty, says W., that’s a sign of intelligence: wit. W. says he is sometimes witty, but, more generally, he’s never witty. W. is more intelligent than me, he decides. But what about those illuminated moments when the clouds part, and I have ideas? It’s true, I do have moments of illumination, W. grants.

We wander on the shady streets, trying to find another route to our favourite cafe. Freiburg won’t let us become imperceptible. We were imperceptible in Strasbourg, says W. We think of the path along the river, and the street cafe in the French city where we drank a good espresso. There’s no good coffee in Freiburg, we agree.

10. What have we learnt, from Freiburg? Always book your own hotel – away from the conference. As far away as possible. This is what A. and B. achieved, and with what were they rewarded? The sight of Husserl’s grave. Of Edith Stein’s nunnery. And what did we see?

Husserl’s grave! Stein’s nunnery! And who were we to defile this city, the city of phenomenology? Who were we to drink beer outside the Novotel? We leave without regrets. What have we learnt? Never, never come back to Freiburg, says W.