Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play

by Danny Wallace

  “Um… yes,” I said.

  “Well… we need you pay now, before I can give key.”

  This was suspicious. If I’d been buying a car or adopting an orphan I might have thought twice. But I handed over my credit card and shrugged. I’d seen a picture, after all—surely I didn’t need to see anything else. The lady ran the card through the system, never once taking her eyes off me, and then handed me a massive key, attached to a large block of orange plastic the length and width of a brick, but heavier.

  “Are you here to see football?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Kind of,” I said.

  “You must be very big fan,” she said. “You must love football game.”

  “Well, I’m here to see a friend as well,” I said. “An old friend.”

  “He must be very old friend,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s 102.”

  I laughed lots and lots. She didn’t laugh at all. Her eyebrows remained perfectly still and blue.

  “You go down this,” she said instead, pointing to a corridor somewhere off to the left. As I wandered off, I turned round to see her still looking at me with a mixture of confusion and fear on her face. I walked on.

  There was a strange smell in the air. It was manly, and musky, and reminded me of cheap nightclubs and angry, fighting men. As I found my room, I also found the source of the smell. The cleaner—and it’s hard to call someone that when they actually look dirtier than you do—was doing a spot of air freshening by walking down the hallway with her finger jammed down on a can of Lynx. This is how I used to make my room smell nice when I was a student, and it did not work. I scrabbled to get the key in the lock and managed to force the door open just in time to avoid total saturation by the smell of a thousand teenage boys. And then I saw my room. Well, I couldn’t help it. One step in and I was already halfway through.

  It was tiny. Absolutely tiny.

  Every piece of furniture had been shoved into one small corner. The TV—one of those wood-paneled push-button ones that one day no one will believe ever existed—was rammed with the sink, the bin, everything, all into one corner. There was a dirty bar of soap face down on a damp table. The window couldn’t be opened because it was jammed shut by the communal bins outside. There were wires where lights should have been. The cold tap spat water around the bowl, unpredictably and perilously close to the telly. There was no toilet or shower. There was a three-inch gap between the floor and the door. I stood there and blinked at it all a few times. And then I blinked a few more times, because the cleaner must have been in here a few minutes ago and the fumes were prickling my eyes. I looked around me and tried to convince myself that this was £290 well spent. And then I realized that looking around me wasn’t helping my case.

  I went out. I’d be making friends again with Tarek at six. For now, I’d make friends once more with Berlin.

  When I’d first arrived in Berlin, in 1990, I had never been anywhere like it before. The closest I’d been was probably Leicester, and it’s very hard to get excited about seeing Leicester. It had been the height of summer and the city was bright and vast. From my little seat at the back of the van I’d looked up as we drove down Unter den Linden to see the Brandenburg Gate in the distance. The entire street was lined on both sides with precisely the same model of pale blue Trabant—the car which millions of East Germans would save for millions of years to buy. The same car which, in thirty years of production, was never once updated or changed. The same car which was originally supposed to have been a three-wheeled motorbike, but which the designers decided to change at the last minute and sell as a car. It was an incredibly odd sight. There must have been hundreds of them… and now, as I walked down the same street, I couldn’t spot even one. Just beemers. And Mercs. And slick, silver Audis. Things had changed. So I went to try and find the Berlin I knew.

  Almost immediately, I found myself riding the U-Bahn to Oskar-Helene-Heim, the tube station I’d used every day in Berlin. At the stand outside, I bought a currywurst and a beer, with chips and mayonnaise piled on top, just as I’d done when I was thirteen. Apart from the beer, I mean. I walked past my old flat on Gary Strasse, the scene of the KGB invasion, with its parquet floors and tall white walls. I wandered through the park that I’d first eaten Oreos and drunk Mountain Dew and played baseball in… past the duck pond which froze solid in the winter and which I once fell into trying to rescue a frozen fish which turned out to be a large brown stick. Down the streets around Dahlem, where I’d cycled with the small Russian kid who’d lived downstairs. Grisha. Grisha Kozlov. I wonder what he’s up to these days?

  I got the bus down to Zehlendorf, towards JFK. I walked through the park next to it, and remembered the shaving-foam fight on the last day of school, when the entire park had turned white, and the entire park smelled just as my hotel room smelled now. I found the tree that Tarek and Josh and I would sometimes sit under when we couldn’t face geography and would decide to skip class and eat apples. And then I hopped back on the U-Bahn and made my way into town again, doing my best to take in exactly the landmarks I remembered best as a kid. The Gedächtniskirche, the church in the center of Berlin, with the spire damaged in the air raids of the Second World War still as it was… the KaDeWe shopping center and the bright blue Mercedes sign that shines over a darkened Berlin like a second moon… the TV Tower, built as a symbol of communism—but which annoys all communists on sunny days as a giant cross appears on its huge, curved windows… then, further into town, a stop at Checkpoint Charlie, where somehow, sixteen years on, men are still making a living from selling pieces of the Berlin Wall which must surely have run out a day or a week after it actually fell… where tourists snap up symbols of the past, tottering home in oversized Russian military gear, or having their passports stamped with the words CHECKPOINT CHARLIE.

  Seeing Loughborough again after so many years had been one thing. I’d found it interesting that the Wimpy was still there, for example. But seeing Berlin, a city which had been through so much, been given a second chance, been made into the capital of Germany while I’d been living there, was quite another. It was such a confident city. Confident of its place, of its cool, of its future.

  Perhaps, of course, it had something to do with the World Cup. All around me, all day, had been football fans in various states of dress and sobriety. I’d seen desperation in the face of a wild-eyed Italian, tapping strangers on the shoulders and holding up a sign saying ICH BRAUCHE A TICKET. I’d seen love gently blossom between a girl in a France top and a boy in an Italy top. I’d seen tension, as a drunken Italian in a central square kicked a ball as high as he could in the air, only to watch with simple-faced horror as it came smashing down on a table full of Germans and beers. I’d seen a man inexplicably wearing a North Korea shirt, a girl bringing a pizza to a cheering group of rival fans, and a poodle that someone had sprayed red, white and blue. The at mo sphere was incredible. Berlin was a party town at the best of times. Berlin was a party town, in fact, at the worst of times. But now Berlin had a reason.

  I wandered down a side street, away from the Ku’Damm, and found the pub that Tarek and I had agreed would be our meeting point. From here, we could easily make our way to the Brandenburg Gate to watch the final on the big screens. I found a seat on a bench outside and sat in the late afternoon sun. A group of very drunk Germans were at the next table. One of them, sporting a look I genuinely thought had died out as the Wall came down (mustache, spiky-topped mullet, tight black jeans and large white sneakers), was leading the group in a rendition, bizarrely, of “Rule Britannia.” There appeared to be no reason for this whatsoever, and no reason for the group to segue seamlessly into “The Final Countdown.” It was a bold move, combining two such distinct genres with such reckless abandon, but it worked out for them, and I had to applaud their progressive attitudes. Internally, I mean. I didn’t stand there and applaud a load of blokes with mullets singing “Europe.” But I smiled my appreciation, and they l
ooked at me and raised their glasses and cheered. Berlin was a lovely place to be.

  The men, though, quieted down as they saw two guys approach. They were tall, and broad, and they looked like trouble. One was wearing a hoodie with his cap pulled down low. The other was wearing a basketball top over a T-shirt and a similar cap. I could see a small spark of bling—nothing too flashy, just hints—but I looked away the second I thought I’d caught the eye of one of them, choosing instead to find my Coke suddenly and profoundly fascinating.

  A bad thing involving strangers has only ever happened to me once, on the night of my eighteenth birthday, when I’d been walking happily through Bath, and a group of lads had caught my eye and strode confidently up to me.

  “You called my name,” said the first and biggest of the three.

  “Um… no, I didn’t,” I said, which was true. I didn’t even know his name.

  “Well, you called me a twat, then,” he said.

  There were so many things I nearly said at that point, but eventually settled on, “Nope,” which turned out, oddly, to be the wrong answer, as they started trying to hit me with their chubby fists, all at once. (Although a terrible experience, I did at least manage to accidentally steal the biggest lad’s watch as, ten years too late, I finally did as Karate George had advised and attempted to work on my block. Having worked at Argos, I knew this watch—a Seiko—was worth at least sixty-five quid, so it wasn’t such a bad night, all told. Although I later destroyed the watch with a hammer and threw it off a bridge.)

  The thing is, I’m a firm believer in the kindness of strangers—in the fact that strangers really can be friends you haven’t met yet—and other things you might sometimes find on a bumper sticker. I relish the chance to meet new people, and I have found that wherever you go on this strange little earth of ours, you will generally find that they are good. But rightly or wrongly, sometimes you feel awkward. Sometimes you feel strange. Sometimes you feel nervous. You shouldn’t—there’s generally no reason to. But as the two big lads in their hoods and their caps sat down next to me, I suddenly felt all three.

  I shouldn’t have. Because one of these strangers was a friend.

  “Danny?”

  As soon as I’d realized it was him, Tarek and I had hugged, and shaken hands, and then slapped each other on the shoulders, like men.

  “So cool you came over here!” he said.

  “A friend’s worth a flight!” I said. “I’ve always said that!”

  We started to gabble incoherently about the old days and all the memories we shared, like two old women with too much to say. It must have been slightly off-putting for his friend, a tall and handsome man known as Chris. Well, Chris to his pals—“BRD” to everyone else.

  “What does BRD mean?” I asked.

  “Beste Rapper Deutschlands,” said Tarek. “The Best Rapper in Germany.”

  This was quite a confident name. How had his mother known that her baby would be the best rapper in Germany? It’d be terrible if he’d turned out to be rubbish.

  “It’s my artist name,” explained Chris.

  “How do you mean?” I asked, and Tarek told me.

  BRD!

  BRD, in short the best rapper Germany’s, celebrates his new entry with a song that leaves no question unanswered. Those, who do not know him will tremble and can go home. Those who listen to him will be part of a new era. He works knowledgeably with the German language without appearing cheap. Battle? Yes of course, but finely chiseled, of high karate, he lets the whole German scene splinter, like Glass. BRD is proud but does not glorify anything. The more one hears him, the more facets will be opened. Statement meets announcement and become a powerful word tornado of images which are exploding in one’s brain. It is difficult to explain BRD and his songs in words. What remains is complete bewilderment… “it is true. Life make me hard and almost spiteful, I am like somebody working on an Oil-rig. Day and night occupied…”

  Tarek, as you may have worked out by now, does not work in IT. Nor is he an architect, a Fijian chief, or a bloke who’s solved one of the great human mysteries of all time. He is, instead, it turns out… one of Germany’s premier hip-hop artistes.

  Yes.

  I couldn’t believe it, either. It was brilliant.

  He certainly looked the part. He’d gone from respectable and bespectacled to the kind of bloke you see in music videos holding Uzis and shouting that life is terribly unfair, but it’s so lovely to have bitches and dough.

  And the more he told me about his new career, the better it got. Tarek was one of the brains behind Hitmen Music, a collective of German hip-hop figures with their own label, studios and a growing and glowing reputation… and BRD was one of its first artists. I was rather impressed and deeply happy at the turn of events. I’d only been in Germany a matter of hours and already I was sitting next to the country’s best rapper.

  And here was Tarek. A little older, a little bigger, a little wiser. And very proud of der Beste Rapper Deutschlands.

  “We’re pressing the new single, right now. And we got a new distribution deal, so things are going well. Life’s good, man. Company’s doing well, I’ve got a baby girl… I got married, to Anna-Re. I met her through hip-hop, she does it too. How about you?”

  “Married as well. Not to a rapper though. And no kids.”

  “Do it—it’s the best thing in the world.”

  “But the rapping,” I said, keen to know more. “How did that start?”

  I was struggling to remember music class and whether rapping had been an option.

  “You remember Marcus from school?” he asked.

  “Yeah—Marcus the rapper?” suddenly realizing all the clues were there in his name. “Used to hang out with that big ginger lad who called himself MC Quite White?”

  “Marcus, yeah. Well, him and me, we were just rapping all the time, trying to get a deal, and eventually we signed to Warners, signed to Universal, brought out lots of records…”

  “Seriously?” I said, genuinely amazed. “You brought out records?”

  This was incredible. My friend had brought out records. I shook my head, and swelled with pride. This made the whole Chunk from The Goonies thing fade right into the background.

  “But when the last group we had split in 2000, we thought, hey, maybe we should do our own thing. Try and start a label, try and bring stuff out, so we hooked up with this guy we know called Axl, and we figured we could just make our own music and use the money to make even more music…”

  “But is there a big rap scene in Germany?”

  “Yeah—and for ten years we were the number one English-speaking group in the country, and…”

  “Ten years?”

  “Yeah. We were bilingual—a lot of people would try rapping in En glish but it would sound ridiculous because they couldn’t even speak it. We could do both. It’s just telling stories about how kids in Germany live, the only way we know how.”

  It made complete sense. Tarek’s accent was a subtle blend of American and German—perfect for his job, and the kind of accent I’d heard every day at JFK. So much so that by the time my year was over, my accent was mildly distorted too. We hadn’t gone back to Loughborough at the end of the year. We’d moved to Bath instead, where I’d had to start making friends all over again, this time with a strange En glish-American accent. It had brought about its own set of problems. Once, at a dinner party my parents had dragged me to, I’d spent three or four hours talking to the same elderly woman, when, halfway through a story in which I was talking to her as I’m talking to you now, she’d put her hand on my arm and said, very loudly, “YOU SPEAK VERY GOOD ENGLISH.” I hadn’t known what to say, so just thanked her, and continued with the story. Only at the end of the evening did it turn out she’d thought I was Belgian.

  Tarek and the Beste Rapper Deutschlands seemed to be very nice men indeed. They’d met on the scene, in dark and dingy hip-hop clubs, when Tarek used to rap too.

  “But then I stoppe
d, and started producing instead.”

  “Did you used to be the BRD?” I asked. “When you were an… R… D?”

  Tarek looked at me blankly.

  “Or were you called something else?”

  “I go by Potna Pot.”

  For a horrible moment there, I’d assumed Tarek had said he was off to buy some pot, but he was actually just telling me his name.

  “‘P.O.T.’ stands for Phat Overloadian Tarikh,” he said, and I’d closed my eyes and nodded, like I’d been about to jump in and guess exactly that.

  “I mean, I still MC. I’m a team with a DJ. He does the music, I do the mic. We have a couple of gigs every month. DJ Reaf and Potna… we’re called Hit ’Em Up Sound…”

  HIT ’EM UP SOUND!

  At the beginning of 2002 Reaf and Potna got into contact via a common acquaintance and felt immediately that they got on with each other! The two decided to tackle a new project. And as the two do not like to pay for entry tickets and like to drink free of charge—they thought: “Why don’t we form a Soundsystem?”

  Competition and battle is the butter on their bread, and Reaf and Potna did not wait to be asked and went to many clubs across the whole republic, making many clubs unsafe! To the deepest north or the sunny south, Mr. Reaf and Mr. Potna bring their monstrous sets to your clubs!

  “But what would you rap about?” I asked.

  I’d never really been into rap. Many at JFK had tried to get me into it, playing me dainty little ditties such as “A Bitch Iz a Bitch” and “Fuck tha Police,” but it was never something I felt I could really relate to, particularly as I’d thought the police did an admirable job under sometimes very difficult circumstances.

  Tarek thought about how to answer the question, and I tried to think what stories I would tell if I could rap about my inner-city struggles, but stalled when I couldn’t think of a rhyme for “canopy.”

  “You know, we’re just trying to portray stuff for the people that live here. BRD is trying to make music for people like him. Normal kids, raised normal. Trying to live your life, trying to get by, getting into trouble—though nothing that bad…”