Having dealt with the ugliness of the city’s outer layer, Dad and I found our accommodation, checked in, and for the first time headed out without any insider help from natives.
Striking out on our own in Bamberg was also be the first time I actually saw the necklace wallet Mum had demanded Dad buy before we left, designed to conceal a passport and other valuables. You know, valuables like the €2000 cash they pulled out before he left just in case Europe didn’t have an ATM. Aside from ensuring Dad’s identity remained safe from anyone willing to exploit it, all those wallets did was leave everyone in line behind him frustrated as he fumbled around under three layers of clothing, trying to retrieve the correct document.
Security had become paramount for Mum and Dad since I’d moved out. Whenever I visited, they were always behind a series of deadlocks and a security-mesh door, as though the house had been relocated to the Compton neighbourhood of Los Angeles. They were never that cautious while I was growing up, the front door only really being locked when we went to bed.
Dad never owned a wallet, his rationale being that a wallet alerted would-be thieves to the pocket that contained it, therefore making you a prime target for pickpocketing, a crime I’d never heard of being committed in all my time in Melbourne. It also ignored the fact he didn’t actually having any credit cards for a pickpocket to drain, and he wasn’t exactly a mafia don walking around with fat stacks of cash held together by rubber bands. Mostly because all his rubber bands were to be used for broken wrists.
It stood to reason that if Mum and Dad were worried about safety in their home city, their paranoia was going to be at peak levels when Dad left Australian shores. According to them, the news was always filled with stories about the horrible things that happened overseas. It was true, bad things did happen everywhere. That’s life. But a nightly news bulletin is hardly going to run a story about eight tourists safely cycling through Colombia, having the time of their lives.
When I was in South America, Mum was in a state of high alert the entire time, only calling off my funeral once I’d landed back in Melbourne. By the time I flew to Afghanistan some years later, to entertain the Australian troops in Kabul, I knew not to tell her where I was headed. When I came back and told her where I’d been, seeing her bury her head in her hands told me it had been the right strategy.
The dangers of international travel are never helped by well-meaning people telling apocryphal (read: bullshit) stories. Like the time a friend of a friend was ‘robbed by gypsies after a fake baby was thrown at her, which they caught, but then she discovered her purse was gone and hours later her bank accounts were drained, her house sold and her children forced into slavery, making iPhones during the day and Nikes at night. And they had to adopt the fake baby too. But they did like the Trevi Fountain.’
I myself had narrowly avoided trouble in Pisa, almost getting my backpack stolen after making the mistake of putting it down in a tourist hotspot. A move so stupid I may as well have just started handing the contents around to strangers. ‘Just letting you know, you’re going to need an adaptor for that Australian iPad charger!’
Fortunately I was travelling with a street-smart Argentinean who was wise to the world after, amongst other things, having a gun pulled on her at the camping store where she worked in Buenos Aires. When a couple of young guys sidled over to us on the pretence of asking for a cigarette, she happily obliged, distracting them while telling me in no uncertain terms to pick up my bag, which they’d been eyeing off. I’d had no idea.
Tourists are ripe for scams and theft, particularly if they’re naive, inexperienced or the fucking idiot who walks around with a bumbag securely fastened with a flimsy plastic clip and a $10 000 camera loosely slung over their shoulder in classic ‘please steal this immediately’ fashion.
Just as Dad had been overly friendly at the outset of our journey, I had also been far too trusting on my first ever trip overseas. I stupidly assumed everyone had good intentions and wouldn’t take advantage of me. Honestly, I don’t think I even assumed people had any intentions at all, good or bad. I just didn’t think about it. I’d never been duped so didn’t even know it was a thing.
Upon my arrival in Amsterdam, when a man approached me and offered accommodation at a hostel, I immediately took it, thinking, ‘How nice is this? They come right to the train station to help people out.’
I had no idea this guy was a long-term backpacker (already suspicious) working for a commission. Once I’d checked in he couldn’t have given a shit that the hostel was located in a dodgy neighbourhood, the rooms were packed more tightly than Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison and I was hustled playing pool in the hostel games room by the guy working the front desk. I lost some cash, learned my lesson and vowed to never again overestimate my pool-playing abilities while so stoned I think I don’t have hands.
Dad hadn’t really been exposed to extreme poverty back home; we grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood, and homelessness and poverty aren’t rampant in Melbourne like they can be in other major cities. Perhaps homelessness is on the rise in the city, but he rarely goes there, so wouldn’t see it aside from what’s reported on the news.
As we wandered through the main plaza in Bamberg, my experience led me to instruct Dad to give back the religious card he’d just been handed by a homeless person. Dad had happily accepted this ‘gift’ with a smile and a genuine, ‘Thanks a lot, mate.’ Followed by utter disbelief when I told him he could only keep it if he paid for it. Which is what he was about to be asked to do.
He argued, ‘But he gave it to me.’ So I explained this was the MO for taking advantage of friendly tourists. They’d hand over the card and hope people would be too embarrassed to hand it back, preferring to fork over a small amount of money to avoid letting down a homeless person.
Handing it back with disdain, Dad was annoyed at the beggar, but also impressed with himself at being a part of an attempted scam, thus confirming his status as a proper tourist. He was even happier that I’d called out this grift without him losing any money. As we walked away, having dodged a €1 bullet, Dad raised his inner alert status to Defcon Tom (the highest). Nothing would get through his defences from here on.
Heading over the main pedestrian bridge, into Bamberg’s old town, the wheelchair beggar stood no chance. When he shook his tin at Dad, I thought, ‘Good luck with that, mate. Unless you’re offering cheap beer, you won’t see a cent.’ In Dad’s eyes you had to earn your money, and sitting in a wheelchair rattling a tin wasn’t going to cut it. Plus, what if the beggar didn’t accept euros? No way Dad was going to risk being embarrassed like that.
As we reached the other side, I suggested we double back and get a photo for Mum of the two of us standing on the bridge over the river Regnitz. As we turned and started back, we saw the beggar get up out of his wheelchair and walk away. I thought nothing of it, but Dad’s world was upended. Forget the pic for Mum – Dad wanted photographic evidence of this fraud unfolding right in front of him.
To say he was stunned is like saying the Titanic had a bit of a rough journey. Dad was personally affronted on behalf of anyone who had ever handed this man money on the assumption that he was restricted to his wheelchair. Dad’s view was that if you’re in a wheelchair, it had better be permanent, otherwise you do your begging from a regular chair. It was black and white for him: if you could walk at all, no wheelchair. The wheels were what made people cough up cash.
Dad was never big on handouts. He’d left school at fourteen to help make ends meet at home, and when he started his own family he worked extra jobs, as a barman and early mornings at the fruit markets, to help us get by. He thought relying on others was lazy. He couldn’t believe it when I went on the dole, not when there were jobs all around that I could have taken. He was right, there were, but they weren’t jobs that I wanted to do. I preferred the work the government made me do for the dole, i.e. pretending to look for a job. The White Pages didn’t open themselves, old man.
Dad
was born in post-war Bamberg in 1947, two years after his sister. It’s always been curious to me that she was born in 1945, right as Germany started to collapse, a seemingly odd time to have sex. Unless of course my grandparents were really turned on by explosions and the approaching Red Army.
In 1949 they left it all behind, emigrating to Australia for a better life as Germany attempted to rebuild. I can’t even imagine changing footy teams, so can’t comprehend what it would be like picking up your life and moving it to the other side of the world. Though I guess when you’ve just lost your second world war in thirty years, there isn’t a lot of hope for the future.
I never knew my grandfather, Roland, and on the rare occasion he was spoken about it was in hushed tones. While always stoic about the effect it had on him, it was clear Dad had zero respect for a man who walked out on his family.
I’d learned that in their early years in Australia, during Dad’s childhood, his family basically tried to assimilate as quickly as they could. They didn’t want to stand out. As migrants from the country that had fought and lost a war against Australia and its allies, I could see why.
So they lived in what they saw as the typical Australian way. Which, having been to Germany myself, probably didn’t seem that far removed from their familiar lifestyle and customs. The only time my grandmother got caught out was when she was invited to a social gathering and was instructed to ‘bring a plate’. If you’d grown up in Australia, you knew that ‘a plate’ contained goodies of your making – scones, lamingtons, honey joys, et al. My grandmother, new to Australia and its customs, did what she’d been asked and brought a plate – an empty one.
The next morning, I found myself sitting in the reception area of the Bamberg Municipal Archives. This was not high on my bucket list. The New York Department of Records, sure. Maybe even the Fitzroy Town Hall at a pinch. But not the Bamberg Municipal Archives.
We were there because Dad had managed to proudly drop into conversation with everyone we came into contact with that he was born in Bamberg. ‘Yes, I would like another beer, and did I mention that even though I have an Australian accent, I was born here?’ But only with the English-speaking staff; he hadn’t remembered how to say all that in German.
Whenever he took a break from telling me how great the breakfast of coldcut meats and cheese was, he was chatting with the hotel manager, skilfully transitioning from how much he liked the beautiful rooms to explaining where he was born. He must’ve had her cornered for a while, because he managed to drop into their chat that his mum’s surname was Krug. Turns out, it’s quite a common name.
Turns out – even better – Krug is the name of a very popular beer made in Bavaria. We were in Bavaria. My mind instantly skipped to me being the heir to a German brewing company. It made sense: I do something good for Dad and the world repays me with beer. I could already see myself wearing lederhosen as I declared open the following year’s Oktoberfest.
The hotel manager wrote down the address for the archives off the top of her head, as though assisting people searching for their family history was a regular occurrence. And strangely Dad was keen to go. For someone who only four days earlier had never shown any interest in family history, he sure was going to a lot of effort to find out about it.
Armed with information assembled back at home and the intel picked up at the family afternoon tea a few days earlier, we sat in the archives’ foyer, waiting. If Dad was feeling any sense of anticipation here, he was going with standard operating procedure and showing none of it. He could either be waiting for his entire family history, leading to hundreds of new relatives, or for a haircut. Actually, there’d be more excitement about the haircut – no one wants long hair. It’s ‘not right on men’.
The wait wasn’t long before we were called in to sit with the director of the archives, Dr Robert Zink. We sat and told our story, Dad passing on all the information he’d gathered, which was mostly hearsay and anecdotal, as few documents had survived the move to Australia.
Despite handing over all available information, Dad was disappointed the answers we were after didn’t immediately come to hand. For my part, I instantly jumped to the conclusion that this didn’t bode well. Bamberg is not a big town and Krug is a very common name, so it should have been easy to find some trace of our family. My conclusion was then usurped by a better, less pessimistic conclusion: that Krug is such a common name, it would take time to find the right Krugs.
Dr Zink explained that he couldn’t help us in that moment, but the archive office would be in touch to let us know what they discovered. I took this to mean, ‘You’ll be forgotten before you have your second bratwurst for the day.’ Which would be in about five minutes.
As we walked the hilly streets of Bamberg, Dad’s physical struggles became obvious. He still said nothing, but was given away by a newly acquired limp. No matter how slowly I walked, he wasn’t keeping up. I continued to play along, sitting and enjoying a beer for longer than usual.
I knew Dad was happy to rest because we ended up at an outdoor pub that had an unreasonable amount of wasps flying around, which would normally have had him scrambling. At one point I was up and out of my seat, standing away from our table until they flew on. I got my fear of them from Dad, but he was sitting tight, as it would have taken too much effort to get up. He would rather have suffered a swarm of stings than activate his knees.
Dinner was quieter than usual, Dad not really engaging in conversation beyond monosyllabic answers.
‘What’s going on, Tommy? Why are you so quiet? Not enough wasps in here?’
‘I don’t know . . .’ he responded, trailing off. I was about to leave it there, but he followed it up with, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done this trip.’
I was shocked. I thought he wanted to be there. ‘What do you mean?’
This was our chance. We could finally talk through it all. Maybe I could finally get him to open up about his family, his father abandoning him. It might even bring us closer together.
‘Nah, nothing. Don’t worry about it.’
And we were done. Plus a perfect score from the judges for an immaculately executed Typical Rozenbachs Response (TRR™).
But I was still confused. Did he mean he didn’t want to be here with me? I knew I walked fast, but surely I’d been a pretty good travel companion so far. I wasn’t the one throwing talc around like a Johnson & Johnson baron. Did he mean Bamberg specifically? Perhaps things hadn’t improved for him even after we’d moved through the outskirts. Or was he homesick already, after only four days? He’d never been away from Mum this long, that was true. Or could it have been because he’d had no luck finding the roots of his family? If I’d gone this far and found nothing at all, I’d probably feel depressed too.
So many questions, with absolutely and utterly no way possible of finding out any answers. Beyond of course talking in a meaningful way with Dad, which was not about to happen. But I could see that a hug was in order, to show Dad that I cared for him and appreciated what he was going through. So I stood up, took a deep breath, and walked straight past him to the bar to order a couple of beers.
With a couple of drinks in him Dad was back to his old self, the reflection gone. We spoke of eventually getting back home to Melbourne, and he told me aside from looking forward to getting back into his routine, he was more excited about a primary school reunion happening a few weeks after we were due back.
‘The girl who I saved from drowning will probably be there,’ he casually dropped in.
I was shocked. Who goes to a primary school reunion? High school I understand – we all shared some pretty amazing times on our journeys into adulthood. But in primary school there were way too many pants-wetting incidents for anyone to want to relive that time.
More importantly, I guess . . . he had saved someone from drowning? Talk about burying the lede. For my whole life.
How had he never mentioned this before? Even if you stretch it out and say Dad saved her in his final
year of primary school, when he was around twelve years old, that meant he’d sat on that story for over fifty years. It was even more annoying to know that he had the ability to be quiet for at least half a century, yet couldn’t help himself when we were in the car and he saw a wind farm in a distant paddock and called out, ‘Look, fan.’
If I was in his position, I’d be bringing it up at every available opportunity. Any time I went near a body of water I’d casually drop a ‘saved someone from drowning once’.
When the swimming was on during the Olympics: ‘That’s a really impressive time and you need to be careful around pools; easy place to drown, which I saved someone from doing.’
No moment would be safe. ‘Did someone say dessert? Can you drown it in chocolate sauce? Which is what the girl I saved didn’t do.’
I’d have a range of merchandise publicising the fact. T-shirts, stubby holders, floaties. I’m sick of people not claiming their hero status. If a journalist asked me if I thought I was a hero for saving someone who was drowning, I’d be more than emphatic. ‘YES! Now where’s my key to the city?’ I wouldn’t be a shy hero. From there on in I’d want to be known as ‘Adam Rozenbachs: drowning preventer’.
Dad had been at his school swimming sports and noticed a girl at the bottom of the pool. Rather than running to get help, as most kids would have done, he just jumped in and pulled her to safety. I couldn’t believe he had the wherewithal as a kid to do that.
Our primary school experiences couldn’t have been more opposite. I’d suffered a similarly traumatic experience, even though it was largely my own fault.
Paris and Other Disappointments Page 9