The Hunger

When you come from a cosmopolitan city (like New York, Tokyo, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bombay or Sao Paolo) to a second tier city, you tend to notice a certain hunger in the conversational tone. It’s not that people aren’t informed, well read or experienced. It’s not a hunger for what’s hip and happening either. It’s more a longing for the free flow of conversational sparring. I used to notice this hunger whenever I came to LA, San Franisco, Hamburg and Berlin and mostly in people who were trapped in professional peer groups, which tend to happen rather rapidly in second tier cities.

Can happen here rather swiftly as well. There’s the famous Schumann’s Cocktail Bar where most media people hang out at night and where I recently found myself surrounded by people who not only told me in detail how to do my new job (well, it is a new job, so some advice was definitely appreciated), but also quite adamently who sucks and deserves to get fired asap. German media talk tends to run in circles around topics like that and despite everybody’s insistence that we’re all a gang of brothers and sisters tends to get quite nasty and spiteful.

So here we are, feeling the first pangs of this hunger. Although contrary to Fred I really can’t complain. The new job’s overwhelming, but actually quite exhilarating. It’s like banging out a whole magazine every single day. Great team of sophisticates. My co-chief turns out to be as easily excitable for good ideas as I am, plus he is super-connected here in Germany. And there is of course a whole cast of characters who are happy to escape the trappings of peer pressure talk. Michael, the jazz musician who travels the world to produce archive music. Albert the poet and playwright who gets invited to readings in Colombia and Afghanistan and who gets commissions from faraway places like Korea. Michi the Yoga teacher who runs the local Shivamukti branch, a vegan restaurant and a crowded disco where old faves like Little Louie Vega and the Body & Soul crew spin. Ralf the quantum physicist who gave up his particle accelerating career to write novels. Clemens who's the Munich deputy editor of the pitbull tabloid Bild and of course knows all the juicy details not fit to print. Markus the former Foreign Legionaire now boxing trainer who fought in the Seoul Olympics.