It was Christmas Day 2024 and we were opening presents. Well, more precisely, everyone else was, because as we all know, older men don’t get many presents and Christmas. And then Daniel handed me an envelope. “Daniel, how many times do I have to tell you,” I exclaimed. “Don’t buy me concert tickets.” Let’s put it this way, previous presents had not been well received, despite them being very kind thoughts. I gingerly started opening the envelope, rather dreading what it might contain. The first thing I saw was a brochure for a posh castle hotel near Frankfurt. I then saw a Ryanair ticket to Frankfurt-Hahn airport. The penny still didn’t drop. And then I saw the ticket. It was for an Alphaville concert in Mannheim. I actually started to cry. Daniel had blown it out of the park. Seeing Alphaville live has been on my bucket list for thirty years. I was going to see them in Hamburg in 2022 but I went and broke my hip.

I knew Daniel liked Alphaville after I introduced him to their music on a road trip to Devon last year. If you’ve never heard of them, you will definitely know two of their songs, ‘Forever Young’ and ‘Big in Japan’.

I was living in Germany in 1984 when Big in Japan was released and it was one of the songs that make the hackles on your back vibrate. I even bought a 45rpm single to send to Steve Wright on Radio 1. He played it and it became a top 10 hit in the UK. Alphaville had several more hits but have never played a live concert here, despite all their songs being sung in English.

 

Anyway, this weekend was the weekend so on Friday morning Dan picked me up from home to go to Stansted airport to fly to Frankfurt-Hahn on Ryanair. I’d never flown Ryanair before and wasn’t looking forward to it given its reputation, but I have to say it was excellent. Frankfurt-Hahn airport is, shall we say, a bit of a distance from Frankfurt – 60 miles to be precise, and it’s so small that it makes Norwich airport look cosmopolitan by comparison. We picked up the hire car and drove straight to the Parkhotel Kronberg, otherwise known as Schloss Friedrichshof.
 

 

It was built in the 1890s by Queen Victoria’s oldest daughter, Victoria after her husband. Kaiser Friedrich died after only 99 days as Kaiser. Of course, her son was his successor, the infamous Kaiser Wilhelm. What an amazing place it proved to be. Utter luxury in every way. If this was hotel in the UK I’d imagine we’d have been fleeced for at least £500 a night. We rendezvoused at 6.30 for a pre dinner drink, then went into the restaurant for what they called a six course fine dining experience. Well, it was certainly international, with the servers coming from Colombia, Italy and Mexico. The Mexican head waiter told us it was his ambition to come to England so he could have a proper Full English breakfast. Obviously a man of limited ambition! Being a man of simple culinary delights, I can’t say I enjoyed the meal particularly, especially when the only main course I could eat was a vegetable risotto, given the main meat dish – bison, since you ask – was cooked in a peanut sauce. Yuck. It turned out to be the most expensive meal I have ever had. I’m too embarrassed to say how much it cost.

Afterwards, we went to the bar, where I renewed my acquaintance with Pernod & Blackcurrant, something I would regularly get pissed on in my student days. Given I don’t drink, and nor does he, Daniel found this quite hilarious. So hilarious, that he then ordered a whiskey. I drew the line at that.

After a fitful night’s sleep – it wasn’t the drink, promise – we headed off down the Autobahn. I fell asleep only to be told when I woke up that I had missed Daniel reaching 248kmh (154 mph). Glad I was asleep. Instead of heading straight to Mannheim, Daniel told me we had taken the turn for Heidelberg, so we spent a few hours there, wandering round the castle and enjoying the views over the Rhein.
 

 

Mid afternoon we headed off to Mannheim. I can’t say we were particularly taken with the town. The city centre was full of the same shops you’d see in any British town – JD Sports, Vodafone, O2 etc. It was utterly devoid of any character and also devoid of any restaurants serving proper German food. I didn’t want Pizza, I didn’t want Turkish food, I wanted a good old Zigeuner Schnitzel (Schnitzel with a ratatouille.paprika sauce), but it wasn’t to be.

At 7.30 we headed over to the Rosengarten  theatre for the concert which started dead on 8pm. There was one slightly awkward moment when the woman next to me was drenched with white wine from the Circle seats. She didn’t seem particularly bothered.
 

 

I’ve never been to a concert by a band where the keyboard player stole the show. Marian Gold, the lead singer, is the only surviving member of the original Alphaville, but Carsten Brock, the keyboard player and MD has been with them for 11 years. He’s about 6 foot 8 inches tall, legs as long as a daddylong leg and arms which reach into the clouds. His dancing, while playing notes on the  various keyboards was quite something to behold. I have expected Marian Gold to take him aside and tell him to tone it down a bit, as all our eyes remained on him most of the time, just to see what he would do next. I assumed he was in his twenties. Turns out he was 48!

This concert is part of a 40th anniversary tour of Germany and it didn’t disappoint. Marian Gold is 70 but wears it well. His voice is as distinct and strong as ever, and to belt out all their hits for two hours with no break was an achievement in itself. The only disappointment was that they didn’t play one of their bigger hits from the early days, but other than that, they were all there – Bif in Japan, Forever Young, Sounds Like a Melody (my favourite performance of the night), Universal Daddy, Fools, Flame, Dance with me, Summer in Berlin and many more. I did think they could have played longer versions of Big in Japan and Forever Young but that is a minor carp. They did something very unusual, and for thr curtain call song, sang a song I can’t ever remember hearing before, Pandora’s Lullaby. I must have it, as I have everything of theirs, but I certainly didn’t know it.

We then drove back to the hotel where it would have been rude not to have a Pernod nightcap. So I did.

On Sunday morning after breakfast Daniel had arranged for us to hire a couple of go-carts to tour the local area. Sounded odd to me, but what the hell. We got there but being largeish gentlemen we could barely fit in the things, and I decided they were too unsafe. Shame. We then drove through the beautiful Taunus countryside with the aim of going to Woppenroth, the village where HEIMAT was filmed in the 1980s. I can’t say I recognised any part of it, to be honest, but it was a nice drive! We had some lunch before heading to the airport to get the flight home.

All in all a wonderful weekend, great company and one more thing ticked off my bucket list. Thank you Dan!