On the evening of the performance, she arrived in the foyer of our hotel, where we were gathering before leaving for the Odeon Theatre, dressed in the tightest-fitting pair of denim jeans in global history.
Quite innocently, I asked, ‘Jeez Angie, how in blazes name do you get into those jeans?’
‘Well, mate, you start by buying me a drink!’ she said.
The vacuum resulting from the instantaneous headlong rush to the bar by the tour’s masculine contingent nearly created a hole in the space-time continuum.
Four days later we flew to Munich and spent the day travelling from pub to pub quaffing significant quantities of Weissbier (wheat beer), as planned. Understandably, none of us recalled much of the three-hour coach journey from Munich to Neustift-im-Stubaital later that evening.
I woke up the next morning feeling thick-headed (more so than usual) in what turned out to be a delightfully cosy and hospitable little Gasthaus (inn) located right on the edge of the main square of Neustift. The town was situated at the bottom of the Stubaital. The valley floor appeared to rise gently before suddenly towering steeply upwards to where the Stubai glacier began its frozen tumble down from the top of its 4 000-metre-high Alpine source. The lower reaches of a renowned ski run called the Schlick wound their insanely precipitous way down through the trees on the mountainside directly opposite my vantage point. I could see the minute figures of expert skiers hurtling down its crazy slopes even though it was still early in the morning.
In the square below me, groups of novice skiers, carrying their skis on their shoulders, dressed in padded suits and multicoloured woollen beanies, were waiting for a bus to take them up the valley to the cableway station at the foot of the Stubai glacier for a day of carefree fun and frolicking in the snow and ice. It struck me that the most critical decision I would make that day would probably be related to what I was going to order to eat, and that the situation from which I’d been extracted just a week before could not have been more different from where I now found myself.
For the first few days, all of us novices attended a training course on the baby slopes within the confines of the village, designed specifically to equip beginners with sufficient skills to prevent us from falling on the icy paths between the various village pubs and our respective hotels. Only once those initial skills had been absorbed and demonstrated to the satisfaction of skiing instructors would we be let loose on the ski slopes proper. Part of the instruction was learning to fall without incurring crippling injuries.
I fell down.
I fell down a great deal, sometimes while skiing, and it is inarguable testimony to the expert tutelage of the skiing instructors that I am still alive today.
At the beginning of our stay in Neustift, our tour overlapped for two days with one run by the same company that was coming to an end after being based in the village for more than a fortnight. In the outgoing tour party were five Rhodesian chaps. I was told by reliable sources that the Rhodies had done everything in their power, 24 hours a day, for the past two weeks, to drink the Stubaital dry. They were quite easy to identify, as they always wore T-shirts over whatever else they’d donned that day. The T-shirts had ‘Advice to every terrorist’ on the front and ‘Go fuck yourself before we do!’ on the back.
Being the only person from Africa in my tour party, I felt duty-bound to introduce myself to these fellow southern Africans and to buy them all a beer. I also hoped to glean some important information from them regarding local conditions, such as the best pubs and clubs, dos and don’ts of a general nature, and where best to make contact with the ladies.
‘Fuck, man,’ slurred the first Rhodie, ‘even the fucking shithouses have fucking pubs in them! Go any-fucking-where, the bastard motherfuckers who created this shithole made sure that it’s fucking great!’
The second said something along the lines of ‘We have only fucking been arrested four fucking times by those cock-sucking Gestapo police pricks since we fucking got here, but I can’t fucking remember why so there aren’t that many fucking rules here, I think!’
The third, obviously a keener observer than the others, said, ‘There are shitloads of arse-puckering, fucking gorgeous fucking women wherever you look, but they keep on fucking running away when we fucking want to talk to them about shagging! Fucking stuck-up bitches, wouldn’t know a red-blooded African prong if you rubbed the fucking thing against them in a fucking cable car!’
The Rhodies invited me to have a farewell drink with them, so I met up with them in a nearby pub. The paint-peelingly vulgar, profanity-rich (but very descriptive) conversation, together with a thick cloud of smoke from chain-smoked Madison cigarettes, soon had patrons from adjacent tables moving away in search of clearer air.
Just then, Richarde, the Rhodies’ skiing instructor, walked into the pub and joined us, having also been invited to toast the imminent departure of the Boys from Bulawayo. Dangling on his arm, seemingly attached to it like a limpet mine, was the most stunningly gorgeous, radiantly sensual, auburn-haired beauty in the town. He introduced her as Gundie, and in seconds I was smitten.
Now, before you get the wrong idea and condemn me for flippancy and shallowness, please bear in mind that I was not, at this stage, nor for a long time to come, functioning at an optimum emotional level. There was nothing wrong with my senses of sight, sound, touch, smell or taste, however. They were operating well, but the depth to which I was able to explore my emotions was limited, to say the least. Consequently, saying that I was ‘smitten’ was absolutely true, at least for that time.
Gundie chose to get as far away from the rowdy quintet of Rhodesian bush people as was possible at an eight-seater table, and ended up sitting next to me. As she spoke passable English and I could mumble the odd German-sounding phrase, we immediately struck up a pleasant conversation and connected as if we’d known each other for some time.
Before too long she suggested that we remove ourselves to the dance floor situated in the next room. I was a little uncomfortable with this proposal, fearing that I would be perceived by Richarde to be ‘moving in’ on his territory. Ever an advocate for preventive maintenance, I asked Richarde if he had any objections to my dancing with his girlfriend. He laughed aloud and said, ‘My friend, Gundie is just an acquaintance. The night is young and the available mädchen endless. Please have fun in Neustift. That is why it is here!’
From then on, I began to seriously like Neustift and its friendly inhabitants.
A day or two later, as I stood waiting nervously at the edge of the village square for the glacier-bound public bus to arrive, with my skis perched on my right shoulder like everyone else seemed to be doing, a sizeable crowd of skiers with the same obvious intentions as me gathered at the bus stop.
When the bus arrived, everyone rushed forward in a manner reminiscent of a buffalo stampede, inexplicably eager to be the first to board the bus and stand next to their skis for the 45 minutes it would take to reach the lower cableway station at the foot of the Stubai glacier. Someone needed to take action to prevent injury or, worse still, loss of life, and so I forced my two-metre-long skis into a horizontal barrier, effectively bringing the headlong rush for the bus door to a halt.
Then, in my best German, I commanded, ‘Halten Sie! Alten Damen… eerste!’
The first four words, Halten Sie! (Stop!) and alten Damen (old ladies), were proper German words, but eerste (first) was Afrikaans.