The VW Factory, Wolfsburg
When I first started travelling through Germany three years ago, my head was a comic-book muddle of lifelong stereotypical nonsense featuring stern efficiency, a jokes vacuum, the “Bosch”, sausages, lederhosen and, oh, let’s throw in Lidl and Aldi’s central aisles of “tinned goods” for good measure.
I found my views reinforced by superfast ICE trains, which I kept missing because they keep such superb time. I found them recharged by nights in Weinstuben where I didn’t mention the war once – it was them that kept bringing it up and making jokes about it – and fomented by a festering jealousy of the economic miracle that is Wolfsburg, home to Volkswagen and full employment, a factory which knocks out 3,000 cars a month but whose catering division produces 6,000 currywurst for the workers. (I brought a packet home for our Royal Wedding Street Party in honour of the Windsors’ German heritage. Went down a storm, especially among the petrolheads who – deliberately ignoring my lovely shiny black Golf – joked that VW should switch from making uniform cars, ’cos the Germans like nothing better than a good sausage, don’t they, nudge nudge?)
Sitting with an actuary, in a formal restaurant hidden inside the world’s most efficient car plant, built on compensatory funds and British postwar acumen immediately after the war? What could possibly go wrong?
It seemed inappropriate to tell this story when I was back in Wolfsburg more recently, dining at Aqua, the celebrated restaurant of Sven Elverfeld, which is cocooned in the folds and swags of the Ritz Carlton business hotel deep inside the VW plantation. Aqua had been closed during my previous visit – the entire staff take their holidays at the same time – but this time they were up to speed and I even met Sven, a jocular, youthful-looking chap who didn’t flinch at all when I accidentally dropped and smashed a glass of champagne all over his kitchen floor just before service. In fact he even laughed, as did I, although at least one of us was crying inside.
Unusually for a three star Michelin gaff, I was joined by the bloke at the next table, an actuary, who told me it was his twentieth visit to Aqua, and that because his square life consisted entirely of numbers and risk projection modules, dinners at Aqua were joyously figure-free. I’m guessing that a client somewhere picking up the tab helped too. As did the circular plates. Probably.
We’d come together because I had made complimentary remarks to the sommelier about the wine list. I was drinking by the glass and was therefore excluded from a few of my favourites, but Actuaryman was ordering by the bottle, drinking a couple of glasses, then moving on. He was informed of my thoughts, ordered accordingly, and sent over a glass, then another, then another.
It’s rude to shout across restaurants anywhere, except possibly when you’re ordering for ten in Maccy D’s, but especially so over the heads of diners who’re paying hundreds to sit in virtual silence, their conversations dampened by plush carpeting, thick napery, and the foreboding presence of the VW power plant’s four chimneys looming just outside the picture windows; this is fayne dayning, which demands reserve and specially minimised codes of behaviour. So in order to prevent an incident, once the maître d’ had established that actuary and I had reached a similar point in the sampling menu and could therefore be allowed to sit together, the staff moved in, silently and swiftly, executing a complex manoeuvre involving cutlery, napery, glassware and art deco tub chairs. Within a blink we were a single table.
What better way could there be to rid oneself of any lingering Germanic stereotypical notions? Sitting with an actuary, in a formal restaurant hidden inside the world’s most efficient car plant, built on compensatory funds and British postwar acumen immediately after the war? What could possibly go wrong?
Funnily enough, nothing did. Actuaryman and I had one hysterical evening. It was either our combined wit and wisdom, or the Remelluri white Rioja, but something clicked. No stone was left unturned, no stereotype of whatever hue or crudeness left unpicked: wars, Nazis, British hooligans, personal hygiene, laziness, football world cups, towels on deck chairs, the lot. Even food.
But of course, while we were laughing and joking, Sven Elverfeld’s sublime offerings were being slid before us: a multicourse menu of tastebud explosions fired by flavoursome essences, delicious soups, spices and jellies, in rainbow colours from deep purple to bright green to vermillion. We didn’t really need to discuss food at all; the truth was before us, literally. Including Sven’s own little joke, a dish of Mondrian design on which one slab of beef is butt joined to a square of “green sauce” (a Frankfurt staple) and a rectangular fried egg with tiny yolk at dead centre. A homage to school dinners and “ordinary” food, a modernist depiction on a plate of childhood memories. Needless to say, it tasted fantastic.
The night, which got a little hazy towards the end, I think just as the staff were switching off the lights and putting on their coats, was a resounding success – the deconstruction of idiotic notions and inherited bigotry, the joyous celebration of not being part of a generation at war. We really did put the world to rights.
It gave me a new appetite for all things German: their humour, style, industry and cuisine. So the following day I set off with a spring in my step, or rather with my foot flooring the accelerator on the Golf Cabriolet I’d been loaned for the day, to do some exploring. It was sunny, it was bright, I looked slightly stupid, but the car was new enough to draw admiring glances as I roared around Lower Saxony’s country lanes, admiring the rustic beauty of it all.
By dusk, I was speeding homewards through a forest landscape. It was still warm enough for the top to be down, but around me, the lights were coming on one by one. I passed a motorhome, parked at right angles to the road. “There’s a motorhome,” I thought to myself. Then I passed another. “There’s another motorhome,” I thought. “This must be where they park them. Motorhome people. When they’re out, er, motorhoming.”
And then I passed another. And another, this one with a light in the window. Then one with a pretty row of red lights strewn across the windscreen. “Pretty,” I thought, before adding a mental note: “If a little unusual.”
I’d passed about a dozen when I noticed that the driver was sitting in one. “Her husband must be in the back watching football,” I thought. Then another. “Yes,” I continued thinking, “the husband of that naked lady must be in the back…”
I stared ahead at the white central lines on the road and sure enough, the next motorhome was lit up too, red fairylights aglow, its interior light showing me that this lady driver was naked too. I slowed down.
She jiggled.
I accelerated. There were more, all lit up for the evening’s business, driver’s seats occupied by ladies in various states of undress. I sped past, slightly embarrassed in what can only be described as a very British way.
Actuaryman was nowhere to be found that evening, and it fell to the barman to explain to me that yes, this was quite normal, these motorhomes were actually parked there all year round, and had been for a very long time. They were part of the landscape, a rural red light district.
“When you think about it,” he explained without a hint of irony, “It’s quite an efficient way to run a business.”
I nodded sagely. “Mmmm, yes. Efficient.” C
Derek Guthrie is a TV producer, travel editor and writer