BROTWURSTS IN BREMEN

During my National Service 1953 to 55 in Germany, I became very partial to a BROTWURST or two from the street vendors in the spa town of Bad-Oeynhausen. Hence, some 30 years later when we were involved with M.B.B. in Bremen, I was tempted to find out if the modern version tasted as good.

One evening after my colleagues and I, (as far as I remember Terry Brown, Dick Williams and Tom Markham) had enjoyed a beer or two in an old gasthof opposite the impressively carved door of the Kurhaus in Bremen, I decided to treat them to my old favourite snack from a nearby street stall. I tried to impress them by ordering "Vier wursts mit Klein brotchen bitte" in my best pidgin German. We had just been served, when along came a very loud drunken German merchant seaman who stood beside me demanding a wurst from the vendor. He had no money, and the poor girl vendor was quite intimidated .I thought things might turn ugly, and as I had no great ambition to be involved in a punch-up, I decided to defuse the situation by treating him to the same snack as ourselves.

It worked. He thanked us in perfect English, because he was not drunk at all, merely putting on an act to intimidate the vendor for a free supper. He told us that his ship had often docked in Avonmouth and he knew Bristol quite well. Small world!

There is a co-incidence to this tale. When I related the above to an old friend, who had been a commando during W.W.2, he told me he had been part of a small commando group operating behind enemy lines in 1944/45. They had entered the centre of Bremen one night, and to prove it, took a picture of themselves outside that impressively carved great door of the Kurhaus. This picture features in the book "From Snows of Norway to Sands of Normandy" written by the leader of the commando group the late Patrick Dalziel Job who my wife and I were privileged to meet when he visited my old friend. Small world indeed!

STAN LOCK

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