Episode 3: Luis

Photo: Isabel Bruijstens

Every year, Dusseldorf and Cologne have the biggest Carnaval in all of Germany. Oskar and I went there. Bar crawl in Dusseldorf is a lot of fun. It’s known as die längste Theke der Welt,

because it’s the most bars in a certain square area. It’s all like typical bars and that’s what I like more than going clubbing. Mai Tai is always one of the stops, ‘cause they give you a huge ass bowl filled with whatever you want: like a cocktail salad bowl.

I talked to a taxi driver a few weeks before. This really polite man who thought he recognized me. There’s one train that just goes north from the city center and all my friends live along that one train line. I have a friend that lives in the first area north of the city and we look slightly similar. So, he’s like “ah, I know you, you’re always in this area!” And I said, “well, no. I’m in this area a lot, but I don’t live here anymore”. He starts asking me really weird questions. He was like “Herr Kellermann! Herr Kellermann! Herr Kellermann!”, that’s how he called me.“Herr Kellermann, was denken Sie? Where can you go for clubbing?” It was basically about girls that were easy to fuck, is what he wanted. He obviously didn’t say it outright, ‘cause he was super polite.

There’s this place called Rheingold. It’s also featured in a lot of the rap songs and it’s known for being a super fucked up place. He’s like “yeah, back in the day, you could just go to Rheingold and meet people”. In Rheingold, in the basement, there’d be a black guy sitting near the toilets. You know how they have like guys that are collecting money for cleaning and shit? They’re the guys there to sell you drugs. So, you just sat in the toilet area and could just get whatever you wanted right in the club. There’s a lyric from a song, which is like “you get fucked up and you wake up, in the night, naked, in front of Rheingold and you don’t remember anything, and all of your possessions are gone”. So, it’s like a really notorious place. He’s like “yeah, I used to go there all the time, but they shut it down now and stuff”. Then we drove under a bridge. He pointed at the place: “dude, last week I was here, and some super-hot girls came out and I took them home in the taxi and they’re telling me how great this place was and stuff”.

So, we’re walking back from Carnaval, cause the tram took too long. And I’m like “oh shit, here is the bridge. Let’s see if they have a party, maybe we will go in”. You know Carl Cox? If you know deep house and minimal techno and shit like that, then you know Carl Cox, 100%. Really good stuff. And he was there. It was like 3 or 4 in the morning, we were already on the way home again, and we’re like “dude, fuck it, let’s keep partying”.

So, we kept partying. We didn’t even talk to each other. I didn’t even see Oskar. I was just dancing by myself.

At a certain point, we leave and I’m like “fuck this, dude, we can’t walk home, this is way too far, let’s call a cab”.

We get in the taxi and the driver goes:

“Herr Kellermann!”