Bar Talk


“Life is like Carrefour, you place your order and you get what you want.” Hagen said taking a swig from an oversized pint of Danish beer.
Running through Farah’s mind was the old proverb “behind every strong man is a strong woman”, but she didn’t dare say it, a little clumsy perhaps to say such a gender centric cliché to a European, so instead she said, “Two heads are better than one.”
“Exactly! The Clintons, they’d never have made it alone, it takes two to be successful, a counterpart is all I want. I have one but sometimes she is strong, but sometimes it's not enough.” Hagen said in a weary watered down Hanover accent.
Zac stretched out his hand, “Zachary, nice to meet you.”
“When you find that woman, don’t let her go. That’s my advice from 46 years of experience.”
Farah smiled and thought back to last summer and remembered the feelings of sharing her utmost self with the only man she’d ever truly loved. Then she wondered why she was still thinking about him at all and consoled herself in the fact that he just wasn’t experienced enough to understand what had been on offer.
“The Queen speaks German, she’s German, we are a nation of thinkers, we want to solve problems. We may not have any resources, no steel, nothing in the ground. But we have our minds.”
Zac moved closer to Farah in a naturally protective fashion.
“I don’t want to think German anymore, I am ready to give up my German and become European. We are European, and the British and the French are just fucking that up.”
Farah finished off her side dish of sautéed vegetables.


“I learned in the US to survive, I didn’t learn any facts in my university years in Germany, but I learned to survive, to be an individual. These people here they don’t want to be individual,” Hagen said.
A Brit, an American and a German, sipping from their drinks at staggered intervals in a central location, downtown Sofia – what a bunch Farah thought, what a bunch!
“No one wants to take responsibility, they want the power but not the responsibility,” Zac at long last had joined the conversation.
Farah said nothing but just listened, attentively, and knowingly that the German sitting to her right would surely have some answers to her many questions, the questions she had been trying to ask the ministries repeatedly for the past month. What a spot of luck she thought to have ended up sitting next to a German businessman who was working on the government deal with Siemens to supply the much needed rolling stock, the deal she had to write about. The ministries had proven themselves useless at offering up information, but a German, what a spot of luck she thought.
“All I want is a house on a hill, with some steps down to a private beach, just two metres, doesn’t matter, with a wife who I can have sex with three times a day,” Hagen was voicing his ambitions.
“It’s not about the result, it’s about the journey,” Zac’s mum with her masters in therapy, was quite clearly a huge influence in his life.
“Isn’t that what every man wants,” Farah joined the conversation again having finished her side orders.
“Yes, a simple life,” Hagen added. “What is that not what you want? No it’s not is it, a woman wants more brain.”


Farah smiled and again thought back to her last relationship, which she thought had been based on “brain” as Hagen put it, but then she thought that’s probably why it had all gone wrong. Of course, she thought, that’s not what he had wanted. It had been his initial face, it had to be. An intellectual himself, but at the same time it went against everything that made him a man according to his dad’s outlook. It had been drummed into him by his father for 25 years, “don’t listen to your mother, she’s just a woman”. He had no respite she thought. We were doomed from the start.
“Do you know how you are going to pay your bills for May?” Hagen said.
“No, I don’t, honestly I don’t, but I’m doing what I love and it’s just kind of moving.” Farah realized that for the first time in her life, she was completely free. Her job was as mobile as the cell phone tucked in her jean pocket. She could absolutely move with the wind, or the story more importantly.
Hagen looked puzzled, but at the same time a certain respect washed over his face.
“No planning? No planning at all?”
“None, it’s been this way for the past year. I can’t explain it, but for some reason, it’s kind of working out. That’s all I can tell you.”
And it was she thought. It was somehow. Somehow it was.