The problem with telling this very entertaining, very true story is that I was very, very drunk when it happened to me, so memories get mixed up, details get confused, and a fair amount of fiction has probably crawled its way between the layers of truth by now. Stories also tend to change a bit with repeated telling, but I’ve tried my best to put only facts to paper in this version. Anyway, as far as I know and as best as I can remember, this actually happened.
All of it.
Southern France. Nice. A bar called “Thor.” I’m young, with four people I’ve only just met, in a country and a city to which I’ve only just arrived. I am drinking too much, eating too little, and talking too loud. A man stumbles over. He’s holding a tray. More like congratulations than a request, he blares, “drink!”
When I was nineteen, I was just finishing my first year of college and I desperately wanted—I have no idea why anymore (then again, why wouldn’t I?)—to take a trip to Europe. Really, I wanted to take a tour of Europe, see some famous sights, meet local people, prove to myself I could survive on my own for a bit, and drink heavily enough to regret it, but not so heavily as to regret it permanently.
I believed and wanted to prove to myself that anything could happen.
To this day I avoid using the phrase “backpacking across Europe,” similar to how you might say that Pluto avoids the Sun. However, if I’m being entirely honest…no. No, I still can’t bear to admit that I was, in fact, “backpacking.” I had a backpack. I rode on trains. I was traveling through Europe. But I was not—WAS NOT—backpacking through Europe. On my trip I met a few Canadians. They were backpacking. I was—I don’t know…wandering?
I started in Hamburg, moved on to Berlin, then Prague (but not before a short, one-night-stand in Dresden with three cute girls from Western Canada, but that’s another story for another night), back to Germany for some currywurst and beer, over to Venice, down to Rome, and a brief stop in Pisa before hopping a train to Nice in Southern France. Later, I’d go on to Paris, then London with extended layovers in Calais and Dover between.
If you ever go to Europe, avoid Italian trains. They’re old, dirty, and overcrowded. My overnight train ride to Nice was particularly bad, as I was crammed in a sleeper car that could only comfortably fit a normal sized man and an abnormally small cat. Thing is, I wasn’t crammed alone. Four large guys about my age were also shoved into the cabin with me.
I had been alone. Got on the train late, got lucky, and found an empty cabin, and before anyone could come looking, I pulled the curtains closed and tried to get some sleep. About thirty minutes later, my door suddenly opened and I woke out of a half—no more like a one fourth sleep, to the sound of an Italian conductor speaking heavily accented English, “oh we look very comfortable, don’t we?”
Ruined. My plans were ruined. I had stuck gold. A cabin all to myself on a sleeper train? I may as well have booked a dormitory style room at a hostel only to find when I got there that I was going to share the small, four bed space with three girls in the area hoping to break into German porn.
Really, though, I did feel bad for the guys. There were four of them. In case I didn’t make it clear earlier, I should point out that we were sleeping on what was effectively two love seats, legs and arms tangled together in an effort to get as comfortable as possible without spooning—and even if the seats were pulled up into their normal position, for sitting during daytime travel, there were only six seats. One open seat of extra space. And the seats were small to begin with.
After two hours of being crammed together, after hundreds of sighs, after tossing, then turning, then tossing again, after the most futile attempt at sleep in the history of the world, long after we had all given up any hope that we’d actually get any rest, and after ten solid minutes of rare silence, a voice split the darkness: “Ah Feck…me leg’s asleep!”
I laughed first. Then they laughed. I gave them my name, where I was from. They shared their names, stories. They told me they were “Kav,” “Cross,” “Dicko,” and “Les.” They told me they were taking a tour of Europe. They told me they were Scouse.
What’s “Scouse?” They’re only the most classless, abrasive, impermissible and dangerous best friends you’ll ever have. As one of them put it, “A Scouser is anyone from Liverpool, unless they’re a cunt.” To which another replied, “We’re all cunts, mate.”
First night in Nice, we decided to go drinking. Of course, we had planned to find a local ballet class, but—go figure—there just weren’t any available on short notice, so we decided to settle for beer and shots. Wasn’t our first choice, but you have to venture outside your comfort zone when abroad.
We began walking. We passed people on the street, an open-air candy stand, a walk-up McDonald’s window, beaches…and when we came upon a bar called “Thor,” well, how could anyone say “no” to a drink there?
We sat. We drank. We laughed. As I had only been drinking regularly for only a few weeks, I started getting drunk after only a few beers. I laughed at the way the Scousers called servers “barmaids.” I slumped back in my chair. I drank more. A man stumbled over. He was holding a tray. More like congratulations than a request, he blared, “drink!”
I had seen him wandering around the bar earlier, always that tray balanced improbably between his shoulder and his head. Around the bar, out the front door, in the front door, between the back tables, up the stairs, down the stairs, and he stopped. His head turned. He spotted me—or someone with me—or someone near us—and…then, his body turned as well.
Like a Jedi reaching perfect, mental equilibrium for the first time, I could see everything that was going to happen before it even began. I could see him coming towards us. I could hear his accent. I could taste the alcohol he would give us and I could smell the sweat rolling down the bridge of his nose. I could tell he would be the best and worst part of the night.
He did walk over to us. He careened around Dicko’s chair, spun to a skidding stop, and tossed the tray, covered in shots of Vodka, without spilling a drop, onto the table between us. From that point on, we didn’t pay for another drink. I can’t remember how many shots he bought, but he got up and came back at least twice.
He was already very drunk by the time he came over to us. Dicko asked what he had been doing.
“Looking,” he said. “For my friends. I cannot find my friends. They have left me here, it seems.”
He feigned concern, but it wasn’t very convincing.
“What are your names? I cannot drink with someone if I don’t know their name!”
We introduced ourselves, but he either had a hard time hearing, a hard time understanding, or both.
“Drink! Drink!” he demanded. Les wouldn’t, though. He didn’t drink. A few days later, in Paris, Cross guessed that Les didn’t drink because he was on some kind of medication.
It made sense. Les was a special kind of weird. He once explained to me at length all of the evidence that led him to believe he was a descendant of Adolph Hitler, most convincing of all being his hairline and the shape of his forehead. Moreover, Les explained “Me gram was a slut.” She had apparently met Hitler once and that was proof enough for Les. He also had a fixation with cathedrals and insisted on visiting every cathedral in every city he visited. He wasn’t particularly religious, he just liked cathedrals.
Nils frowned, “well, then, you must be Jewish or Handicapped.” My jaw dropped. Dicko looked at Kav, Kav looked at me, I looked at Cross, Cross looked at Les, and Les looked at Nils. “I’m both,” he said.
Nils roared.
“Hello! I would like my drinks! PLEASE!?”
The servers were not amused. It’s impossible to know now how many drinks we had or how much time passed before the female servers began sending over male bartenders to question us about our friend. They were convinced we knew him. They kept asking us, in what little English they knew, to control him. But we couldn’t.
“Why are you here?” asked Kav.
“To drink!”
“No, why are you here in Nice?” Kav clarified.
“…to drink!” Nils repeated, confused.
Cross joined in. “Where are you from?”
Nils thought…or, he looked like he was thinking, anyway. “I am from Denmark,” he finally answered, sinking ever lower in his seat. “You know. Copenhagen?”
“What brings you to Nice?” This time Dicko asked.
“Ah…well, business. Not here though. I am here to drink.” Nils explained. “But I have business in Italy. Well…I have business on an island near Italy. I am taking a boat there.”
We looked at each other. Dicko mouthed to Kav, “He’s a murderer,” with the sort of excitement on his face you only see from six-year-olds on Christmas morning.
We kept talking and drinking. At some point, we lost Nils. He was still in his chair, but to say he was still “present” would be a gross misrepresentation. The bar staff decided that they had seen enough of Nils and two big guys dressed entirely in black lifted him by his arms and tossed him—quite literally tossed him—out a back door into an alley.
It took the rest of us a few moments to really register what had happened. As things started unraveling faster and faster, the night got blurrier and blurrier. Time seemed to fold over on itself. Only seconds after Kav stood up, the rest of us realized he had left and went looking for him as if he had been gone for hours.
I never saw Kav again that night, the rest of which is a series of still photos in my mind.
First, we left Thor without paying, still holding our glasses, half full of beer. No one said a word.
We walked along the street, drinking. It was dark now. We had to pee. There was a stairway leading down to a basement entrance to…something. Cross and I peed at the top, but Dicko thought it would be better to go down the stairs. While he was peeing on the wall at the bottom landing, I looked to my right. A security camera mounted on the wall next to me watched Dicko as he peed. Giggling, I cupped my hand and put it over the front of the camera.
“Dicko,” I whispered as loud as I could, but it was too late. Lights burst to life, a door flung open, and there was shouting in French. We stumbled away laughing.
As we emptied our glasses, we left them wherever we were. I left mine on a mailbox. Dicko smashed his on the ground. Cross handed his to someone on the street and asked, “would you put this away for me?”
Then we were in another bar. There was a lot of wood. Dicko led us in singing Liverpool Football Club songs. I remembered suddenly thinking it was a very good idea to get outside as fast as possible. Bouncers tossed Dicko and Cross out the door, right behind me.
Dicko thought for a moment then said, “I think I’ll have a word with that bouncer…” and turned around to go back inside. I started walking away, quickly, all the while wondering what had happened to Kav and Nils.
We found ourselves at a candy stand. Not satisfied to steal sweets for ourselves, we began putting candy into the bags of strangers, assuring them “this one is good,” “you want this,” nodding all the while. The lady who owned the stand began shouting as though this were just the latest chapter of the worst night of her life and again, we found ourselves chased away from our entertainment.
Suddenly, we were at the beach. It was bright there somehow, as if there were huge work lights set up—the kind road workers use to see at night on highways—but I don’t remember ever seeing them. Being an American, I know how to throw things. The beach was rocky, so I picked up stones and threw them as far as I could, into the ocean. Compared to how far the guys from Liverpool could throw, I may as well have been hurling rocks directly into orbit. They were impressed and I was pleased with myself. The French men fishing weren’t so happy though.
“Excuse me. EXCUSE ME. You are scaring all the fish, please.”
Next, I was walking home alone. I have no idea how I found my way back, as my only landmark was that walk-up McDonald’s window. I stopped for food. As drunk as I was, I managed to spill out what little French I could remember and successfully ordered a cheeseburger. With a great sense of accomplishment, I continued back to the room.
I was second back, after Les. After lying down for a few minutes, I decided I needed to throw-up. I went to do that, but I could never force anything out. Which was good—I had just paid for the burger, remember.
The last thing I remember is waking up on the floor of the bathroom with my pants around my knees. Cross was angry about something and told me he needed the shower, so, in the dark, I moved as best as I could to my bed.
I woke to the sound of Kav explaining the rest of his night to Dicko, Kav, Cross, and Les. He stood, wearing the same clothes he was wearing the previous night, in the middle of the room as we each sat up in our beds, listening from under blue cotton blankets. It’s difficult to retell his story with any justice unless you can imagine his accent. It’s not the Liverpool accent you’d remember from hearing the Beatles speak. I recommend looking for something recent from YouTube…
“I felt bad. Nils—I couldn’t leave him to die in an alley or something. I tried to get him up of the ground, but he didn’t recognize me. Told me to ‘fuck off’ and walked away. I lost him, so I went back inside, but you’d all left, didn’t you? Subhumane. Murderers.
‘The barmaids were angry about something, so I left. I started walking back here. While I was waiting at a cross walk, I met a bird. She said she had a room at a hotel in the other direction, near Monaco. She asked me back to drink with her friends, but I told her I was looking for you, so she told me the name and gave me her room number.
‘Then I saw Nils. The cunt was sleeping under some tables in the street that had candy for sale. Was off his tits. The woman who owned it was trying to wake him up. I said his name and when she realized I knew who he was, she got angry with me and tried to make me take care of him. I said ‘I don’t fucking know him—he just bought me drinks.’ Someone called an ambulance and it took him away.
‘I came back here, but it was empty. So I left again. I walked all the way back across the city, found that bird’s hotel, and found her room. I’ll never know how I did it. A miracle, that.”
“D’you fuck her?” Les asked.
“Yeah, I fucked her. Was class. When I left, the sun was about coming up. I walked back on the beach and my boss from the market back home was there. She said, ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’ I said, ‘No, you won’t.’
‘And then, I see this shadow coming towards me from off down the beach. And it’s slowly getting closer. And as we’re about to pass each other, he looks at me and says ‘Rob?’ and I say, ‘no. Kav.’ And he just kept walking.
‘It was fuckin’ Nils, that cunt.”
We got up. Got dressed. I learned that Cross was angry the night before because someone had peed on him while he was peeing on a wall.
“Me hand hurts. I think I punched whoever peed on me in the back of the head. I hope I did.”
We went outside. We all agreed we needed food. Cross remembered a KFC he had seen the day before and it took no convincing whatsoever to get the rest of us to follow him there.
We ordered. We sat down. After eating in silence for the better part of ten minutes, Dicko finally spoke.
“Imagine, lads, if Nils walked through that door right now with a fucking drink in his hand?”
See, Nils gave us a gift. It wasn’t the forty some-odd drinks. It wasn’t one of the better nights of any of our lives to that point. Really, it wasn’t even the story, which is a very good story and one I’ve probably told a thousand times since coming home from that trip (though this is the first time I’ve written it down). What Nils gave us is the belief that at any moment of any day or night, something slightly amazing could happen.
After all, that was the reason I had taken that trip, alone to Europe, in the first place.
