Saturday pub

Hutt’n, Nuremberg

I thought I was lonely but I was bored so I went to a pub. Nuremberg last month, a couple of nights, a wander around the city and a day trip to Bamberg by train. A pub naturally, Hutt’n in the old part of the city, first visited in January and a chat with a Romanian barman, who told me he had five kids by three different women. Also told me how loud war is, especially for a 13-year-old, which was his age when the Ceaușescu regime enacted a bloody revenge on protesters in his home town of Timișoara. I was back on a Saturday night in October, in the small wood-panelled bar, with its walls decorated with old framed paintings and prints. Elsewhere in Hutt’n, men and women eat bratwurst, dumplings and roast pork with relish. I just wanted beer. 

I sat on a stool at the end of the bar and asked the barman — not the Romanian who had left some time before I was told later in the evening — if he had any Märzen. ‘Haben sie ein Märzen, bitte.’ Was rather proud of myself until he came back with a Weizen. As I lifted my glass to take a deep gulp, the guy next to me lifted his in a gesture of cheers. In the background the voices of locals and bar staff collided and scrambled, joyous banter and laughter. Locals knew each other, ‘we only live 300 metres away’, said my neighbour. A liveliness on parade, a Saturday night liveliness perhaps, as a glass of a clear aniseed-flavoured shot was handed to me. I don’t drink such stuff but it would be rude to refuse so down it went in one and suddenly I was part of a group of three drinkers at the bar, a couple (the guy was the twin brother of the barman) and their cheers friend, who revealed that he had a roofing business. 

Another shot, this time a hazelnut schnapps, and I was told by the roof guy that they called one of the regulars Bruce Willis. The woman in the couple said he was in a film but didn’t elaborate on it. Bruce Willis certainly looked like Bruce Willis as he came to the bar to pay his bill. Elsewhere there were deep growling voices, the crackle and scrapes of laughter, high speed story-telling and the four of us talked about the German economy, the army, Bavaria and Franconia, while the woman told me about her job with Red Bull and her weekly trip to Munich and we exchanged moans about Deutsche Bahn. Meanwhile the barman handed me a glass of a Weizenbock that he thought I would like. 

A glorious evening and a confirmation of the spontaneous nature of pub life in both Europe and the UK. We talk to strangers in the pub, tell our life stories, sometimes embroidered, but usually true. A pub like Hutt’n and the beer it serves are the glue that brings people together, and alleviates any trend towards the loneliness of the lone traveller and also raises spirits. On the next night I went back after a day in Bamberg and swooped down on a Doppelbock like an eagle from the heights. It was my last beer. The barman, as industrious as ever, welcomed me back while a man with a reddish nose, wearing a pastel shirt, sat in a corner on his own gorging himself on a plate of bratwurst. I swear he had meat sweats. I had a sense of belonging, if only for a brief time, and then off back to my hotel I went, an early train to Brussels via Cologne in the morning the next chapter in my travels. 

Shameless plug: my latest book A Pub For All Seasons is now available (Headline).