Rocket Man

Back again in dew & frost clad Somerset after a fabulous weekend in Bavaria, which has left me somewhat out of pocket, and I must confess that I feel every bit as depressed as my ex-patient Alison must have done. I had if you remember used the excuse of a patient with an eating disorder to fly out to the Oktoberfest and visit Dr Bayer of the University Hospital of Straubing.

After a beer soaked evening at the fest on friday, the following day I attended Dr.Bayer's clinic, an incredibly modern hospital full of glass walls and chrome seats, housed as it is in a fabulous medieval building up in the wooded hills above the river Danube.

Dr.Bayer's work is at the cutting, nay bleeding edge of modern psychology & psychiatry, but after bandaging his patients up, most make a full and remarkable recovery. Whilst discussing treatment for eating disorders, Klaus showed me a patient (a typical German male) who was hooked up to a computer via a large bundle of cables and munching on wurst. The computer slowly tracked the chemical changes in the brain as sausage after sausage raised the pleasure levels, before the anxiety of an empty plate dragged them down again. Another patient was drinking beer from a metal stein and received shocks of increasing voltage with every swig.


I took the most of this opportunity to absorb as much knowledge as possible, and toured the facility for myself. The town of Straubing floods regularly and Dr.Bayer has a whole department dedicated to overcoming flooding and other water related traumas. Here I met one of his patients a certain Herr Hartman totally submerged in a glass tank full of water with only a small air pipe to keep him alive and struggling frantically.

Klaus explained that Herr Hartman was planning to become the first Bavarian in space after collecting a number of old U-Boats which a friend of his was going to blast into orbit from a disused brewery near the airport. But Hartman himself was both claustrophobic and scared of the dark, and facilities for experiencing zero gravity in NiederBayern are limited.

On Sunday, after another evening of heavy drinking, I decided to visit the Bavarian rocket expert Professor Koenigsbauer and was whisked to the old brewery in Erding by Dr Bayer in his huge bulletproof Mercedes, (who was clearly after a new client).

Amongst the forest of conning towers, funnels and communication masts of the brewery we found Professor Koenigsbauer and joined him for lunch (half a pig with a jar of sauerkraut).
"Oh yes.." he explained as if space travel was the third most popular hobby in Bavaria, " we are sending small rockets and payloads into space all the time. Normally small things like beer cans or bottles, (sometimes we put messages or cameras in them, its very funny) but we are very close to launching something much bigger.....The U-boat is ideal really as it is already air tight and aerodynamic...."

Being careful to only mention the first world war, I suggest that U-Boats were scarcely airtight at the time, never mind in their rusted condition nearly a century later. Koenigsbauer seems unconcerned. Hartman it seems has a veritable collection of specimins to choose from stored in temperature and humidity controlled conditions in his garage on the outskirts of Munich, and
Gunther von Hagen has apparently agreed to seal the casing in plastic. I ask Professor Koenigsbauer how close he really is to launching something as heavy as a U-Boat. He grins and mumbles something into his Handy. My cynism begins to fade however as a deafenning roar breaks out and we are consumed by heavy oilly smoke. A dark shaddow followed by a long firey tail streaks before my eyes. When the smoke has cleared it reveals the hideously mutated shape of what might once have been a 1992 Nissan R32 Skyline with an Energia rocket bolted to the chasis. With an estimated 46MN of thrust its certainly Bavaria's scariest Nissan, and at the wheel grinning ear to ear is Herr Hartman.

Its all a very far cry from my poor little blue plasticy Smart car as it skins its way to the village hall in Backwell this morning....