feeling european

Girl you know I'd love you like a holiday. I'm packing the essentials and I've got my money changed. I’ve been thumbing through the guide books, and studying the map, to find your points of local interest and take you off the beaten track. SHA NA NA NA NA NA NA NAAAA.

When we go to sleep this evening we’ll be feeling European, we’ll be steeped in history and swimming in warm beer, I’ll be staring at your architecture and staggered by your art, but worried that the politics will tear us both apart. I’ve got to get away, on holiday, on an aeroplane. Kolle alaaf you. Kolle alaaf you.

Well it wasn’t quite the holiday that you had planned, you said I couldn’t find the campsite and my sleeping bag was damp. But I bought a brand new phrase book and baby by tonight, I’ll have learnt a million ways to say that I can blow your mind. SHA NA NA NA NA NA NA NAAAA.

When we go to sleep this evening we’ll be feeling European, we’ll be steeped in history and swimming in warm beer, I’ll be staring at your architecture and staggered by your art, but worried that the politics will tear us both apart. Kolle alaaf you, Kolle alaaf you.

Facts: The Winter Olympics visited Cologne in 2003 and liked it so much that they wrote a song about it (and about plane rides with pretty girls - see also Wolfpack of One's How do They Stay in the Air').

It was recorded by Dave Anderson out of Hawkwind, which might explain its intergalactic man-disco sound (and this picture of Martin riding a pig).

"Kolle, alaaf you!" was the closing line from a speech given by the visiting John F Kennedy in June 1963. It wasn't quite German, but the 350,000 strong Cologne crowd he drew took the compliment to their hearts. Too right, as well, it's a great place.

download the audio in mp3