The Rights Of Mannheim

It wasn’t so much a case of me finding Mannheim, but of the city finding me. Christian Vinne, our drummer, studied in Mannheim, and his brother Michael, our bassist, lived there. So we all, including Aoife O’Sullivan who sings and does strings and stuff with me, moved there after we formed the band and stayed there for two great years.

The town is in the south-west of Germany on the banks of the Rhine. It smells of chocolate on sunny days because one of its main factories produces chocolate, and there’s a strong Turkish and Italian presence too. The town was bombed during the war so it had to be rebuilt, and thousands of families moved over from Turkey and Italy. They nearly own the town now, so there was no end of entertainment and music. The town can have a really electric atmosphere. At night you can see the eerie but strangely beautiful lights from the town that they built around the enormous BASF chemical company that employs 250,000.
Mannheim is probably not the most aesthetically beautiful town in the world, but to me it meant writing songs without any limitations or having people like record companies telling me what I can or can’t write. It’s not terribly big, so you could have a good walk from one end of the town to the other. I lived in two places, on each side of the river. I had a cosy attic flat that I painted myself and asked my visitors to write notes on the wall. I lived right beside a red light district without realising it! Both places were fairly quiet. But the people are mental, nuts! They play music all over the streets and they have an annual festival that seems to drag on for weeks. The people dress up for it in strange clothes and even wear the clothes to work.
It’s probably a poor town compared to, say, Frankfurt. But there’s always something cultural going on. The classical composer Bach studied there and there’s a classical music college, so the town has a strong musical tradition. There’s music every night, from Turkish traditional performers to hip-hop and international acts like Roisin Murphy and Regina Spektor. One of the best venues is Alte Feuerwache on Brückenstrasse, which has local and visiting acts. Capitol was another great place for music, and Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins played in a venue that was knocked down recently. There’s a jazz festival every year and they come from literally everywhere to perform and to listen.
While I was living there we had a two-week countrywide rubbish strike, which I actually enjoyed because everyone started to throw out all kinds of stuff, including lovely old furniture. I found some 40-year-old family photos when I was scavenging in the junk.
I listened a lot to radio there. Radio Sunshine was great for hard house and techno. There’s also Radio Funk and SWR3. They have some kind of quota for local acts, and in the past four years they’ve really been giving good exposure to local artists. I got a fair amount of plays on SWR3. They have an interest in Irish music from way back in the day, and there’s a guy called Ray Garvey from Tipperary who’s kind of considered the Bono of Germany. I recorded my first EP and the album in Mannheim, and there’s a terrific studio in Heidelberg which is only about ten miles down the road.
It’s much cheaper than Ireland. A comfortable flat would be €200 a month. You could get by on €200 a month for food and so on. A pint of beer can cost as little as €1.80, dirt cheap. There are quite a few Irish pubs too. I was enthralled by pubs with bar-ladies dressed as witches for no particular reason other than they felt like it, and my landlord once had Howard Marks stay for a lock-in in his pub called Rhodos.
It was quite liberating for me, living in a different language and culture, among salt-of-the-earth people, in a town with beautiful side streets and parks. At the beginning I busked so I could afford to eat, then played gigs to avid fans and enjoyed an ecological lifestyle, swimming in the outdoor pools. I used to cycle around the beautiful Wasserturm water fountain hidden away in a corner of the town.
There are tiny Godfather-style Italian restaurants, like something from a movie, men and boys with greased-back hair, shiny shoes, shouting in friendly jest at each other about the weather. I’d often share tables with some of the mad fuckers from the Hell’s Angels of the Baden-Wurttemberg area. The people shop for clothes like crazy, and young lovers can regularly be seen cuddling on the street. They have mish-mash shops that sell everything from door hooks to pets. For me, Mannheim is not so much a place as a brilliant part of my life.”

WHERE TO EAT:
The best place I ate was the family-run Bei Gianni’s at Beilstrasse 25. It’s quite small and had the cheapest and tastiest food you’ll ever eat, with a brilliant atmosphere. I always felt really good coming out.

TOP TIP FOR DRINK:
There are so many places to drink in Mannheim, but Contra’N was one of my favourites. It’s a Goth bar on Werftstrasse with great music of all kinds.

WHERE TO STAY:
The hotels tend to be a bit expensive, but one of the cheapest is Hotel Luna which costs about €22 for a bed per night. It’s just off Bismarckstrasse.

GETTING THERE:
It’s about 25 minutes by train to Frankfurt for a direct flight to Ireland. You can also go Ryanair to Hann which is in the middle of nowhere and is best avoided. You can also get trains to Paris.

Wallis Bird’s debut album Spoons is out now