Originally published December 14, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1465
The name of the restaurant in Berlin was, of all things, the American Western saloon. Never in a million years would have I gone anywhere near the place, even in America, but I had been doing my Q&A with the German audience at the Nexus Resurrection convention while my daughter Gwen had gone on ahead to get something to eat. This was the restaurant at the convention center. So that’s where they took her.
I walked in and was stunned.
The décor was beyond belief. The “saloon” was jam packed with all sorts of icons of the American west… such as the 1997 Queens phone book, or a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Clearly they’d simply decorated it with anything that vaguely smacked of America. What was even more bizarre, though, was the spectacle on the dance floor. Germans, about a dozen, clad in cowboy hats, boots, gaudy western shirts that looked like something you’d see on Grand Ole Opry, were out on the dance floor, and they were line dancing in perfect synchronization to “Achy Breaky Heart.”
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