A new theme town is giving Germans a chance to indulge their fixation with the Wild West, writes Derek Scally in Berlin.
It's just after high noon in Silverlake City. I hurry down the sandy Main Street, looking at the timber buildings covered in signs and posters promising "Can-Can Girls", "Painless Dentistry" and a $5,000 reward for the capture of Jesse James. Through the clearing smoke I realise with a sinking feeling that, in true Irish style, I have just missed the shoot-out.
Welcome to Silverlake City, an "authentic" Wild West town in Templin, a town located halfway between Berlin and the Polish border. It's a €17 million homage to cowboys and Indians, but this is still Germany, and the high noon shoot-out takes place at high noon, sharp. No exceptions for disorganised Irish journalists.
The town has only been open a few weeks, and wood perfumes the air otherwise polluted by Aaron Copeland-meets-Ennio Morricone muzak piped through the PA system. A disembodied metallic voice with a twang that's more East German than Texas announces: "Dear visitors, come and look into our general store. Even if you don't want to buy anything, you'll be amazed at the love and quality we have invested in the interior décor and the original items shipped in from the US." Visitors are walking through the sandy street peering cautiously into the buildings. The sheriff, a man with a large beard, sits in his office stroking his even-larger gun, a silver monster with a marble handle. When he hears I've just missed the shoot-out, he tells me to make sure not to miss the bank robbery at 3pm.
Trying to get into the spirit of things, I tell him: "Either you have good informers or you're in cahoots with the bank robbers." The sheriff gives me a baleful stare and returns to lovingly polishing his gun. "That's a big gun you have there," I hear myself say in a cringingly Irish, stating-the-obvious fashion. I beat a retreat when I hear myself getting ready to ask if it makes a big bang.
All this authenticity is making me hungry. I look around, discount the "authentic" Chinese restaurant, and buy a Silverlake Schnitzel and stroll through the doors of the Silverlake Saloon. The tables are full, the atmosphere is limp and the floor is spotless - not a wood shaving or lump of chewed tobacco anywhere.
Onstage, a three-piece combo calling itself the Silverlake Ramblers are singing Back in the Saddle Again. They're followed by a magician doing card tricks and punishing the audience with the high-volume dance remix of Cotton-Eyed Joe.
The band returns, this time with singer Loni in tow, and a risqué number called Learn Your Lessons Well. She works the room in a busty dress, lecturing the audience, in English: "Sex is a wonderful habit, it's a most inexpensive treat". Food for thought as I chew my overpriced, greasy schnitzel. She confuses several young children with her continued sex lecture and the line, "It's the one thing you take lying down". It's hard to tell if the audience, mainly older eastern Germans, are bored or if they are always like this.
"Germans really are mad about the Wild West," says Hannelore Ruhland, here with husband Alexander to celebrate his 60th birthday. "For us, it started with a cowboy hat three years ago. Then we started line-dancing. We were going to get into our cowboy gear to come here but I'm glad we left it in the car. We'd have looked very odd compared to the other visitors."
As she talks, the stage is cleared for the can-can girls. There may be only four of them but they're having a devil of a time staying in synch. Can-can can't, I think to myself as I head out to the clearing at the end of Main Street, where children ride ponies while their parents and grandparents look on.
"The place is really well done but I thought there would have been more people and more atmosphere," says Ingrid Chlopczik. "The children are loving it and it reminds me of all those great John Wayne films and our own westerns." Germany has a century-old love affair with the Wild West, thanks to the books of German author Karl May, devoured by generations of children and adults. May never visited the U.S. but churned out convincing western novels with Barbara Cartland-like speed right up until his death in 1912.
Revered in Germany but little-known elsewhere, May's books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, making him by far the best-selling German author of all time. After the second World War, producers in West and East Germany began filming his books, such as Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. The films were pure escapism, providing audiences with parables of loss and repression, not to mention the ideals and dreams lacking in post-war German society. The "eastern" westerns in particular, green-lighted by the politburo in East Berlin, are fascinating for their idealised portrayal of the Indians as the good guys and the cowboys as the villains.
It's the same at Silverlake City, where the highlight of the visit is the Indian Earth House - think Newgrange meets Crannóg - where a crowd has gathered to take part in a pow-wow. The three native Americans on hand are led by Buffalo Child, a statuesque 6ft 7in Cherokee. Watching him dance around the enclosure letting piercing war cries escape from his throat, it's impossible to believe that Buffalo Child is actually 81 years old. He is in amazing physical shape and has a great line in accessories: eagle feathers and a necklace of grizzly bear teeth.
The two other Indians, a man and a woman, come over to introduce themselves. "Hi, I'm Kathy-Ann and I'm one quarter Irish," says the striking woman just introduced as Cheyenne River Sioux Indian with the name "Woman Draped in the Flag". She was born Kathy-Ann Wilcutts with a grandfather from Dublin who emigrated to the US to work on the railroads. Almost as proof, she proudly points out the traces of red in her long dark pigtails. She's been married for 11 years to the other Indian performing, Steven Garcia, also known as "Black Star-Eyed Eagle". They live in San Diego but travel the world performing at festivals and at parks. "The crowd here is a bit reserved. It's hard to tell if they are enjoying it," says Kathy-Ann.
But people seem to be getting into the swing of things as I make my way out and run into the promised bank robbery, bang on three o'clock. It's an impressive show, with a shoot-out, a brawl, a screaming damsel in distress, exploding dynamite and even a shot sheriff falling from the roof of a building. His fall, like the rest of Silverlake City, is harmless but good-natured fun. Butlins meets Bonanza.