On June 13, 2026, I attended the 2026 Los Amigos Masters of the Universe convention. Now the last two Los Amigos conventions took place in Neuss about 300 kilometers from where I live. It’s a long drive, but perfectly doable and in 2024, I even drove there and back in a single day, though in 2025, I booked a hotel for one night.
However, Stadthalle Neuss, the venue of the 2024 and 2025 Los Amigos con, is currently undergoing renovations, so the organisers had to find a different venue. And the venue they found, the Luxor Film Palace, is located in Heidelberg, which is a lot further away than Neuss, 536 kilometers to be exact. That’s further than my trip to Hanau in December 2024 and further than my trip to Antwerp last year and in fact it would be the longest road trip I have ever done on my own.
Nonetheless, I decided to go, because I always enjoy the Los Amigos con. And besides, I have an aunt in Heidelberg who always asks me to visit and this was the perfect excuse. Besides, I several long road trips, I have become much more confident. That said, because the trip was so long, I would stay at a hotel for two nights. Basically, I was planning to drive to Heidelberg on Friday, go to the con and visit Aunt Irmtraud and Uncle Gerd on Saturday and drive back on Sunday. And because it’s such a long trip and I wanted to have some time to explore Heidelberg, a city I have no memory of ever visiting, I was planning to leave very early, at four AM or so. That way, I could also make my way through the three construction zones between Bremen and Hannover (at the Weser bridge in Bremen, at exit Langwedel and junction Walsrode) and hopefully even through the construction zones at Hildesheim before the rush hour traffic and the related traffic jams. Of course, there would probably be construction zones and traffic jams further down the line, but at least I could get the ones I knew would be a problem out of the way before rush hour traffic starts. And since Germans start work almost ridiculously early, rush hour traffic can start as early as six or six thirty AM.
So the plan was made. On Thursday afternoon, I packed my overnight bag, a box of action figures for my pal and fellow toy collector David from Cork in Ireland as well as some chocolate for Aunt Irmtraud, put my water bottle in the fridge and went to bed very early (late afternoon rather than early evening) so I could get enough sleep. I was planning to get up at 3 AM, take a shower and wash my hair and then set off towards Heidelberg.
An Urgent Call
But like all good plans, this one didn’t survive contact with reality. For after about two and a half hours, I was woken by my mobile phone ringing. I decided to ignore it – whoever it was could wait. But then the landline phone started ringing as well, so I reluctantly got up to answer it.
On the other end, there was the owner of a translation agency with whom I sometimes collaborate. He apolised for the time, but the District Court Bremerhaven urgently needed an interpreter for a deportation detention hearing. Could I do it?
I said, “Under ordinary circumstances, yes. But I’m leaving for Heidelberg at 4 AM tomorrow morning and I want to get some sleep beforehand, so this is really bad timing.” The translation agency owner asked if I was travelling by car or by train. “By car”, I replied and he agreed that this really was bad timing. I said that I would do it, if there’s no one else – this hearing is about a real human being and the question whether he will have to go to deportation jail or whether he can go home to his family – but I’d prefer not to. We can agreed that the agency would try to find someone else and if there was no one, they’d call me back.
Since I was awake already, I decided to go to the toilet. And lo and behold, I had barely finished my business, when the translation agency called back. Unfortunately, all the other interpreters either didn’t answer the phone or really, really couldn’t do it. So I sighed and said, “Okay, I’ll go.”
Now remember that the opening ceremony and match of the 2026 World Cup were supposed to take place that evening. And I suspect that this may have a lot to do with the fact that no other interpreter wanted to take the job. Which is rather annoying, because a World Cup match that didn’t even involve Germany IMO is less of a reason not to take the job than having to get up at 3 AM or so.
But things couldn’t be changed, so I got up and got dressed. Which promptly caused another issue, for while I had already laid out my clothes for the trip to Heidelberg, a He-Man t-shirt really isn’t an appropriate outfit for a court hearing. So I hunted in my closet for a more appropriate top, grabbed my purse and set off for Bremerhaven.
Even though I’d been fast asleep and it was just before seven PM, it was still light outside and would be for another three hours or so. After all, it’s a week before the summer solstice, which means that the sun rises at shortly before five AM and sets at shortly before ten PM.
The Road to Bremerhaven
Now you must know that Bremerhaven is 80 kilometers away – in the wrong direction. If it had been the court in Verden, which is 45 kilometers in the direction I would be driving the next day, I would have grabbed my overnight bag, too, and would have gone in search of a hotel in Verden to get an early start the next morning. Alas, it was Bremerhaven, for of course it was, which meant driving 80 kilometers there and back.
I hit the first obstacle before I even made it to the Autobahn. Because the Brinkum bypass road which takes you directly to the Autobahn exit Bremen-Brinkum turned out to be closed for the night, because the powers that be had decided to install a railway bridge just that night. They are currently using existing railway tracks to extend the Bremen tram system all the way to Brinkum – something I would really have welcomed back when I was sixteen and a direct connection to the city center from the neighbouring village would have been really useful. These days, however, I have a car and rarely use the tram. As for why they felt the need to install the bridge that night rather than any other – who knows?
However, since the bypass was closed, I had to drive through Brinkum instead. Which isn’t too bad, except that our stupid local council has set a speed limit of thirty kilometers per house on all the roads going through Brinkum. Not just the small side streets, but the main roads as well. The problem is that we’ve had an influx of people from Bremen moving into Stuhr, which meant increasing votes for the Green Party. And the Green Party hates cars and would prefer us all to ride bicycles (which has always been a thing here, even though I always hated bicycles) and use public transport (still shitty, though improving), so they slap stupid thirty kilometers per hour speed limits on various main roads. They’re really aggressive about enforcing them, too. So I had to crawl through Brinkum at thirty kilometers per hour, even though there was absolutely no one around I could have endangered. So instead of five minutes of zipping past Brinkum on the bypass, I had to spend ten to twelve minutes driving through the town to get to the Autobahn.
As explained in this post, there are three roads to Bremerhaven. Normally, the fastest way to Bremerhaven is driving onto Autobahn A1 in direction Hamburg and then changing onto Autobahn A27 at the intersection Bremer Kreuz. The A27 will take you directly to Bremerhaven. However, this route means that you’ll have to pass the construction zone at the Autobahn bridge across the river Weser and get through the massive traffic jam that always piles up in both directions before the construction zone. Getting through the traffic jam will take you thirty or forty-five minutes, so during the day, the Autobahn is out and driving along smaller country roads and through the Wesertunnel is the fastest way to get to Bremerhaven. However, it was past seven PM, so the traffic jam at the Weser Bridge should theoretically have dissipated. I say theoretically, because in practice the traffic jam was still there, though not nearly as bad as it would have been earlier in the day. That said, it still took me an extra ten minutes to get through it. Together with the delay in Brinkum, that means I had already lost fifteen minutes.
Once I had passed the construction zone at the Weser bridge, the going got easier. At intersection Bremer Kreuz, I changed onto Autobahn A27, headed towards Bremerhaven. Now Bremen and Bremerhaven are both elongated cities stretching along the river Weser. And the A27 runs past all of Bremen except for the part called Bremen-Nord (Bremen-North), which is served by Autobahn A270, while the A27 swerves away from the river to cut through thinly populated marshlands. There are only three exits between Bremen and Bremerhaven, spaced far apart, because there is nothing to exit to here, and then the A27 runs along the length of Bremerhaven. Bremerhaven is a strange city anyway. It was only founded in 1837 to provide an alternative to Bremen’s harbour which was becoming increasingly difficult to access for larger ships due to sedimentation of the river Weser and is basically a collection of previously independent villages and small towns and a succession of ports along the river Weser, starting with the fishing port (partly touristy and partly active destination for fishing fleets and home to food processing plants), then the touristy bit with all the museum vessels, then the cruise terminal and finally the overseas port with the car terminal, where brand-new cars and other vehicles stored on giant lots and gigantic parking garges before being shipped onwards to their new owners (the coolest part of Bremerhaven’s harbour) and the container terminal.
I left the Autobahn at the exit Bremerhaven Center, even though the District Court isn’t actually in the city center – that would be too easy. Instead, it’s in a residential neighbourhood called Bremerhaven-Lehe far from anything that is even remotely of interest. It was around quarter past eight when I arrived and the parking lot was mostly empty. I didn’t even have to pay, parking was free at this late hour.
Through the Prison Gate and into the Court House
Of course, the district court was already closed for business at this late hour, so I had been instructed to enter via the gate of the adjacent prison. Yes, there is an early twentieth century prison (opened in 1916) next to the district court. So I walked up to the large prison gate, feeling rather apprehensive about the whole thing, because absolutely no one likes to approach prison gates, even if you know you’ll be allowed to leave again. As for what entering through the gate to the Bremerhaven prison feels like, it was very much like R2-D2 and C-3PO approaching Jabba’s palace in Return of the Jedi. You ring the doorbell, there is a camera eye, though unlike in Return of the Jedi it doesn’t pop out, and a voice from a loudspeaker asks you to state your business, though it is somewhat less unfriendly than the voice in Return of the Jedi and also speaks German.
I said “I’m an interpreter, here for a deportation detention hearing” and a buzzer opened a small door next to the big main gate. I stepped through and found myself inside an enclosed driveway with the outer gate behind me, high walls on both sides and a grated iron gate on the other side leading into the prison proper. On one side there was a guard house with the gate guards sitting behind what I assume is bullet-proof glass. The guards told me I should go through a side door into the courthouse and buzzed the door open. Alas, the door leading into the courthouse was an extremely heavy steeldoor, probably to make sure no one can escape in either direction. I had to push against it to even get it to open far enough to slip inside.
The steel door fell shut with a heavy thud and I found myself in a completely dark corridor, illuminated only by a wan emergency light. I used my phone to cast some additional light on the matter, walked up a few steps, rounded a corner and found myself on the ground floor of the courthouse proper. I spotted a police officer in full uniform, complete with bullet-proof vest, baton, pistol and handcuffs. “Are you the interpreter?” he asked. I said yes and was ushered into one of the small courtrooms that are more like classrooms or conferences rooms compared to the big, drafty main courtroom.
The Hearing
Inside the courtroom, there was another police officer, a court recorder, a lawyer and the subject of the hearing (or “the person affected” as he was referred to in all the official documents), a young man from Ghana. I had encountered this lawyer before – he handles a lot of immigration cases and criminal cases involving immigrants in Bremerhaven and always does a good job.
I turned to the young man from Ghana and introduced myself and told him I understand he is upset, but if he wants to say something, which he’s not obliged to do, he should leave some breaks to give me the chance to translate. I almost always say something like that to whoever I’m supposed to interpret for – witness, defendant, plaintiff – because being in court does tend to make people nervous and most people also don’t know how interpretation works and that I’m not a robot and can’t keep all the stuff they’re saying in my mind and produce a perfect translation. And the degree of nervousness of a civilian in court has nothing to do with how serious the case is and whether the person is runs the very real risk of going to prison or whether they are a witness in a civil case.
Indeed, one of the most nervous and upset people I ever encountered in a court house was a former competitive showjumper from South Africa who had even competed in the Olympics (he even has a Wikipedia entry) and was called as a witness in a case involving an expensive race horse not doing what it was expected to do. Verden, the location of one of the courthouses where I occasionally work as an interpreter, is Germany’s center of horse breeding, so I occasionally get horse cases. This guy had flown in from South Africa the day before, was terribly jet-lagged and also struggling with a very cold winter day in North Germany coming out of the South African summer. He was super nervous and after he had given his statement and I had interpreted, we were both allowed to leave, since the rest of the trial was in German. When we left the courtroom, I asked the guy if he was wanted to wait for his friend, a Verden horsebreeder, or if he wanted to leave the rather labyrinthine courthouse. He said he wanted to wait. He was also yawning and shivering in the cold and wet North German winter. I said, “I know where the coffee maker is. I’ll show you and we’ll get you a coffee.” He was very grateful and asked if he could buy a coffee for me. I replied, “Well, I’m theoretically not allowed to accept anything from anybody involved in this case, but if you wanted to bribe me, I hope you don’t think I can be bought for a 2.50 Euro cup of coffee.” He laughed.
While everybody else was assembled in the courtroom in Bremerhaven, the judge was still in her chambers, though she briefly appeared to swear me in, when I informed the court recorder that I only have general court approval for translation, not interpretation. “Why not?” the court recorder asked, while she and the judge debated whether orally translating an official writ on the fly counts as translation or interpretation. “Ask the state court in Saarbrücken”, I replied, “They felt I wasn’t experienced enough to be granted official court approval as an interpreter as well.” Though come to think of it, I certainly am experienced enough now, so I maybe I should go after the official general court approval to avoid these debates.
I was then handed some papers – the official request for the arrest and remanding into custody until deportation of the young man in question – and asked to translate. This is common for deporation detention hearings – there’s always a writ which I have to translate on fly. If I’m lucky, they hand me the papers beforehand. These writes are full of legalese and endless references to paragraphs, laws and precendents, which is pretty painful for me and I also don’t think very helpful for the person affected, because they usually have no idea what all this stuff is even about or what paragraph whatever of the whatever act even says. Hereby, my favourite is the German Federal Law for Family Matters and Cases of Voluntary Jurisdiction, because they decided to tack some clauses involving deportation detention to a bloody family law. The first time I had one of these judicial writs in hand, I actually interrupted my translation to ask, “I’m sorry, but does this really mean Law for Family Matters [the laws are routinely abbreviated and particularly with obscure ones, you sometimes don’t know what the abbreviation stands for]? Cause that makes no sense at all.”
Basically, what happened here is that the guy came to Germany and was sent to live in the City of Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhrgebiet. In Germany, refugees and asylum seekers are distributed throughout the country in order to prevent ghetto formation and individual cities from being overwhelmed. In theory, this is a good idea. In practice, however, it often becomes a problem, because the people are not allowed to leave the county to which they have been assigned, let alone the state, without explicit. In some cases, this means that even taking the bus to the neighbouring city is theoretically illegal for refugees and asylum seekers, let alone visiting a friend or family member assigned to a different city in a different state. However, many refugees don’t really know this nor do they necessarily know where the borders of the county they’re assigned to are. When I was teaching German to refugees, I had a lovely young couple from Syria who were super excited that they had the chance to get an apartment of their own. And I told them, “That’s great, but you have to ask for permission first, because that apartment is in Bremen, which is not just a different county, but a different state.” They were confused. “But it’s only a few kilometers away.” I said, “Yes, but it’s Bremen. Do you know where Mohammed [a classmate] lives?” They nodded. I said, “Well, across the road from where Mohammed lives, that’s where Bremen starts.” So in short, mistakes are really easy to make.
What happened in this case is that the young man met a young woman who lives in Bremerhaven and has a residence permit. They fell in love, had a baby and then she became pregnant again and was hospitalised with a high risk pregnancy, so he moved to Bremerhaven to be with her and take care of their child. Meanwhile, the City of Gelsenkirchen decided to send him a request to voluntarily leave the country, which he never received. So they sent the police to arrest him and couldn’t find him. Eventually, they found him in Bremerhaven and had him arrested and this is why we were all sitting in a courtroom at a quarter past eight PM.
Once I’d read out the request by the City of Gelsenkirchen, the judge came and proceedings proper started. The lawyer argued that he had actually informed Gelsenkirchen about the whereabouts of his client and also that his client had applied for asylum and that the asylum process was still ongoing, which means that he cannot be deported. Well, it turns out that the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees had – I kid you not – lost this guy’s asylum application. Which is just face palm worthy. The next morning, I heard on the news that some stricter asylum regulations were going into effect that day and thought, “Well, maybe do your job first and don’t fucking lose asylum applications.”
Waiting in a Spooky Courthouse by Night
After the lawyer had stated his case and the young man answered some questions about his life and family, the judge and court recorder retreated for deliberations. The rest of us were sent out of the courtroom and waited. And waited. And waited.
There are wooden benches outside the courtroom, but they are hard and unpleasant. Plus, the benches apparently haven’t been repainted since the courthouse opened in 1916, so the paint was flaking and came off on my hands. I checked my phone and studied the papers posted on bulletin boards inside the courthouse, which basically were some legal writs which have to be posted publicly, mostly because the court doesn’t know where the person in question lives, as well as some union posters and job openings advertised for legal clerks and prison guards. In short, super dull stuff.
The two police officers and the lawyer lamented that they had planned to watch football that evening. I said, “Well, at least it’s not a match involving the German team. Meanwhile, I have to get up and leave at four AM tomorrow.” – “Well, this whole thing should be over by then”, one of the police officers replied.
I also asked the police officers and the lawyer, if there was a coffee maker anywhere in the courthouse, but there is none, at least none that is publicly accessible. So we were stuck with waiting and couldn’t even get a coffee.
After a pretty long time of waiting, the court recorder appeared and apologised for the delay, but the computer system in the courthouse had gone down and they were having problems typing up the ruling.
So we were in for more waiting. One by one, the two police officers, the lawyer and myself all went to the toilet. Now there are toilets opposite the courtroom, but those toilets were locked for the night – and they’re often locked by day as well. There is one toilet that’s always accessible – where the offices of the public prosecution are on the second floor of an annex to the old courthouse built in the 1970s. Note that we were in the main building on the ground floor. It’s a long way, even during the day.
One of the police officers asked if I knew where the toilets were. I said, “Yes. I’ve been here a few times before.” and set off in search of the toilets in a courthouse that was completely dark except for service lights and what outside light filtered in through the hallway windows. In short, it was super spooky and I wouldn’t have been surprised to run across a ghost or two, especially since I imagine a courthouses with an attached prison would be the sort of place to attract unquiet spirits. Though as far as I know there haven’t been any executions carried out in Bremerhaven’s prison. Those would have been handled in Bremen, where the old guillotine spent decades stored away in a shed, before it was donated to the local history museum.
I also took some pictures. Normally, they don’t like you taking pictures at the courthouse, but there was no one there to stop me. Besides, it’s just photos of empty hallways by night, so no one’s privacy is violated.
A spooky hallway in the old 1916 part of the Bremerhaven courthouse by night. The illuminated emergency exit sign under the arch looks like a ghostly train barelling towards you.
Inside the 1970s annex of the Bremerhaven courthouse. Once again, the emergency exit signs are the only illumination. Also note the empty cart for transporting files.
Another reason why I took those pictures is that liminal space horror is having another moment right now – empty and abandoned spaces are kind of creepy, who could have guessed? – and that I wanted to prove that I can take better spooky liminal space photos with my phone than a certain wunderkind director.
I guess liminal space horror is one of those things every generation claims to have discovered – just like “young woman in the big city navigates career and romance” stories. And if you’ve been around the block a few times, it’s always annoying whenever one of these things comes around again and is hailed as new and never before seen. Because creepy abandoned buildings have been a cornerstone of the horror genre since its inception more than two hundred years ago. Of course the nature of the spooky abandoned place has changed from the crumbling ruined castles of the gothic novel via the haunted 19th century mansions of early to mid twentieth century traditional horror to the summer camps and holiday cabins of the slasher era to today’s abandoned malls and stores. But the idea behind it is always the same. Abandoned places are spooky.
As for that Backrooms movie, it’s just the latest incarnation of this very old phenomenon. It’s not new or special, though it may well be entertaining and put a new spin on an old phenomenon. The trailer also doesn’t make it look very good – I have literally been in spookier abandoned places myself and taken pictures of them. That said, I normally wouldn’t have any issues with that movie, except that the way Backrooms and its twenty-year-old wunderkind director are being pushed as the next big thing that will change all of Hollywood is so bloody annoying. Especially since there are doubts that the twenty-year-old YouTuber actually did direct the movie, at least not on his own.
And the fact that Backrooms and Obsession, another cheap horror movie by a young wunderkind director, though this one has already reached the ripe old age of twenty-four (and he probably actually did direct the film), are being pitted against Masters of the Universe and to a lesser degree, The Mandalorian and Grogu, as “hot new thing” versus “tired old IP for old people who should just die” has turned those movies from “films I have zero interest in, but that I also don’t mind existing” to “fuck that shit and their shitty fans and shitty directors”. Scary Movie Whatever should also be listed here, except that that there’s no way to call that a new and never before seen thing made by young filmmakers, because the youngest Wayans brother is a year older than me and I’m apparently old enough to not deserve any movies anymore, but should instead just lay down and die.
I was a little worried that I’d spent too much time going to the toilet and back and that the judge would have returned in my absence and everybody was waiting for me, but nope. Everybody was still waiting outside the courtroom and it took another fifteen minutes or so for the judge and court recorder to finally return.
The Decision
We all filed back into the courtroom and the judge proclaimed her decision that the guy who had been the subject of the whole mess would not have to go into deportation detention. There were several pages of reasoning for this decision, including references to paragraphs and precendents, but because it was so late and everybody wanted to go home, it was decided unaniminously that I would not have to translate the entire decision on the fly, but only the gist of it. Which was, “Come back, when you have an actual deportation flight booked” directed at the City of Gelsenkirchen, which also has to pay for the entire proceedings, including my fees, and “Make sure to inform the police of any address changes and get the mess about the missing asylum claim sorted out” directed at the lawyer and his client.
It was quarter past eleven when we were all finally allowed to go home. The young man was understandably extremely relieved and happy, so happy that he hugged his lawyer, me and even the police officers, though he refrained from hugging the judge. We were all let out again via the prison gate and the lawyer offered to take his client home. If he hadn’t, I probably would have offered, because the busses were no longer running this late in the evening and the poor guy is destitute and has no money for a taxi.
The Way Home by Night
Even though it was a week before the summer solstice, the sun had set it just before ten PM and by the time we left the courthouse at a quarter past eleven, it was completely dark outside.
Now Bremerhaven has something extremely uncommon in Germany, namely a supermarket that is open 24 hours. The supermarket is in the harbour and caters to sailors whose ships don’t always arrived during normal opening hours, but lots of people go there, showing that there is a need for more 24 hour supermarkets. And if I didn’t have to get up so very early the next morning, I would have gone to that supermarket for some grocery shopping and maybe a coffee, if the bakery counter/coffee bar was still open. However, I did have to get up at four AM and I had a very long drive ahead of me the next day, so I forewent a pitstop at North Germany’s only 24 hour supermarket and just drove home.
I wouldn’t have minded a cup of coffee at all. However, at this late hour there was nothing open, at least not anywhere near where I was. There is not a single service station between Bremen and Bremerhaven – the only service station on Autobahn A27 is on the Bremen – Walsrode/Hannover leg and it’s terrible and also closes at three or four PM or so – and only two Autohöfe: Autohof Wulsdorf just south of Bremerhaven and Autohof Hemelingen in Bremen. Autohof Hemelingen is two exits from home, so there is no reason ever for me to stop there. And Autohof Wulsdorf was not only already closed – they close at nine PM, which is super early for an Autohof – but also not accessible from due to construction work on the A27. In fact, Autohof Wulsdorf hasn’t been accessible from the Autobahn for months now, which must really be hurting their business.
While making my way through Bremerhaven back to the Autobahn, I passed a corner bar, a typical dive bar, that was still open. I briefly considered stopping to ask if they could make me a coffee. They probably would have done it, too, these places are welcoming. However, there was no place to park and even at eleven PM I didn’t want to illegally park on the sidewalk. Besides, I wasn’t particularly tired in spite of the late hour, so I just drove home.
All the traffic jams that has plagued me on the way to Bremerhaven has dissipated by now and the Autobahn was mostly empty, though I saw several oversize load transports headed in the opposite direction, most likely towards the harbours in Bremerhaven or Cuxhaven. Unfortunately, the Brinkum bypass was still closed and so I had to make my way through Brinkum again at thirty kilometers an hour. Luckily, the gas station in Brinkum was still open and so I filled up my tank again. My car had been fully fueled for the journey to Heidelberg, but the unexpected trip to Bremerhaven had burned up some of that fuel and I prefer setting out on long road trips with a full tank to avoid running out of fuel and having to refuel at overly high prices. So I filled up my tank in Brinkum and drove home. By the time I made it home, it was half past twelve. Normally, I would have parked the car in the garage, but I just left it in the driveway, because I would need it again in less than four hours anyway.
Once I made it home, I went to bed – well, actually not. I showered and washed my hair, which I would normally have done before setting off in the morning, typed up the invoice for my interpretation work and ate some blueberries that would have gone bad by the time I returned from Heidelberg. When I was finally in bed, it was about two AM and my alarm would go off in nínety minutes. But that’s a story for another day.
So while this detour to Bremerhaven was utterly unplanned, my pay – including a higher fee for work done outside normal work hours – would cover most of the cost of the trip to Heidelberg. Even more importantly, I made sure that a man could go home to his family rather than to jail, where he doesn’t belong (I am opposed to deportation detention and think it should only be used in extreme circumstances). And that’s a good thing.
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