Eurotash

What happens when you travel around Europe meeting people with cool moustaches, then grow your own and enter the world championships? Conor Creighton and photographer Steve Ryan find out.

It was a sunny June afternoon in inner-city Dublin when Steve and I ran into a kid called Jason. Though still too young to have covered algebra at school, Jason already had two girlfriends. We didn’t understand how until we got up closer and noticed he was wearing that earliest symbol of manhood – a ratty, bumfluff moustache. Clearly, his power over the ladies lay beneath his nose, giving him a bearing that raised him above his peers. Jason got us excited about moustaches.

Stopping by an internet café, we discovered that the World Beard and Moustache Championships (Bart Weltmeisterschaft) were happening near Frankfurt, Germany, in September. The decision was made. With precious little facial hair between us, and not much else to go on, we decided to start growing our tashes and enter.

But that wasn’t enough – we wanted the whole experience. So to delve fully into this world we decided to travel around Europe finding out what sets hairy-faced people apart from the baby-faced masses. We’d also produce a book about our experiences for Movember, a charity that rallies men to grow moustaches for the month of November to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer.

Packing small rucksacks and minimal shaving foam, we set course for our first stop, Edinburgh, where we met a member of the oldest moustache club in the world. The Handlebar Club was founded in London in 1947 and, at 23, Simon Whitby Brown is its youngest member. On the day he was granted admission to the hirsute group he got a tattoo of a handlebar moustache across his midriff. He assured us his girlfriend loves it. He also assured us that fat genes don’t run in his family, so there would be no chance of his ink tash becoming an ink elephant one day.

Next up was London, where we met with club president Rod Littlewood. Rod was also going to the world championships in Germany, and we could see the competition was going to be tough. “The Germans take it too seriously,” he said. “They’re up at 6am with their own stylists getting ready for the competition. So I got a badge made in German, saying: ‘I’m only here for the beer.’”

But we weren’t, quite. We were in it for the glory (and to make our book). We came back to Ireland and were grooming our newly sprouting whiskers when a tough Ryanair Magazine assignment was emailed over to us. We’d have to leave for Sweden that night and while there track down the legendary Dan Sederowsky (pictured, top left), a man who has clean shaved just once his entire life. Dan, 45, was another big contender for the championships, and has the most famous moustache in all of Sweden. Once he fell off the back of a truck and skinned the whole side of his face. “Save the moustache,” he told the doctors before they put him under for the operation.

Next we flew to Germany, where we swapped tips with French band Mini Moustache. Each member had a moustache, and they showed us a list of all the girls’ numbers they’d picked up on tour. “Fifty per cent like them, fifty per cent don’t,” they told us. “And to be honest, it’s not a bad thing to get rid of that half.” They reckon growing a moustache doesn’t so much repel potential mates, as filter them. Unbelievable as it may sound, walking around Berlin we actually managed to convince girls to rate our moustaches based on how well we kissed with them. Steve got a phone number. I managed to make my girl sneeze.

One of them claimed to be able to grow a moustache larger than ours, so we set our sights on finding a moustachioed lady. Many, many lesbian bars later, we stumbled across a straight woman with a pencil moustache. Tatjana Bergius (pictured, right) is an artist who once worked with the Berlin police force. She looks on her moustache as a way of telling men: “Anything you can do, I can do better.” And that she can. She’s very proud of her moustache, as is her boyfriend. One day she envisions a world where beautiful girls will walk down the street with fine waxed moustaches on display. Say no more.

On a quick trip home to the Emerald Isle to procure fresh clothes, we visited the most advanced wastewater treatment plant in Europe – the “stinkhouse” sewage plant in Ringsend. Basically, we wanted to find out what happens to stubble when you shave.

At the site, hair and various other solids are processed into some of the most potent fertiliser known to man. “It’s all about sex,” said chief engineer Ciaran O’Ruanaidh. “We need to keep the bacteria at an ambient temperature so they keep having sex and eating the solids.” Well, Ciaran and his crew may be simple wastewater treatment operatives to us, but to bacteria they’re no less than love gurus!

The fertiliser is then distributed to farms around Ireland. David Richardson invited us to his farm for the day to see how the stubble went to work on his cornfields. While unappealing to the ears or the belly, human fertiliser speeds up plant growth like steroids.

Far away from the farm, we got on a plane back to mainland Europe and ended up on the Polish-German border in the company of Estonian truck driver Aksel Sepp. He’d grown his moustache in honour of former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. The first hippie in Tallinn, Aksel used to play a game with friends where they’d sneak across the Iron Curtain to bring back Emerson, Lake & Palmer records. “Back then there was Russian mafia at every border with Kalashnikovs – it was really dangerous,” he said. “Back then there were no tachometers either, so you drove until you saw double, and then kept going until you saw triple.”

We didn’t do that. While we may have slept a few nights in cars, we never wound up driving until the two lanes in front of us turned into six.

Our adventure ended one day in September, in the small town of Gründau-Lieblos, near Frankfurt, where as usual we were waking up in a car park. We’d finally reached the world championships and, under our hastily constructed banner, we’d be competing against 150 of the best facial hair growers in the world.

Our opponents had been up since 6am spraying and blow-drying their constructions. We were also up from 6am, trying to get the heater in the car working so we’d get some feeling into our toes again.

Seven men entered our category. World champion Wolfgang Schneider was first onto the stage. He scored a perfect 10. We scored considerably less, although Steve did manage to pip the president of the Handlebar Club into fifth. After all, he was only there for the beer.

Somehow, a rumour was spreading around the tournament hall that we’d offered to host the next round of the world championships in Dublin. I blame the weissbier. We decided it was high time we left before we were roped into catering for 150 moustache champs and their WAGs, so we tucked our fifth and seventh place certificates under our arms and split.

It was a close escape but we had our book. Putting it together we ran out of gas, got lost and lived mostly off the food available at petrol stations. We learned a few things, too. Moustaches get you searched a little more diligently at airports; one in every two girls will probably take you for a gypsy; and food will always worm its way north to hide beneath your whiskers. But for all the disadvantages of growing it, we have to say that we never met a bad man (or woman) with a moustache. We can’t wait to lick our lips and not taste carpet again though.

EUROTASH — A JOURNEY TO THE ENDS OF THE UPPER LIP COSTS £20, AND IS AVAILABLE AT WWW.MOVEMBER.COM. ALL PROFITS GO TO THE PROSTATE CANCER CHARITY.