3000 kilometres later...

"93) Prove your tolerance by listening through a whole record of My Chemical Romance without commiting suicide"

I'm writing this as I'm sitting in the back row of Nastefan's car on our way back from Hungary to STP, the "final act" of the Rika+Everton Germany tour I attended as some sort of roadie which kept us busy for the last ten days. Us, that's (me with) Stefan, Fresh, Lizard, Josef, Mihci, "Is des dei Lebensmotto?", Donkey Breeder and Richard playing some of the hardest rocking emo music no one has ever heard. 10 days spent on the road in an Hungarian van (listening to the best music ever made), Lenny's flat in Berlin and cool squats.

To sum things up a little, here's some stuff I learned from these 10 days:
electric flyswatters are best alienated used to electrize the stressful Vrtn drummer; a XXXXL hoodie is an investment for life and provides you with more cuddliness than a human being ever will; walking all night through Berlin [a rough reconstruction with Google Earth tells me something around 30 kilometres] will lead to sleeping in on a bench of an airport hallucinating you see and hear friends talking; cuddling with Richard will let you sleep in immediately and tight enough to miss "Exxxtreeeme"; getting lost in Schweinfurt makes sense in that respect that you will find yourself in a Russian store buying food you can't read and checking by at the nearby Dollybuster store to acquire fake nipples (Orion aren't selling them anymore.); stores at US army bases are a great way to fill empty spaces in the tour bus with cans of Mountain Dew and stuff and last and least you simply won't think about suicide while (forced) listening to a record of My Chemical Romance when you're hanging out with 8 lovely musicians, or even better: friends, in a Christian concert location, playing Worms (Aah... the 90ies...) and giving a shit about what's going on in the rest of (one's/) the world right now.

πs: "Danke für die Tour, Nasch" (without any sarcastic undertone) and putting so much effort and time into it. You're far from gschissn.

ππs: Of course, thanks to all the dudes of RikH' and EvH'ton for making this last 10 days pretty worthwhile and probably the best road trip through Germany a Gogo could wish for.

πππs: To all of you interested in further footage check my photoblawg uhm soon or so.

It's been a long time, long time now...

"45) Have strangers sleep at your place (like couchsurfers or something)"

It's been a long time since I've updated this thing the last time. I haven't done much since, a lot of planning but nothing ever happened that helped me with scribbling a few things of the list. And number 45 isn't an exception either. I just basically passed writing about it over until now although finalized it early september of 2007: Having strangers sleep at your place.

These days I seem to think a lot about that peculiar event of having people you've never seen before sleep at your place. (The main reason being the search for couches for upcoming trips to Stockholm, Barcelona and Dublin in April.) The amazing thing here is not the "uuh, these people are strangers"-part but actually people wanting to come to a blunt hamlet like the place I was raised in.

So how did it happen?
People that come to know me better learn all kinds of stuff like my affection for sensual touches while occupying parking lots, my disfavor of modern delta blues and of course that I like to travel. The moneysaving guy I am somehow stumbled across the whole couchsurfing thing ca. 2005. Which is basically asking total strangers for a place to stay for a couple of nights who most likely are very warm-hearted, welcoming dudes and dudettes that ask nothing for in return. (Beside the occasional sexual flavors every now and then, of course.) So I've been doing this since almost three years now and surfed like 19 times - almost nearly never got disappointed - but still: nobody ever dared to visit my hood.

Until september 2007. Back then I had the opportunity to host two nice Italians (36 and 45 years I think) that were traveling on business all through (Lower) Austria taking pictures of wine cellars and related stuff for photo agencies. Which was cool. Not only translating them words they picked up on signs and stuff from Austrian German to German German and then to English (They were like: "What does Bluza mean?") but simply being able to give something back to that well working, fascinating community that is couchsurfing, that not only enriched my days abroad but also introduced me to a lot of interesting people.