benn:org

A whole bunch of us went to a concert of Die Sterne at the Komplex – my personal highlight in Schwerin since years! The crowd was raving, drinks cheap and the music great. Die Sterne changed my life. 🙂

Oops, my server was down yesterday for most of the day. My provider moved my machine from one data centre to another. That took some hours and unfortunately the hard disk got a little damage when the machine was shut down for the move. It took me a while to find out what’s wrong and until I could fix it. But everything is back now and no data was lost. Some e-mails might have been delayed a bit and the websites were offline. Sorry for that, people.. Before yesterday the server was running about a year without a single reboot.

A short hello from the fabulous Polish countryside near Poznan. Everything went well in Warzaw. More details as soon as I’m back in Schwerin. 🙂

Something interesting I read in the news today: myClimate is a small Swiss NGO that tries to neutralise the environmental effects of air travel, “The climate killer number one”, by taking donations for every flight that you take. Yes, you are buying letters of indulgence for your sins from them! 😉 They put the money into projects for climate protection and preservation. So if you really can’t avoid plane travel, fly with myClimate. The idea might be questionable, but the myClimate website has some compact information on the effects of air travel on our climate.

Now that more and more countries are leaving the US “Coalition of the Willing” I was wondering who is actually left. And I noticed that according to PWHCE the US have 130.000 troops in Iraq and all others together ca. 25.000. What a farce!

I’m going to the Alternative Economic Summit in Warsaw from the 28th to 30th of April. Join me! 🙂 Latest news: The films on the 26-27th of April will not be shown in Kino Praha, but in an alternative location.

Maybe some of you found out that my entry from the 1st of April was a hoax. For the ones of you that didn’t: well, it was. 🙂 I had a nice easter weekend. On Friday Seppl, Höhni, Sophie and me went to the beach on the island at Poel near Wismar at the baltic sea half an hour away. After playing around with a frisby and all the cameras we brought, we collected loads of wood from the nearby forrest and lit a fire. Thank god, because quickly after the sun went down Grandpa Frost creeped out from behind some stones to say hello. He brought along his mate Freezing Cold Wind. After we went to our tents we had some rain as well. Well, yeah, you know, I still believe it was a good idea to go camping. The next day the three of us boys hitchhiked back to Schwerin. It was great fun in the sun between some burned down (in our minds) NCC super-commercial cottages next to some trees mutilated by the multi-national NCC, bottles of wine, loads of garlic, picknicks, an abandoned mill with a storehouse, wind turbine parks, smoked fish, fields to cross and an Easter bonfire with free beer. At night we went to a nice Drum and Bass party in Schwerin’s Komplex.

Don’t know what I did on Sunday, but on Monday I drove my mum to Danmark to let her have a look at their puppy dog which they will take home in a couple of weeks. The breeder has a nice little house in the Danish country side four hours away from here. The eight little dogs found some great fun in eating my trousers, my shoes and my jumper. Silly little things. Must be some kind of reflex to chew stuff when it’s attached to tall two legged other things. On the way back we stopped in Kolding, a cute little city. But man, Denmark is so expensive! I didn’t steer a car in such a long time. Hmm, strange feeling to be behind the wheel. I only saw one or two people hitchhiking..

I’m in my hometown four weeks now. The project that I came here for still didn’t start. D’oh! But as it looks I can start working on it pretty soon. Until then I’ll enjoy the springtime in Schwerin.

Wow, United Internet, the holding company that owns my web provider 1&1 announced in an internal letter to their customers today that they have been bought by some Internet consortium from Dubai. They seem to prepare for the post-oil era there and are investing in western technology companies. Anyway, the consortium seems to have some strange policies on foreign domain names. They need to own the domain names that they are hosting. Must be some Arab thing.. In practice this means the Dubai company is currently offering the 1&1 customers to buy their domain names for 1.400 Euros each! The 1&1 customers, and therefore my customers as well, will sign a contract which guarantees them full rights to use the domain names, so just the owner will change. Domain owners that do not agree with this new policy will have to change their web provider. But for me this is a welcome addition to my travel budget. 🙂 I have 5 days (4 + 1) now to decide what to do..

Hitch dee dop, a hip dee bop – that was easy! Got to Berlin one day ahead of schedule, and now I’m in Schwerin. On Friday Dragan woke me up with some drumming and around noon I started started hitchhiking to Ljubljana from Pula’s central roundabout. A friendly craftsman took me to the petrol station at the exit of town. From there a rock carrying truck took me to an intersection some 20 km away. After two minutes a part-time salesman took me to an intersection 3 towns further. The first car – another craftsman – stopped and brought me to the next town. From there someone with very dirty hands and a slight garlic odour took me all the way to Ljubljana and I arrived at 4 in the afternoon. On the way I saw Pera (Dragan’s girlfriend) standing beside the road in the other direction. It’s a small hitchhiking world. I stayed at Ursa’s, someone I know from a movie set of a mass battle scene with dozens of blue painted naked people three years ago near Berlin (another story). Thanks again, Ursa! 🙂

The next morning at 10 o’clock I went by bus to the motorway drive-up to Austria. There I stood for about an hour when a young(ish) couple picked up me and a fellow hitchhiker. The wife used to live four years in New York and was the manager of a fashion shop in “the frozen zone” up until a few days after September the 11th. Anyway, they dropped me off infront of the tunnel that leads to Austria. There Jedo, the first person I asked took me at lightspeed all the way through Austria and up until Nuremberg – yippie! At a motorway service area I drew my “Berlin” sign, put it out and the third car stopped and took me all the way up. I was telling Birgit und Ralf I have to go to the centre of Berlin to stay there with some friends and that I want to go on to Schwerin the next morning. They offered me to stay in their cute little country house a bit outside Berlin. Wow, thanks! Eleven hours from Ljubljana to Berlin dispite some traffic jam – not bad..

In the morning Ralf brought me to the nearby motorway. After an hour (5 cars passed me so far) an elderly couple picked me up, took a couple of wrong turns because they were going a different way than me, and let me out at a little busier drive-up. Another couple picked me up, told me it’s a bad spot and brought me a little further. I had a lot of time so I enjoyed the play in amusement. 🙂 At the petrol station I got a “sorry, don’t take hitchhikers as a matter of priciple” by someone from Ludwigslust. Pah, Ludwigslust, who wants to go there anyway? 😉 Shortly after the next person took me close to my hometown. He was a sales consultant and we had a very good talk about what drives humankind to do what it does (ruin our planet), and the hour flew by in no time. Finally at the road to Schwerin Ingo in his red Alpha racer took me right to the Schwerin castle, the heart of my fair city. What a nice journey, always again!

The meeting is over and everything is cleaned up and now has some activist flair to it. A sticker here, a tag there, some leaflets in forgotten places, announcements.. Also people inside the building got to know each other better through the international visitors. For me personally and I believe for EYFA as well it was great fun and very successful. So many interesting minds met and created new ideas. For now my job here is done, I will leave to my hometown tomorrow morning. But I’m planning to be back in Pula in April to … Well, don’t really know why. Just sounds like the right thing to do at the moment.