benn:org

Leaving Las Belgrade, just can’t let go. I’m staying again with Sasha in another abandoned place (I wouldn’t really call it a squat). This time it’s an office building of a former consulate. We have electricity, two big heaters hungry for lots of watts, warm water, clean rooms, a door we can lock, desks from finest woods, a conference room and a couple fancy leather armchairs big enough for some consul’s ass. 🙂 After picking up some metres of film reel from the Lord of the Rings from a footpath near the city centre – someone must have put it there for me to find – I went to see the movie with Dina last night. The show lasted until 3am. A great flick. Maybe a bit confusing for the non-reader, but I’ve heard they took out a lot of scenes to bring the movie down to “just” 3 hours. That’s all for the moment, will meet another Ecotopian now.

It’s christmas – again! Am I in a Bill Murry movie? Over the next three days the Serbs celebrate their Orthodox christmas with more dinners, presents, friends. And a couple of days later it’s their New Years. Super, super! I was planning to leave Belgrade tonight but luckily I decided to call Dina last night. She is a good friend of Amir from my hometown Schwerin. After an exchange machine ate 10 Euros of mine and a service technichian with perfect English gave them back to me with many words of sorry, Dina and I met for a cup of tea. We talked fast and a lot and she offered me to let me stay in her beautiful and warm appartment for some days. A nice christmas present. Snow is covering the ugly things in town. Om.

I’m still in Belgrade. Had pretty rough and good times. The first night I stayed in the Rebel House squat. Maybe I shouldn’t have.. Since I stayed there two months ago some people moved out and some new people moved in. Well, these new people are pretty violent and desperate for drugs and money. Combined with the intake of the first a dangerous cocktail. After things escalated that night Sasha, the last remaining old inhabitant, and me had to escape from the house. It’s now declared dissolved, don’t go there anymore! I am still in one piece but Sasha has a new scar on his head. Man, those fuckers really have no brain. What I have learned from that: If in doubt, stay somewhere else or leave before things get funny. Junkies do not look like junkies (This one I actually learned before, but I forgot). OK, everything else was fun, I went to a punk New Year’s party a bit outside town and had a great time. I met Hauke from Hamburg (Hello Hauke!) From the party I went to a friend’s place where I can stay some more days. Thanks, Djole! I met Branka from Ecotopia twice, everybody seems to know each other here – nice. But as it looks I will go on to Pula within the next days.[…] Weather is a little grey and rainy with temperatures around 3 degrees.

Aaaaaand: ..Belgrade! It’s nice and sunny and the people are friendly. In Prague I stayed in the Milada squat. Unfortunately there was hardly anyone there. It was pretty cold, people hid in their rooms, the water in the kettle in the kitchen was frozen. Probably the wrong time of the year to visit. It’s a very nice building and I’m sure in the summertime it’s luvly. I fired up a little oven and put on as many layers of clothes as possible and had a nice few hours of sleep. In the early morning I went to Budapest. And I’m so glad that I decided to fill some of the waiting hours with watching the movie “Dogville”. A lot of food for thoughts. Haven’t seen such a good film/play in a while. After a comfortable train journey through the night here I am, Red Star Belgrade! Looking forward to the days to come and New Year’s.

Yippie, on the road again! Off to Prague now. More news later

I have a photo gallery now! Come in, have a look and leave comments. I put up some pictures of my travels through the Ukraine and Turkey first. More things to follow, I need to do some scanning.

I’m organising a little Debian Linux event thing for December 13th at Komplex, an alternative youth centre in town. See here for more info: DePlex (sorry, German only)

Die Zeit is auch weg. Abends geht sie schlafen und morgens is sie.. morgens wacht sie auf. Genau wie ich. Das mach ich auch. Das machen im Moment ganz viele. (DJ Koze)Time is gone as well. It goes to sleep at night and in the morning it is.. in the morning it wakes up. Just like me. I do it, too. A lot of people do it at the moment. (DJ Koze)

I arrived to my hometown Schwerin two days ago. It’s good to be back and see people that I know for years. I moved in to Florian’s in the centre of town above a cinema. I unpacked my stuff and made the room comfortable for a couple of months lasting living and working stay. Laptop, fast Internet, a room, central heating, clean clothes, gadgets all around. Different knifes for different things to cut, for Ford’s sake! How easy it is to be a cave man.

Choose life.

OK, my way back to here: I hitch-hiked from Olympos in the very south of Turkey to somewhere 100km north of Isparta. Among many different people a young woman gave me a lift for a couple of kilometers. First she passed, then stopped a good bit away and reversed. She was on her way to see the mayor of the next town. I was invited for some tea and shook the mayor’s hand. Next to the higher citizens meeting and discussing various issues in the office I felt a bit underdressed in my manky pyjama trousers, smelly shirt and dirty face – but they just gave me understanding smiles. The woman collected a big stash of money and got back with me in the car and brought me to the next crossroads. How confiding, I thought. Later the next day (Brr, the night in the tent was cold, continental climate struck) I got stuck for a couple of hours in some kind of steppe in the middle of nowhere. Cars and trucks just wouldn’t stop. Must be one of those days I said to myself and stopped a bus to Istanbul, as I wanted to be there by the end of the day. I spent two more days in Istanbul, staying for cheap on the balcony of the nice “Chill out” hostel. Here I met back two Germans that stayed in the Olympos cave with us for one night. Small world, eh?

I took the train to the Bulgarian border where I found a truck in the queue that would take me directly to Hamburg. Jackpot! Anyway, I had to walk over the border on my own in order to meet my truck on the other side, which for the first Turkish border controller was a “BIG PROBLEM!”, whereby taking a seat in a passing car was “guezel” for him again. After I passed the 8 checkpoints I waited 9 hours (!) sitting on my bag, munching the food I brought. The truck came but for some silly misunderstanding I missed it – argh! So my heavy bag and me walked to the 4km away truck overnight parking to look for him. I couldn’t see him anywhere, so I entered the trucker bar in the basement of the building nearby. — God, this story is getting long — Of course he wasn’t there, but another driver, a very sincere man, gave me food and drink and took me to a motorway crossing near Sofia the next morning. He left me with two US Army field food rations “MRE” (Meal, Ready-to-Eat, no joke) which he brought from a tour into the Iraq. Again stranded, this time in cold windy rain, I took the bus to the centre of Sofia and from there to Belgrade.

O beloved Belgrade! In an Internet cafe I met Mark from Australia who I spent the rest of the day with drinking beer from 1.5 litre bottles and asking people for sights that we were standing infront of. Milan, a friend of Cathie (a friend from Dublin, ciao Cathie!) showed me the squat called “Rebel House” where I decided to stay for 3 nights. This is where I met Ljubica, who became a very special friend in such short time. 🙂

On the evening of the fourth day I took the bus to Budapest. I spent all day in the Szechenyi thermal bath – ahhhh, how I needed that. The same night I went on to Prague by bus, took the train to the German border and got back home with friendly weekend group train ticket people that took me with them. What a tour! Over and out..

Belgrade it is! I’m staying in a pretty big but empty squat and I love the people in it. The city is beautifully friendly. To Mark in Budapest: Sorry, won’t be able to meet you tomorrow as I will stay here one or two days longer. I don’t have your e-mail address, so please e-mail me and we could meet later in Budapest or Prague?