ze Germanz

Well well well... it's day two of Jon's little getaway trip. A trip to forget IB results, to have fun, to see a little Europe, to find El Dorado, to chase the elusive "Good Pint" all the way from the cold, muddy wastelands of the North to the sweltering smog of the South. I'm currently getting to grips with a German keyboard in a Netcafe in Munich (or München as i discovered it's called in actuality). I kissed Teddy goodbye(figuratively speaking) yesterday at stupid o'clock in the morning, muddy, wet and cold. Since then I have blitzed through Denmark and Hamburg, meeting lots of cool backbackers, fit maltese girls who buy me lots of beer until i tell them how old i am, old german ladies who talk wistfully of the DDR and crazy drunken danes.

I met one German guy on the train who had also been at Roskilde. His opinion of the festival was that there "NOT ENOUGH RAIN! HAHAHAHA! MORE! MORE MUD!! I LIKE VERY MORE! HEEHEEHEE" (imagine this belched by a rotund, black-clothed man in a black leather cowboy hat, opening his second can of Tuborg mid-sentence and knocking it back faster than a Danish plughole). I was recommended by him to visit "ze great 'strippedy barz' HAHAHAH" in Hamburg, but instead found a very agreeable and tall dark glass of Dunkel (sexier by far). There was a market of produce from Stuttgart there too and so at around 8pm i sat down there reading La Reppublica (can you believe they didn't have a decent English paper?) and tried various sorts of Riesling and Bretzel while men in funny outfits serenaded me with accordions and guitars. This fitted PERFECTLY my stereotype of Germany, so i was happy.

I look like a proper hobo. I smell. I'm wearing my only dry clothes after Roskilde, carrying a tiny bag stuffed to the point of supernova and with a guitar tied round my neck with a piece of string. It's a miracle i haven#t been beaten up yet, but, i guess this isn't Portugal, eh? By the way Vasco, i'd love to visit you mate but Portugal isn't on the way from Denmark to Italy, but if you can shift your country a little to the right, then i'll drop by.

My next stop is to try and see if i get arrested by busking in Bologna before carrying on down through any cool cities that take my fancy. The people here may be rude, the weather may be bollocks, I may be coughing like a convulsive rubber duck, my state of hygeine may be post apocalyptic but nothing beats sitting down with a good pint and a map and thinking "where to next? Ljubljana? Bern? Istanbul?".

I'm just going to check the weather and that will most likely decide where i eventually end up. Then maybe check that there is no death-penalty for unlicensed buskers in Italy, for that would be an unfortunate end to this trip.

A post about Roskilde may be forthcoming but as for now i still have to recover. It was rather insane. One of those wonderful, purgingly free insanities. Less than 7 pounds for 18 beers...thats a nice price.

Anyway, if anyone has been trying to contact me during this time i must apologise but my mobile has been out of battery for an insufferably long time. Hence, no pictures sorry. I'll try and get it recharged soon. I was relying on German trains being as sensible as Danish ones, with powersockets next to teh seats but NOOO. "You are now leaving the Nordic Region. Please leave your common sense and modern thinking in the bags provided".

Oh and one last thing. Why did i never learn German? WHYYYYYYY!?
"Post veröffentlichen"? Sure, why not...