Takes of hitchhiking in Germany, wellness (feat. naked picture) and The Holy Chao fan site

G´day,

And another special welcome to my congregation, Hello Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel (nice pix btw), Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. I´m back from my trip to visit my friend Alex near the Dutch border at the Rhine. I have already complained about the pricing structure of the German public transport system and as a trip by train down there would have cost nearly 40 Euro (one way! only 125km!) I decided to hitchhike, cheap-ass me...

Well hitchhiking got a little out of fashion around here, when I was young I can remember that there were hitchhikers everywhere and it was a quite normal way to get from A to B but nowadays you rarely see a hitchhiker at all so I was a little worried if that was the best of all possible plans but I was game to give it a try. So I pondered a few days if I should go via Autobahn or via the small roads cross country. The upside of Autobahn is that you usually get quite a long way in one go, the downside is that you can only hitchhike from the big motorway stations and it usually takes quite a long wait until you get a ride. The downside of the cross country route would be that it would require lots of small steps from town to town and according to Murphy´s law you get a ride to the one end of the town and will have to walk all the way through the town until you can hitchhike again to the next town.

In the end I decided to go cross country so I started around noon on Friday after I found my hammer. Btw thanks for all the interesting comments on FB...well here is a picture:
The classical carpenter´s hammer is a quite usefull tool to have when you go hitchhiking. In 20 years of hitchhiking experience I only encountred potentially dangerous situations twice but you can´t be too careful. And if it comes to making a point that you are not to be messed with nothing beats a carpenter´s hammer. Even the most dumb troublemaker will think twice before messing with a guy holding a carpenter´s hammer...And if you think now, wow, I need one too, contact Emily (you can get her Blackwoods email if you contact me...), she will be able to sort you out and you might even get some discount...

So I walked 4 kms to the other end of Borghorst and put my thumb out. Five hours later I was in Kleve. All in all it worked quite well, I never had to wait for more than 15 minutes and I got some unusual lifts. Twice I was given a ride by women and it doesn´t happen too often that a woman who is driving alone picks up a guy and when I commented on that one of them said, "Well you were standing there and I thought you look kind of cute...". And I was given a ride by an older Dutch couple which is also fairly unusual. All in all it took me ten lifts until I was in Kleve and had to walk only once, in Bocholt, for approx. 5 km. The only drawback was that, even though it was cloudy I got a decent sunburn. Damn, I managed to live two and a half year in Australia without getting a sunburn once and then I get one on a cloudy day in Germany...

Alex picked me up in Kleve and it was the first time that I saw her new flat. She used to live in Holland but the rents in Holland are unaffordable so she moved to the other side of the border like half of Holland does. It´s quite funny, the Dutch are slowly taking over Germany. In Kranenburg, the town Alex live half the population is dutch by now...
They even have the street signs in two languages "Besucherzentrum" is German for visiter´s centre and "de gelderse poort" is Dutch...
This is one of Alex´s paintings I always loved and because she won´t ever sell it I finally took a picture...
I love the skull-like face of the dog...reminds me of "The scream" by Munch
more arty stuff
and another painting...

In the evening we went for a walk to a lake in a nature reserve which was kind of nice but I got eaten alive by mozzies and horse-flies. And once again: you P.E.T.A. idiots can threaten me with Coldplay until you rot but if any sixlegged bugger bites me, that´s the last mistake in its miserable existence. I mean they started it...
Lake, looks nice but is full of nasty biting thingies...

The next day we went for a wellness day. In a town nearby called Goch there is a lake with a sauna park at the shore and in an outburst of creativity someone called it "Goch Ness". The sauna thingy was really great. They had some ten saunas in all varieties but I loved the original Finish ones with an open fireplace and at least three square metres of hot stones. The best thing was that they had a sauna-master who came in every half hour to pour ice on the hot stones and wave the hot air around. It was awesome...sauna is one of the best inventions ever...thanks Finns!

By the way, just for information to you Australians and other decendents from the prude English. You don´t wear bathing clothes in sauna! My friends from Finland couldn´t stop laughing when I told them that in Australia people wear speedos or swim suits in sauna. In sauna you are naked. And that´s not considered perverted or another kinky German idea, that´s just normal. Well one observation I can share with you, the fashion in Germany in terms of hair style nowadays is to go bald. I felt a bit like last millenium having pubic hair but I have always been a little anti-cyclic.
One of the sauna houses...you could even jump straight into the lake when you got out of it...nice...
Me relaxing with a book on the beach...as my blog is not adult rated I had to censor some bits...

On Sunday I took the train back home. But I went on the Dutch side as I found that the trains are a lot cheaper on the other side of the border.

In other news, as some of you already have noticed I have put up a facebook page for "The Holy Chao", my old band. Thanks to everyone who became a fan and thanks for the feedback. I´ll put up some more pictures and songs during the next weeks and I have also contacted Mark to get my hands on our old recordings...so stay tuned.

That was it for today, have fun, take care and cya