Dear You!

It was so nice! First the festival and then the trip.
I flew to Germany on the 18th of June, met Selina and stayed at hers a few days, then drove down to the SouthSide festival with her, Ella and Jevgeni. Brilliant sunshine and almost untolerable heat for three long days filled with beautiful music and definitely not enough water providing facilities.

I'm sitting on the porch at the back of my parents house, Sufjan Stevens is playing a song called "Come on: feel the Illinoise! Part I: The world's Columbian exposition, Part II: Carl Sandburg visits me in a dream" How's that for a title! There's longer ones and all the songs on the album are equally fantastic! Everything is good and the general atmosphere is something close to idyllic.

The festival, then. The highlight of the first day was, as expected, Radiohead. I bought the last album (In Rainbows) and only gave it one chance back then, didn't take it in really, but they turned me back into Radiohead religion by playing bigger part of the album and it is good, you know!
The second day treated me to Beatsteaks, a german band whose live, although I didn't understand most of what their lead singer was saying, left me in the best spirits, near exhaustion and ready to dance on. Just the right combination for The Chemical Brothers! I'm in loss for words..
Third day started off with Bellx1, who were playing on the smallest stage inside a small tent for a small crowd. Great!
By that time, my camera battery was near death and I hadn't brought the charger, so more time to actually concentrate on listening and looking and dancing. I'm too hooked up on taking pictures and making videos most of the time, which is really annoying, I'd rather have the memories in my head. But then again, with a memory of a goldfish, I'm probably still better off taking the occasional photograph.
The third night ended with Foo Fighters, who were a big disappointment, to be honest. I was actually waiting for the gig to be over so I could leave, because they really weren't giving it their best.
Then there were Flogging Molly, who left me seriously bruised and with my dress ripped and Sigur Rós, simply beautiful, but too atmospheric for daylight and the heat, perhaps. All and all, it was great fun and the spontaneous "trash jam" that took place on the last night was so spot on. Everyone having a blast banging the hell out of empty 5-litre beer kegs and those big green plastic trash containers with whatever happened to be in hand and parading around, singing, chanting, generally having the greatest time!

After we got back to Selinas place, i fell asleep for 16 hours and would have slept more, if she hadn't woke me up.

Two days later, early in the morning, we headed South. Hitching. It only took us one day to get to the South-West corner of Germany and then, through France, to a gorgeous town called Berck Sur Mer in the North-West corner. Spent the day on the beach. My face got sunburnt. Unfortunately the mixture of occasional clouds and wind and cold water took the wish to go swimming away even from me, who usually (as histry has shown) doesn't back away from any kind of chance of a dip in the water.
That night we slept on a field. It was warm.

We already made it to Rotterdam on our third day. Which, as you might have already realized, didn't really give us a chance to look around and discover the places we drove through. A pity, but with the limited budget we were on and the heavy rucksacks we were carrying we kind of didn't feel like it anyways.
We stayed in The Netherlands for a week, though, so got a chance to see a bit of this and that. Rotterdam, Zandvoort, Haarlem and Den Haag, to be percise.
Spent two days in Zandvoort, visiting our friend Severine who we had first met in Clonakilty. She and her boyfriend also showed us Haarlem, where I would go shopping any day of the week, but preferably with money. Since I didn't have any, I wasn't enjoying the whole in and out of shops experience that much. But I'll go back. After I win the lottery, of course.
A day in Den Haag left me with the funniest tan lines ever. I'm really like a proper zebra or something like that. And so ridiculously brown, be jealous! Oh, and we went swimming and the waves were super and the water so warm and I didn't wanna come out at all!

It's getting dark here, it's 23:23, better put on the lights and go make coffee.
Right.
Aah, this is ridiculous! I now have no internet because i moved the laptop to the side a bit. For example I can only sit in a certain position in a certain place here outside so it'd pick up the wireless from who knows where.
Anywho.. lights are on, I have a BIG cup of coffee, woolly socks from the grannyfactory and a warm jumper (Nick, it's proven very handy, big cheers!). My coffee comes with honey from dads bees. Yum!

Where was I.. in case anyone's still interested in finding out what happened later.
It was a pity to leave Holland, but Berlin was to be reached and we did it in about 12 hours I think.
We were staying with a friend of Selinas there. He showed us around, took us to one of the markets they have around the city on Sundays that I'm so fond of. Then to the little beach clubs and underground places alongside the river that are gonna be torn down soon to make room for big corporate buildings. They're having last parties there at this period to protest and show their opinion, but it's not likely to change much.
Although I would have loved to stay, I left Berlin after two days, mainly because I was getting seriously homesick.
It was the week at my parents place that did it, playing with Alex, my nephew and getting the hang of family life again. And country life. With all the weeding and lawn mowing and the cherries are ready for picking now, we'll be making jam tomorrow. And in September, we're gonna start with homemade apple cider. Supplies for the hot days next summer.

Okay, so I left Berlin.. took a train to Frankfurt so that I could start hitching from there, but I never took into account that I could end up on the side of the motorway with nowhere to walk, trapped, basically. So there I was, ready to throw myself in front of a car to get out of my misery, when the motorway police pulled up next to me. After I had explained my sad story and big wish to get home, they took me to the border, which was only 2 km from where I was standing as it came out, and told me to never get lost next to a motorway in Germany again and basically to get the hell out of Germany and to the hands of polish lorry-driving perverts, but they said it in a nice voice.
There I was.. decided to sit down and have a ciggy, when a truck pulled up next to me and asked me where I'm headed. So I got a lift for about 80 km. By then it was getting fairly dark, but I was in high spirits and dancing and singing on the roadside with my thumb up and got a lift in about 2 minutes. Couldn't even finish a song, dammit!
The guy promised to take me to Warsaw where he lived. We arrived there 4 in the morning, so he decided to drive outside the city, about 50 km, where his country house was. I got to have a shower there, 9 hours of sleep and breakfast and then he took me a further 50 km towards Lithuania. And the whole time we weren't able to fully communicate because of the language barrier, which makes the whole thing even more beautiful. You get to see how your whole being and not just words can bring out the nicest side in a complete stranger.

Joni Mitchell is halfway through her "Blue" album, which will forever remind me of Zandvoort! My coffee's gone cold.. It's dead quiet outside, a couple of grasshoppers in the distance. You'd love it here!

Then I met The Pervert. A smallish lorry pulled aside and I got in, closed the door and he reached, grabbed my boob and smiled. I got off and showed him The Finger. And it was kind of funny then, because I've never been happier over someone grabbing my boob 3 minutes into our aquaintance. If he had had the chance to start driving first, I might have been in a spot of trouble.

From there on it went ridiculously smoothly, I was home in no time. Exactly 3 weeks after leaving. Short and cheerful!

It's just so upbeat, my whole life at the moment. Hope you can say the same about yours!

All the best,
Me.