Cyprus

Woke up, the sun was shining and we were still not in Cyprus. Excellent, I am getting a whole night's sleep on this ferry I thought and fell asleep again. We arrived at 8 something in Girne. The custom officers were curious about my board games, but not excessively so. I tried to figure out how to buy a ticket to where from here, but it wasn't easy.

The sun shone very hard on my sleepy unwashed head. I dragged my feet behind me and tried to find kebab but in this city there was nothing but real estate firms. I followed the street signs towards Lefkosia and the road went up and up and up and my body screamed of tiredness. I rounded a corner and found a busstop after a roundabout and I sat on the bench and was apathetic for a while. People came and hitchhiked where I was. This wasn't a good place, and there were too many people doing the same as I wanted to, so I forced myself further uphill till I found a nice little parking place, excellent for picking up hitchhikers.

After 2 sunny minutes and 20 dusty cars a truck stopped. He didn't care to use the fine parking spot I had found for him, but blocked the street behind him so I was quick to get in and together we climbed the mountain. Like often when hitchhiking in these parts, my conversation with the driver consisted of me waiting till the scenery was easpecially appealing, and then turning to the driver, putting the thumb and finger together and saying "guzel", (beautiful, or good).

Lefkosia was situated on a plain and had big advertisement signs on its buildings. For 10 seconds it looked like Tokyo, but it wasn't really. I got out of the truck and started walking towards the city center. Found an internet café and had a message from the Cyprus gang saying that they had been unable to arrange a SEIGO session at Lefkosia university. I surfed around to look for strategy game people in Cyprus (I had got no replies from boardgamegeek.com). I found one profile that had "strategy games" as one of his interests. He also liked soft kissing and hardcore and was ok with married men but would not meet younger or fat men.

I decided to be open-minded and drop him a line to ask if he was interested in a strategy game session. After all, I have played with several heterosexual girls without them touching me during the game, so this should work as well. However, it wasn't possible to give Nicola25 a message without making my on profile. And making a profile on GayCrawler.com didn't feel fair to the rest of the community. False marketing that would be.

But I did find a strategy game store; apparently the first of its kind on the island. I want a copy of SEIGO to lie in that store.

Contined walking through this extremely hot part of Lefkosia, and after an hour I was in the old town. I had looked up some hotels, one of which was on the occupied side. I studied a map for a while and then I asked a man on the street if he could help me. He looked at the name of the hotel and said "they will steal all your stuff". He seemed pretty sure about it. I wasn't too sure, but at least I got a bad feeling. I found the tourist info and asked for hotels and a woman gave me a flyer for the same one that I'd just been warned for. "Is that the only hotel on the island?" I asked but she didn't understand my question. We played with words for a while till she understood that I was looking for a thing called "alternatives", but she had none. I looked for the place anyway, and eventually I found it and walked up the stairs. "You will be living with this student" a man said and pointed at another man and wanted 10 € for it. The way they were looking at me ... their impatience ... made me turn around and walk away.

Finally I found a wall. A Berlin Wall. On the other side there was a UN flag. Wow, can you believe that the European Union - the symbol of safety - has a border guarded by the United Nations? That's good! That's where EU should be. I wanted to get over to the other side and started to follow the wall to find a hole. It was very complicated since no streets lept next to the wall. So I went down a street, found the wall, took a picture, walked up the street, found a parallell street, walked down the next street, found the wall, took a picture, walked up the street, followed the parallell street, took the next street down to the wall, took a picture... I spent hours doing this, but there were no holes in the wall. The stupid wall pissed me off, and when I found a big red gate with Turkish flags on it I took out my passport and knocked on the doors. "Hello!" "Hello!" Let me inside my Union! You have no right to keep me out here!"

No one heard me. I was at the end of the old city, and had to climb down from the old city wall. I lost hope to find a pass, but continued doing what I was doing since my brain hadn't been washed and refreshed for a while, since it was hot and since I was carrying around a big stupid cardboard box with boardgames based on the Japanese writing system. Sometimes the wall look like a fenced paintball-area, and in one of those segments I found a soldier running. I caught his attention and he said "no photo no photo" and I tried to ask how I could get over. He explained that I should go to the opposite side of the old city and then he continued running. On the way back I stopped for a durum and an ayran and then I found the tourist information from before. It was closed now, but a policeman showed me the way to the crossing point. I know I sound like a very childlish and unexperienced person now, but it was really cool to cross the UN buffer zone. In the middle of it there was a shop where you could have your own t-shirt printed. Yes, of course, why not.

There was no passport control on the free side of the UN buffer zone; the road simply led into the old city again and ended on Ledras, the main shopping street. I sat down on a bench and was very tired for a while. The Southern side was really different. It was much ... richer and more ... superficial. I had addresses to a few cheap hotels, but they were all full, except one that cost 30 €. It was three times more than the hotel on the occupied side, but I was too tired to walk another kilometer. I paid, got a key, crept up the stairs, opened the door and laid down on the bed. My trench feet looked like sheep brains, my brain looked like a scouring rag, my rags looked like shit and all my shit got wet when I took a shower and washed my clothes since all the water ran directly from the shower into the bedroom where I had put all my stuff on the floor.

But nothing could stop me from feeling extremely good that late afternoon/early night. There is nothing like a bed. A warm, soft and safe bed. Just for me.

I started looking around for Ant Comics (the name of Cyprus' most well-sorted strategy game- and comic store) and found it a few hours after closing time. There was a restaurant nearby and people sat by tables directly on the street drinking and eating. I got a feeling that they knew the people in Ant Comics and walked up to them. My feeling was right; they told me that the owner was on a party tonight and wouldn´t make it to the shop until tomorrow afternoon.

I found an internet cafe and checked my e-mail. My uncle had written that my stepmom and brother would come to Sweden this summer. Wow, that changed everything, the whole travel schedule. Suddenly I got a feeling that I was on an island very far from Sweden, like a cat who climbed up in a tree to wait for the firemen. Can I still hitchhike all EU countries? Or do I need to skip some? What countries to skip? I went home to the hotel and picked up my map of Europe and then sat on a bench on Ledras, trying to come up with a new plan.

Next to me was a Chinese guy sitting. He came from Dalian in North-Eastern China and was studying tourism in Cyprus. He didn't like it here at all, at least not the Southern part. He felt more at home in the North, perhaps it was the military presence and the lack of freedom of speech that gave hime the homy feeling. He was looking forward to next summer when he will go home to celebrate the Olympic Games in Beijing. It's a pity he is looking forward so much to something so corrupt as the Olympic Games, and especially the games of 2008 which are set to be the greatest display of Fascist propaganda since Berlin 1936. And it's a pity that the Fascist party ruling his country will with the help of the games infiltrate his sound love for his country even more, making it even harder for me to critize his regime without him defending his country, unable to distinguish between the two.

But this wasn't a night of debate, we just had a nice time together. He was studying how 2-3 million tourists visit this island every year, and he was going to use the experiences when going home to build up tourist industry in Dalian. I have an advice for him: middle-class establishments. We tourists need something in between 0,1 yuan tea houses and 30 yuan coffee-shops, we need that kind of places where a possible middle-class would go. Such as a 1,5 € "Greek Pita" restaurant. Mmmhh ... pork kebab, so sinful and juicy. But what's up with these french fries inside? French fries isn't food for humans. Each french fry is like a cigarette.

When my Chinese friends (more people had showed up) had said goodbye, I sat alone with my map, thinking thinking thinking. I am very familiar with two-dimensional optimization problems. But I have to confess that I never really mastered multi-variable analysis. And I think no one can optimize problems involving values that can't be quantified. How can I be a brother? How can I be a boyfriend? How can I hitchhike how many countries? How can I be a boardgame designer? How can I get money? What am I gonna do when the government stops sending me 300 € a month for starting up this company? How can I eat the cookie and still have it? How can I get a free lunch? At 12 pm I had a plan with all pieces in place.

Konya - Tasucu

Woke up and took a tour of the old hotel and found a shower. Haha, those 6 euro weren't needed after all! However, there was no light in the room, the water was cold and came out from 1 meter above ground. In addition everything in the room was wooden and had that wet wood-smell. Well, who needs a shower every day anyway. I have one more day as a human.

The city looked completely different in daylight, teeming with people and goods as it was. I found a very tasty kebab sold by very curious and friendly people, got some tea and then found another internet café. I tried to get in contact with people in Cyprus, Greece and Italy and I tried to find ferries to Cyprus and highways to the ferries. The internet café guy told me that he was going to buy some cheese and asked if I wanted some. "Sure" I said, surprised and already full, but a little piece of cheese can never hurt. I sat alone for 20 minutes, after which he came back and put half a kilo of different kinds of cheese melted in pita bread in front of me. "Wow" I said "how much?". "It's on the house" he replied. Later his friend came over and they had a long look at my game and told about their friend who was currently working in the ELFA factory in Järfälla in Northwestern Stockholm, showing me a catalogue with all the factory's products. The price for 3 hours of internet was 1 euro, probably less than the ocean of cheese that was being digested as I walked the kilometers towards the highway.

I stood after a streetlight waving my thumb at a cloudy 14:18. An old man came by and talked to me in Turkish for a while and shook my hand. After 7 minutes and 5 cars I got a truck to Mut. When we passed the Southern exit from Karaman (which I had also considered as an option) we saw two other hitchhikers on the road. One of them was lying down and let his friend thumb. They looked like stereotypical backpacker-types with dreads and all and seemed like they'd been there for a while. What is it with hitchhikers that they have to look so out of hope? They're like standing there signaling "I've been here for an hour, hitchhiking doesn't work". I personally always try to smile and look in the face of each car like it was the first car of the day, and I think it works.

The landscape turned from dull plain to the most alien and rocky planet I have ever visited. It was absolutely crazy. After 20 minutes we were in Mut and I walked to the cloudy other end of the city and thumbed there for 12 minutes and 29 cars. Some men at a construction site was yelling at me to come over to their place, but I thought they should come to me if they had anything to say. Eventually I walked over there anyway and then saw an older gentleman patiently parked, waiting for me to get in. He drove me for some 20 minutes while listening to old French 1960s music, which was a bit odd. The place where he let me off was the perfect hitchhiking spot - a cloudy but bright country road right after a crossroad. It wasn't perfect as in "easy to get a ride" but it was perfect as a beautiful and comfortable place to spend one of the 687.000 hours a Swedish male gets to live. I didn't get a whole hour of this beauty though, since I was picked up after 14 minutes and 8 cars by a group of men in a domush, a minibus.

They let me off in a tiny 3-house village which was right after a hill. To easier be seen by the cars, I started walking away from the crest. It was a pity, since I then got out of the sight of a group of old village men who were sitting in their chairs and probably were betting on how long I´d have to wait (that's what I'd have done). After 18 minutes and 10 cars, 2 young men stopped. They were driving around on holidays and had bought a bucket of very sour plums, which I guess was the specialty of some region they'd passed through. On our right side there was a canyon that was like cut out of the ground with a razor blade. The world was greener here than before and at the bottom of the canyon there was a very blue river. Wow, I would like to slowly sail down that river on a raft, dressed up in Tolkien-clothes.

The two young men noticed my fascination for the landscape and eventually did me the great favor of stopping their car for a photo-break. Unfortunately they stopped in the middle of a forest with no canyon to be seen in any direction, but I gratefully took some pictures of the trees and stretched my legs. Nevertheless, I know I've said this before, but this WAS the most beautiful landscape I've hitchhiked through.

They dropped me off in Silifke and I started walking towards Tasucu. It was cloudy and I thumbed for 1 minute and 7 cars, realized that I wasn't far out enough, walked for a while and then thumbed for another 7 minutes and 17 cars and was picked up by a domus full of people that for some reason were laughing their heads off. Hahaha. It was so fun. But they were nice. Really nice.

It was 6 pm something when I arrived in the little port town of Tasucu. I found out that the next ferry went at midnight and that it was possible to buy ticket until half an hour before that. Great, I thought, and decided to first try hitchhiking onboard. I went to have a look at the port area to check out its hitchhiking conditions. There was a German couple there, easily recognized by their typical Turkish-spring-burned nosetips. I hadn't had a decent English conversation since Ankara so I jumped on them as much as they jumped on me. They suggested that I first check whether one paid by car or by passenger. An excellent idea; I went to the ticket office and they could confirm that one paid per passenger, that is, I would need a ticket for 60 TL whether I hitchhiked onboard with a car or walked by myself.

So I bought a ticket. I had some questions about how to get back to Turkey, but unfortunately the English-speaker had now gone home for the day so I got to sit and wait for a man that called every now and then and said that he would come. When he came he walked in with the ego of someone who after a long and miserable childhood of abuse and low self-confidence learns 10 words of English and then becomes the mini-boss of a ticket office. He walked in with his chin half-ways to the roof, made noise with his black shoes, smiled because he was happy for us getting the favor of a visit from him, repeated three times a sentence that he had rehearsed in the car, did not answer any questions and marched out, pointing with his arms in different directions to give orders to his subordinates. Clueless, I got a single ticket and a 1,5 euro durum and read my fantasy novel. In a back-alley a dog tried to breed with another dog.

There is something special about getting on a ferry in the middle of the night. It has a strong and oily smell of adventure, exodus, smuggling and Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Höeg.

I climbed up the ladder and first of all checked out the bathroom. It had circular windows so one could see the trucks roll onboard through the mild Mediterranean night while relieving oneself.

There was a big passenger room with very uncomfortable seats. However, neither the stiffness of the cushions nor the narrow spaces beteen the arm rests could withstand the sleep attack of a savage and professional pass-outer.

Shaken to Karaman

Woke up, had a shower, wrote a note to my generous hosts, took my stuff and went to the bus station. I looked at the hundreds of erected buildings in the valley below me, thinking that when they built METU, this was all wilderness. Took the bus to Guvenpark and there I ran around asking policemen for the bus to Gölbasi. I ran into a big demonstration with yellow flags. I couldn't make out what they were protesting for or against, but there were plenty of policemen and armored policecars and eventually I found the bus stop and got so happy that I had to take a picture of myself. The bus arrived and it wasn't possible to buy a ticket onboard so the driver just waved me on a bit annoyed.

I realised that this bus was going all the way to Konya. But I had told the driver I was going to Gölbasi, and hiding on the bus halfways through Turkey would be both impossible and fruitless. In addition, the bus went into every tiny village on the way and that stressed me out. So when we had come to Gölbasi, and I had seen a gas station by the highway, I got out at the next stop and walked back. It was very sunny. There was the big lake on the other side of the highway. It was dusty and the box with 4 games was still heavy. For some reason it struck me that the copies that I played with people would get dirty after a while, and then I wouldn't be able to sell them, and I would also not want to show them as demo games since they looked dirty. So I decided to from now on always sell the demo copy as soon as possible.

I stood on the gasstation and made myself a "Konya" sign that I showed to the cars that left for the highway. The gas station staff came with their tea to have a little chat and make sure that I was standing in the right direction. After 20 mercilessy sunny minutes only 12 cars had left the gasstation. One man came to tell me to stand on the naked highway and got out himself to wave for me. I got a bit suspicious and annoyed. But he couldn't have anything aggressive in mind; if he had friends that would come and pick me up to rob me, then the gas station would be as good as the highway. But he was just annoying, I don't think he helped me by thumbing for me, it just looked like we were 2 people hitchhiking. After a while he lost interest in the game and left. I kept on thumbing on the highway.

After 8 minutes and 107 cars a truckdriver, who had stopped behind me, came up and asked if I wanted to go with him to Konya. His truck looked old, but after 38 minutes of thumbing it felt nice to get a ride halfways to the coast. First he needed to wash a little part from his engine. Then he was having lunch. He asked many times if I wasn't hungry, but I was still full from the kebab in Ankara. So I drank tea inside the truckers' inn while he filled up himself. We climbed into the truck, which looked like a museum, like a toy car from the 1950s. It was basically made of wood, and the wood was falling apart. I was suprised when the thing actually started. He turned the key and we started shaking like socks in a washing machine.

We never stopped shaking, it was supposed to be this way. And we never reached above 60 km/h. Whenever I tried to lean back my head hit the wall like a hammer - badum badum badum - but eventually I took the liberty to use all his quilts and pillows to comfort my head and it would have been comfortable if I could have relaxed my legs, but when I did they leaned against the dashboard and started hitting it which inflicted pain on my knees as well as on the poor tortured truck. I am not exaggerating when I am saying that my adam's apple was beating my spine.

It was difficult to talk, not just beacuse the constant shaking but also since I didn't know much German, which annoyed him since he had worked there for decades and thought he was to get some language maintainance when he picked me up. I shook into shaky dreams sometimes, but he said thad he would be shaken asleep himself if we didn't speak so I tried to stay awake and talkative . He asked if I was Christian and said I was an Atheist and he said "we are brothers. I muslim, you atheist, we are brothers. I am black, you are white, we are brothers". Brother is "kardash". It's easy to remember, think of carwash, but with a d instead of w and the a:s pronunced as a:s.

He had Quran verses all over the cabin and he didn't smoke or drink. His pleasures in life were food, tea, coffee and sex. And also cockies, as it seemed when he stopped to buy us some.

One of the many cities we shook through was "Kulu". In Kulu, national road D715 changes name to "Olof Palme's Street". Many people from Kulu went to work in Sweden and when they came back they named their main street after our prime minister 1969-76 and 82-68. After passing Olof Palme's park we were out of the city and on the brown plateau again. This part of Turkey wasn't much to see.

When we had shaken close to Konya, he stopped the truck next to another parked truck and asked the driver if he could take me to the road to Karaman. He said yes and took me there. I walked across a bridge and along the highway until I found a place where it was reasonably easy stop. It was hardly a perfect place since it was highway, but I decided to give it a 100 cars. After 50 cars a group of teenage boys showed up. They came up to my face and talked into it but I couldn't understand what they were saying. But the way they waved their hands in my face looked like "get out of here". I decided to ignore them till I had counted my 100 cars. It was stupid pride; if someone wants you to go then just go whatever their reason. But as the group leader with his tiny moustache stood shouting at me I counted "87 ... 88 ... 89" and at 100 (after 8 minutes) I turned 180 degrees and walked away from the little rascals. Then car # 100 stopped. It was a policeman. "Eh ... Karaman?" I asked. "Get in" he said. I opened the door, sat in the front seat, fastened the seatbelt and picked up my map. He started laughing. Why was he laughing? "We don't like that" he said. "The seatbelt. You can take it off if you want". Wow, the police are telling me to take off my seatbelt. He drove me to what he said was the last big gas station in the Karaman direction.

"How can I help you ..." he said to himself as much as to me. He talked to the gas station staff and then he talked to a truckdriver. He came back to me and said "Do you want to go to Antalya? You can go with him to Antalya." "Are there boats to Cyprus from there?" I asked. "No" he said and I declined the offer. The he went with his police uniform to another truck and came back and saif "Do you want to go to Iraq? You can go with him to Iraq." "Are there boats to Cyprus from there?" I asked. "No" he said and I declined the offer.

Then the policeman went out on the highway and pulled over a bus. They stopped, he got up to them and talked to them and then he came to me and said "You can go with them to Karaman, for free".

I took my luggage and got on the bus. They poured me tea and as darkness fell over Turkey I sat in my comfortable seat and read my fantasy novel. What a great way to hitchhike.

In Kamaran it was dark and I didn't even consider hitchhiking. The city looked deserted. I started walking in the direction of a shop I could see far far way, trying to walk on the most lit-up streets. When I came to the shop I saw other shops further away, but no hotels. Suddenly, there was a big old castle and close to it a big house with coloured windows that looked like a fancy restaurant. Perhaps the fancy restaurant was also a hotel I thought and went there and realized it was a mosque. Mmmhh ... maybe they accomodate heathens I thought and went up to it and stared as people came out from their evening prayer. A man in a hat came up to me and asked in German if I needed any help and he pointed out where to find the city center, where there'd be hotels.

On the way there I ented a pastry shop and bought two of something that looked delicious. The shop assistant wouldn't let me go till he had made sure that I had learnt the name of the stuff I bought, but now I've forgot it but I'll never buy it again; it was nothing but oil in a crispy shell. There were three hotels; two were full but the third had one room without shower for 7 euro and one with shower for 13 euro. Wow, 6 euro for a shower, that's an expensive shower. For 6 euro you can in most cities enter a bathhouse, swim in a pool and have sauna afterwards. So I took the small room. While the hotel guy - who was so excited about speaking English that he could hardly control himself - looked at my passport and filled out forms I got some tea and watched football in a green room together with a smoking older gentleman.

The room was the smallest I've seen in my life. I know I've said it before, but this time it's true. Brave as always after finding a hotel, I took a long walk outside and found a kebab + ayran = less than 1 euro restaurant where they were very interested in football and tried to have a conversation with me by dropping names of players and teams. Unfortunately, "football" is not on my list of international languages. After the restaurant I found an internet café where they filled me to the brim with tea while I wrote emails to some Waseda friends about today's events.

The Middle East Technical University Japan Club

Yesterday I saw a poster advertising a "Japan Day" on the METU campus. Among other things there was information for Turkish students who were interested in studying in Japan. I felt this was an opportunity I couldn't miss, so I kindly asked Asli if I could stay another night. "No problem" she said. "There will be more room now when the Cypriots have left".

I joined some people in a car to the campus, and there I got lost. Someone had said that the forest on the METU campus was the largest forest in the Middle East. Sounds like an exaggeration to me, but it was obvious that I could never find my way by just walking around at random. I started asking people and after a long time I found the library and the room for the Japan Day. I heard that some kind of presentation was going on in there; and from the flyer I saw it was about martial arts. I wanted to set up a table just outside this room and sit there with my game when everybody came out, but the only table I saw was a huge solid piece of wood that would require three Turks to carry. First of all, let's get some food and coffee or I won't make any wise decisions here. I hid my box with SEIGO games and went out on a hunt for food. I found the big house with the huge Kemal flag, the club house, the canteen and the restaurant and got myself coffee with Chicken Baklava and spinach.

When I was back at the library the martial speech was still going on and I saw two young Japanese men smoking outside. I introduced myself and we had a little chat and they asked what I was doing in Turkey and I said that I was here to present a strategy game based on the Japanese writing system. They were, to say the least, a bit surprised by a Swede showing up a sunny afternoon in Ankara on this particular errand. I presented my game and one of them happened to be METU's Japanese teacher. He took a flyer and promised to strongly recommend the game to all his students. A guy from the Japan Club showed up and they introduced me to him and he recognized me from METUcon and he suggested that I'd present my game to the audience after the guy from the embassy had given his speech about the Monbukagakusho scholarship. They first asked him if it was ok, and he said it was, but recommended that I'd go up before him. I got on stage, the audience were friendly, they laughed with me when I wanted them to and all in all it felt good.

Fukuoka-san from the embassy spoke for almost an hour. It was in Turkish, but I kind of understood what he was talking about anyway; I guess I have visited many hearings like this one. Afterwards he took a look at my game and said that I should show it to the embassy in Sweden and that they would send me on a 2-year scholarship to Japan. I'm not in that phase of my life, but thank you anyway for the encouragement. Maybe he could write that paper the Warhammer importers needed to sell SEIGO?

A lot of people came up to the stage to look at my game and I talked till my throat ached. I made an appointment with some of them to play in the library tonight.

Waiting for tonight's game session, I sat for the rest of the afternoon in a café drinking tea and reading my fantasy novel. A lot of people from Metucon were there as well and they were like "what are you doing here, the event is over" and I was like "I've got my own business here". After another Chicken Baklava I went to the library. I was one minute early. After 5 minutes a girl came and apologized for being late. No one else came so we stood talking for 20 minutes. It turned out that she had joined this game session mainly because she had applied for a free Master program in Sweden and I happened to be Swedish. I told her all about studying in my country (which is still free for all foreigners despite the new right-wing government) and recommended Uppsala of all my heart. Together with Lund, it is THE place to go for studies if you're interested in meeting other students, which you are. Interestingly, Zeynep had also applied for studies in Japan and Taiwan, so she had managed to apply for those 3 countries where I have lived for a longer period of time.

After some time, Evrim, Ekin and Goksel from the Japan club showed up and we set up the game in the library. They said hey used to play Go and Shogi in their club. Excellent. And they really understood SEIGO. I don't want to be rude now, but most people don't understand the beauty of SEIGO and it's a waste of time to play with them. It's not just a waste of time, it's a torture. I hate it. But I still do it, because I have to. But these guys really got the game. They got the beauty of it. They were trading, negotiating, making careful border wars. And they didn't draw Kanji cards like idiots since they understood it would be bad for them. Instead, we were fighting over the few Kanji cards that were drawn; intriguing and plotting to prevent each others from getting the right syllable combinations. The game was played like it was supposed to be played. It was such a pleasure to play with these sophisticated, well-cultured and intelligent gentlemen and gentlewomen. And fun - they made so much fun all the time. And when the clock stroke 10 pm and we were thrown out of the library we all cried bitter tears. They bought a game from me and walked me the whole long way through dark and chilly Ankara to Asli's house.

I recognized the house, it was next to the house with the green waste basket and the Turkish flag. But when I knocked on the door and a woman opened it looked like the wrong house. I had never seen that woman, and no one else was in there and most of all: it was spotlessly clean. The house I left this morning was a mess, it looked like 10 guys and girls from Cyprus had been playing roleplaying games and drinking for a week. But then I recognized the paintings on the walls, said goodbye to Evrim, Ekin, Zeynep and Göksel and got inside.

The woman offered me some tea and cookies and I gratefully accepted. We didn't have many words in common so we watched TV, smiling to each other every 5 minutes. After an hour the girls came home and translated for us. The woman, who was one of them's mother, could then ask for my name and nationality and stuff. She asked if it was true that Romani people had special rights in Sweden. I said I had no idea, but that Romani (together with Finnish, Meänkieli and Yiddish) was an official minority language, but what it means other than recognition I don't know. "She is curious, since she is a gypsy" Asli said.

I looked at maps of Ankara and chose the village Gölbasi for my hitchhiking to the South. We looked up buses and then I read a chapter in a history book I found in my room.

Last day of METUcon

I woke up in the guestroom. I took a look in the master bedroom and there was my longhaired friend and his girlfriend. She opened one eye and said "good morning" and then they slowly crawled out of their hangover and tidied the apartment and then we got back to METUcon.

I took my table, set up my game, drank tea and read another fantasy novel I had got for a gift while waiting for people to show up and play. One guy with long hair came with a friend and played it with me. Later he came again, but now he had shaved his hair. He had forgot the rules, but he learnt the game again and we played for a while. "I think me and my twin will take this game" he said and pulled out 55 lira and bought the third printed copy of "SEIGO - Conquer the Japanese language". One of the twins were called Umut, "Hope" and the other Utku, "Despair".

Just kidding, Utku means "Victory".

People were packing up and the convention was going towards its end. One girl came up to me and said "you can come to my house tonight if you want". Sure, but why? Is there a party? Murat came by and we went to a campus restaurant and ate. The food was paid per gram so I filled the plate with chicken filet and baklava. I called my invention "Chicken Baklava".

Then we went to the club house where a lot of people gathered, not wanting to admit that Turkey's biggest game convention was over for this time. The members of the METU game club knew how they wanted it to end; they danced around Tuna the Organiser and sang "bira o gel Tuna!, bira o gel Tuna!". Go and get beer Tuna, go and get beer. The group pressure was too strong. I got in his car and he drove me to Bahadur's place where I got all my stuff, including my wet clothes that had been lying in Bahadur's washing machine for a few days. Then we went to a shop and filled the car with beer; don't know with whose money. Back at the club house a small party took off. I stood in the cold Ankara night and talked with Ilker and Nide. Nide was of Bulgarian decent. Ilker said that he had got much more confident since he became an RPG game master.

It turned out that I was going to sleep in Asli's house. I shared it with a big group of very tired Cypriots, but not the same Cyprus gang that I had been playing with earlier. I got my own room and hung my damp clothes all over it. Then I went down to join the rest of the crowd. Everyone was tired after 4 days of constant role-playing and partying, so they just watched television, sipped whisky and did occasional attempts at conversation.

At 2 am I went back to my room. In my bed there was the most beautiful cat I've ever seen. I went down and hugged it, holding his little head in my hands. We laid like that for a long time looking into each other's eyes. He was purring and looked straight into me like he knew all about me and was talking to me. This animal was too perfect to be a product of evolution. When cats and humans started living together, the friendlier and cuter cats had bigger chances to survive since they got better access to the humans' dwellings and all the juicy rats they contained. So there has been some natural selection in favor of friendly, cute and cuddly cats. But I found it impossible that this kind of blunt and random selection would produce something so perfect as this cat. The beauty of his head was bigger than life. I felt there was a god in the cat; a divine experience, the first in my life.

When I later tried to analyze my feelings that night, I realized that it takes two to tango, it wasn't just that the cat was unbelievably beautiful and calm and with smart eyes. It was also that I had the kind of brain that attachs certain characteristiscs to certain animals. The perfect cat wasn't in the cat, it was inside me. And why do I have those feelings? How has that helped my ancestors to survive long enough to breed me? I came to think about the mice in the office of Atol Production. I used to stand and stare into the mice's eyes, fascinated by how human they looked. They really looked like human eyes with human feelings. Like scared little humans they were, the two mice. I wanted to hug them and talk to them so much that I had to remind myself that they were just mice and would be scared to death if I attempted something like that. I realized now, when thinking back to my mouse meeting in Czechia and comparing with my cat meeting in Turkey, that it wasn't the mice that were humanlike. It was me that was mouselike!

A million generations ago, my ancestors' love for mice was essential for their reproduction, since they were mice themselves and needed to like their fellow mice in order to make new mice! And this mouse-loving gene has survived in many people's DNA since it hasn't been of any disadvantage, it's been preserved as a harmless monument of history such as the appendix or the foreskin. In fact, in the case of cats it's even been beneficial to like them and be able to create a relation with them. They have eaten my ancestors' rats and thereby left them more of their grain. But what about the affection for mice, it can't be beneficial for any human to like mice? No, not for the human. But it's been good for the mouse! By free-riding on your love of selected mammals, it has been able to look at you with it's brown pepper-eyes saying "please don't club me to death, put me in a cage in your graphic production company and feed me weetabix". So, to summarize: my love story with the cat was a funny little leap across hundreds of mutations.

Or maybe I was just missing my girlfriend.

Second day of METUcon

Woke up after my 12 hour "rest" and had an icecream for breakfast and then we took a taxi to the convention since they were late for a game session they had signed up for.

I found my tables again and set up my games again and talked and played the whole day again. The Warhammer retailers came and asked questions and seemed very sceptical about the prospectives of a Japanese-teaching strategy board game. But they wanted to play it and were surprisingly good at it. In fact, the blond guy with blue contacts were a few turns from terminating me, but then he pulled back for some reason and perhaps I would have made it if we'd continued. But they hadn't time for a 4-hour game of course; they were working. But to my delight they were much more positive after playing the game than before and asked if I could translate it to Turkish. "If you order 100 copies", I said "then it'll be in Turkish! No problem." In my mind I calculated that those 100 games wouldn't show much profit. But they would pay the making of a Turkish version that would be there, ready to be printed again. And it'd be cool. It'd be the meaning of life. They bought a game from me. It was the second game I sold from this edition. In fact, it was the third game I sold in my life (I sold one from a photocopied edition to my friend Torkel two years ago.)

They asked if I could get a letter from the embassy recommending the game, which they said they might need in order to sell it to language schools. And then they took my contact info and went back to sell their Warhammer stuff.

Towards the end of the day, Tuna (the main organizer) asked me what I'd be wearing on tonight's masquerade. "Oops ..." I said " ... I'll come as a hitchhiker".


"Oh yes! You can get a towel and be the Hitchhiker of the Galaxy!"

"He has a towel?"

"Haven't you read the book?!"

"Long time ago..."

"He's got a towel with all the smells of the universe. I'll get you one!"

I sat by my SEIGO-table, drinking tea and reading a fantasy novel I'd got for free for being an exhibitor (which is not the same as exhibitionist) till Tuna picked me up and drove me to a house that was full of Cypriots. There I got a big shish kebab and a towel with all the smells of the universe and then Tuna took me to the party. I didn't mean to be a big lazy baby or Michael Jackson or something, but this was just the way things happened. Poor Tuna, he was stressed out. I've organized big events myself so I could recognize the sweat on his neck, the frowns on his forehead, the eyes that said "I really hope you like this, because I am fucking up my studies in order to make it happen". Yes Tuna, we really really appreciate it! And those who didn't say so just forgot to. But in their hearts they are forever happy and grateful that they got to take part in METUcon 2007, Turkey's largest game convention (and the first international one).

The club was jam-packed with people dressed up in all kinds of costumes, many of which were very impressing. Burak was dressed up as a soldier from the Independence War 1919-23 since he didn't find a uniform from the Gallipoli Battle. I felt a bit lonely at this Turkish costume party, where I was the only foreigner among 100-200 dressed-up Turks. I guess it must have felt like this to be that first Turkish kid in the Swedish primary school in the 1970s. I found an internet computer and sent some e-mails, which felt like an even weirder way to spend a party.

I decided that I needed to break the ice with some jokes so I went outside where it was possible to talk and told the pirate-joke Aletha told me in Japan and it made people laugh their heads off. But when I told the sheep-joke Nathan told in Japan, then they laughed so loud that the neighbors came down and threatened with the police. Sheep is the shit in Turkey, make sheep jokes and you're home.

Eventually I realized that I hadn't been out in town on my own, so I took my hitchhiking towel and started exploring the Ankara night. The first thing I found was a convenience store and I got inside and had a talk with the shop assistant who was eating kebab. After a while I was joined by some guys from the party I just left; they loaded up on beer and we had company for a while - we really got along. One guy with long black hair had a girlfriend that looked just like my girlfriend and that moved me somehow. When I came back to the costume party Murat told me that they had been looking all over Ankara for me, especially in "shady places". Thank you for looking for me in shady places, is that what I seem like?

When the party closed everyone crowded the street discussing what to do, and after an hour or so the police came. I went with my long-haired friend and his girlfriendish girlfriend and a bunch of other people in taxis to a night club. We got ourselves a table and watched a cover band playing covers. I got really disappointed; I first thought that I had accidentaly stumbled upon some underground Ankara rock scene, but then found me listening to Rolling Stones or whateveritwas.

After a while I felt a strong urge to explore the premises and ran into a small, bold man with big nose who spit in my face while talking. He seemed like he was really interested in boardgames and that excuses everyone from spitting in my face, so I just endured the lukewarm rain while I thought we were arranging a boardgame session. But eventually I realised that he was a pimp and that he was putting me up with one or two of his girlfriends and then there was no excuse for him to spit me in the face anymore. What a disgusting little fellow; when I left him he shouted at me "hey, buy me a beer, c'mon!"

When we got out of the night club there was a fight on the street involving quite a few people, among whom I recognized several from the convention. The fight wasn't that serious, just noisy, and after a while the police came in 7 cars and calmed everyone down. We walked up some streets, down some streets and up again and eventually we came to a fencing club in which there was some kind of an afterparty. I don't know why, but for some reason we found it boring there and I and my long-haired friend and his girlfriendish girlfriend with her charming white cloak and round glasses took a taxi. We bought some beer in a convenience store and as we walked home with the cans at 5 am towards the apartment my long-haired friend had borrowed from his grandmother the chanting started from the mosques: aaaayiiilaaa iiiyaaa alllaiyaaaaaa.

First day of METUcon

We got dressed and walked to the first day of METUcon. I got breakfast, found my tables and set up the game. Murat set up his illustrations on the walls and made himself a little workshop where he sat working on a small statue. Some comic guys came and took some tables for their comics. Some Warhammer guys came and took some tables for their miniatures. Some Magic - The Gathering guys came and took one room for their tournament. People who sold stuff took a lot of tables and put big swords and small statues on them. Publishers sold fantasy novels and the convention staff sold their own t-shirts.

People poured in, dressed up, fenced, played princes and princesses. But most of all they were sitting by tables playing role-playing games. And slowly, the big canteen filled up with geeks, the geek élite of Turkey. People streamed to my table, looking at the foreigner and at the even more foreign game. The talked to me, played with me or just took photos. A group of people from Cyprus who showed up and played and smoked said they'd arrange something for me in Cyprus.

I drank tea, ate manti and played and talked and played and talked all day long. It was very very fun. Could I live my life like this? Yes I could.

After dinner we walked through the cool night back to Bahadur's apartment. I told Murat about a card game idea that I had in mind (perhaps number 15 of my list of games that will maybe or maybe not see the light of the day) and he was skeptic, saying that distribution would be a problem. Distribution, schmisschtrution, I hitchhike, no problem - everyone's got Internet.

He was himself working on a strategy game about the Gallipolli battle in 1915. I assumed that one player would play Australia, one would play UK, one Turkey and so on, but he said:"No, these issues are a bit sensitive here, no one would want to play the foreigners, so everyone will play Turkish generals and the allies will be played by an AI".

"Isn't that a bit ... over-sensitive?" I asked, "In Axis'N'Allies you can play Hitler and Stalin but no one minds doing that, it's just a game"

"Well, you don't make jokes about Auschwitz, do you?" he replied.

"No ... " I said and shut up for a while. "But ... wouldn't there be a trade-off between a smart AI and one that the players can administrate easily?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the smarter AI, the more complicated boardgame."

"Aha, I see. No problem, the allied moves will be decided by drawing cards from a deck."

"But that sounds more like artificial stupidity than artificial intelligence" I said.

"Yes, but that reflects reality very well, the Allies made very stupid moves." "I see haha".

"You know, Kemal Ataturk did some maneuvers during that battle that were until then unknown in military history"

"I see, will it be possible to make those moves in the game?"

"Yes!"

I am looking forward to playing it.

We arrived at Bahadur's place and I laid down on the bed to "rest" for a while.

Arriving in Ankara

Hi my friends. I am sorry that I wrote last time that i had a heap of blogposts to be released and then didn't release them. I thought this would be a summer of peace and work, but it's turned out to be a summer of adventure. So I can't keep the pace of a blogpost per day, but hopefully one per week. Now, please follow me to Ankara:

We went down to our good old bakery and got more breakfast from the wonderful people there and then we went up to the flat to play a game of StreetSmart. After the game we went to the restaurant of yesterday night and had delicious filled eggplants for lunch. We talked about the discrimination against Turkish people in Europe. The topic made me depressed so I tried to cheer us up by telling a joke my father (who worked as a Swedish-teacher for immigrants) told me about The Turks who came to hell:

One day, some Turkish guys went on a trip to hell. The devil himself greeted them and they were very well taken care of. The people were very nice, the girls smiled and flirted and they found some friends and all in all they had a very good time. After they came back to Turkey they said to each other "wow, how nice it was in hell" and one day they decided to go there again. But the next time, everything was different; they got heavy, dangerous and low-paid jobs, people avoided them on the streets and they felt despised by everyone. They went to the devil and complained: "Last time we had such a good time here, but now it's like ... hell". "Well well" the devil said with an evil smile, "first time you came you were tourists. Now you are immigrants."

Alp didn't laugh at the story but protested: "It's not true. They don't treat tourists nicely. When I went to Germany as a tourist they treated me like I had come to apply for welfare and blow up things". For his next trip he will go to India.

He put me in a cab and told the driver to take me to the toll station for the Ankara highway. The taxi ride was 10 €; perhaps it's a bit luxurious to take a cab to the hitchhiking spot, but we simply didn't know how to get there otherwise. I had a sign saying "Ankara" and tried to stand so that the policemen wouldn't see me. But after 5 minutes they came and honked their horn, winded down the window, pointed at me and the place and said "problem". I made gestures that were supposed to look like "so, where can I hitchhike?" and they shrugged their shoulders and said "problem". I pointed here and there and asked "problem?" and they made a "whatever"-gesture and drove away. After 10 minutes and 49 cars a guy stopped and picked me up.

He was an eletrician and had girlfriends all over Turkey. As we drove through the endless Istanbul suburbs he asked me if I was Christian and I told him I was an atheist. I thought that would put me on some kind of neutral middle-ground, but it had the opposite effect. He got all upset and pointed at the mountains and the sky and at us and asked "how?! how?!". "I don't know, I don't know" I said, and I didn't mind not knowing. Then I fell asleep. When he woke me up we were at more than 1000 meters and there was snow everywhere. Oh no, not snow again, somebody let me out of this long winter!

When we had passed the peek of the Istanbul-Ankara highway he turned off the engine and we were pulled for 10 minutes by gravity like skiers. He let me off in central Ankara and I had a kebab and sent text messages to and fro with someone from the METUcon game convention who didn't know where I was and where to go. After an hour or two I found the Guvenpark bus station and found the bus to "Odtu". I sat in the back next to an old man and everyone in the bus gave each other money that slowly moved forward to the driver. I showed the old man my hand with coins and he picked out 1:35 and sent it forward.

When I got off at the gate of the Middle East Technical University it was already dark. I sent a text message to the METUcon number and waited. After 5 minutes a car came full of people who got out, shook my hands, threw in my luggage and put me in the front seet with a "welcome beer". They drove me to the canteen of the university they were people were busy setting up tables, making fantasy sculptures and having an informal party going on. I got some tables for me and my game (I was a little bit of a novelty as a foreigner, the first to make METUcon and international convention.) and then we had a very nice time with nasty and witty jokes flying in all directions. I wondered whom of all these men was Murat, and eventuelly he got out of his anonymity and presented himself. I was introduced to a great number of people and I had a hard time learning their name. I could hardly remember my own name, which I think was Hamid.

I didn't know where to sleep, but joined them to the club house that was sprayed with slogans like "IMF - International MotherFuckers", and "Atheism - a Non-Prophet-Organization". We listened to music, ate snacks and tried to make me stop talking politics. I asked some people if they wanted to join the EU and they replied "You know the answer". "Is ... that a yes?" I asked and they said "Yes, if we are treated like an equal nation and not like a second-class country full of fanatics." As they talked about how they wanted and not wanted to be treated, they changed their mind and didn't want to be members of the union anymore. I understood perfectly, it's a perfectly rational attitude. If a club wants you, it's rational to want membership. But if you suspect they don't want you, then it's better to not want to be a member, or you'd look rejected. The problem is when a club wants you after a long period of rejection. During the period of rejection you have cultivated reasons for why you don't want to join the club. You have found faults with the club and stressed them, you have developed a strong identity that is incompatible with membership in the club. If the period of rejection is long enough, then those reasons may have grown so strong that membership has become infeasible.

And that's what extremists on both sides are hoping for.

Bahadur, Murat, Burak and I went to Bahadur's place for a little after-party.

Burak is a bit older than the others; he went back to college to take his MBA after 10 years translating fantasy novels into Turkish. After graduation he'll start a company importing and translating GOOD stuff. They were all tired of the dragon-slaying mass-products that were filling up the bookstores.

Someone complained about the term "geek":

"In Europe and America, people who play RPGs and boardgames are called 'geeks'. But here in Turkey these are hobbies for intellectuals..."

Of course it is! It's the same all over the world. But intellectuals are geeks. RPGs and boardgames are for the smart, for the intellectual upper-class (which is not necessarily the same as the economic upper-class). Calling yourself and others "geek" is not degrading; it's humble and equalizing. It means, "I'm not smarter and have a richer life than you TV-slaves, I am just a geek". You call yourself a geek to make the non-geek and cool Tom Cruise-loving people feel better about themselves. So cheer up geeks, be proud of yourself and hide your pride under the humble veil of the geek-tag.

I fell asleep on a sofa, Bahadur offered me a bed and I thought "aha, so this is the place".

Istanbul

Sorry friends, my blog was blocked by Google for a while. It contained so many links to different websites that a robot thought it was a "junkblog", like a big junkmail ifyouseewhatamean. I hope you don't think it's a junkblog too ;) The most conspiratory part of my mind thinks that they are harassing me because I link to an Amnesty page where they complain at Google censoring the internet to support the Fascist regime of China (which means that they would censor the Swedish or American Internet if we got Fascist regimes in the future and that they would have censored Nazi-Germany's Internet if they had had one).

Well, enough with paranoia, now I have a heap of unpublished blogposts about Turkey that are waiting impatiently to be let loose on the semi-free part of the Internet, so please follow me back to Istanbul:

Good morning! Strange feeling to wake up in a bed all of a sudden.

First thing I did was to open the curtains and take a picture of a modern Asian-side Istanbul residential area from above. Alp was up and we went out to buy some breakfast in his neighborhood bakery. It wasn't really traditional Turkish breakfast but it was good; especially the almond cookies were awesome. Then we went out and hit the town. First thing was to look for a post office. He had written an article for a magazine so old-fashioned they required the stuff by snailmail. Since this doesn't happen very often it took us some time to find a post office and during the walk we talked about the content of his article. It resembled what I wrote in the blogpost "Pardubice - Horovice" above; that evolution has equipped us with an urge to play since playing is educational and helps us survive, but that evolution didn't foresee computer games, just like it didn't foresee fastfood chains when it equipped us with an urge for fat and sugar. Alp had a very precise two-word expression to capture this thought, but I forgot it. But I'll ask him, and later edit this blogpost.

After sending the article we went to an old cemetary and a park. I amused Alp with the story of my late father's passion for Turkey. For some reason we got into the Armenian genocide, perhaps since I found Alp so outspoken and liberal in mind that he might have a different opinion than the government. But he just said that a lot of people died on all sides. Then it was lunch time. Alp had in mind a kebab that was the king of all kebabs and that would set us back 12 € each. I voted for not going there, I was afraid it wouldn't taste good. I cannot appreciate expensive food, every atom of taste is divided by its cost in my mouth and in my soul I only feel the taste-per-euro and therefore I seldom appreciate 12 € meals. This means that free food is nearly infinitely delicious (well, there is no such thing as a free luch as my friend Friedman says. For example, when my neighbor bought me a kebab on my 26th birthday, she told me to keep the recipe and reminded me several times throughout my 27th year.) Presented with these facts, my sophisticated host wouldn't consider kebab at all, since he claimed that cheap kebab was bad meat. So we ate Black Sea region-style pie instead. It was only bread and meat; but I liked the ayran, a salty youghurt drink.

We took a walk along the Marmara Sea that divides Europe from Asia and the Black Sea from the Mediterranean. It's very hard to navigate these waters and Alp was worried that one of the 5500 oil tankers from Russia or the Caucasus that goes through his city every year would have an accident and endanger the health of him and his 12 million neighbours. I thought the revenues Turkey could get from having these transports through its city would make up for the risks, but according to an agreement from 1936, only a small toll can be charged.

Then we talked about all the couchsurfers he had had; in fact I was his 13th. He had never couchsurfed himself though, but when the time comes for his big trip abroad, I bet he will have an easy time finding couches with all the extremely positive references he's got. We walked down the main shopping street of Asian Istanbul, gypsies were selling Turkish flags and we found a very friendly cat that was all over us. Then Alp treated me Turkish coffee.

We picked up more almond cookies from his neighborhood bakery and then we took a look at my games.

When the others arrived we started with going out to eat dinner. When around boardgames, I feel more like home-delivery-pizza, but I didn't want to be rude so I put a fake smile on my face and joined them to the restaurant. The smile was soon changed into a real one, and then into an ecstatic one. First we had delicious wine leaf dolmas with rice inside. Then we had the most perfect dish I have ever eaten. It was very small dumplings topped with a yoghurt sause and a tomato sauce and covered with spices that I'll later give you the name of. The way the flavors mixed in the mouth was fantastic. And I tasted it with my girlfriend's taste as well and knew she'd like it too, so I decided to get the recipe and cook for her one day. It shouldn't be a problem to get the ingredients considering the sizeable Turkish community we have in Sweden and Netherlands. The name of the dish was "manti". After this little edible paradise we went home to our playable. They were 6 people so I got to sit and watch, which was ok. We didn't get to play for a very long time, but at least they were amused.

Then Alp's friend Koray showed his Arena men's magazine. Everyone laughed at the pictures of half-naked men, asking if it was a magazine for homosexuals. I saw that Koray looked a bit uncomfortable by his own work being laughed at so I tried to save the situation by saying that it was a magazine for modern urban men. Which is nothing but the truth, although it's a kind of modernity I am not a part of. I showed Koray the components of Seigo and StreetSmart and talked about the game and about myself and we took some pictures for an article about an "Adventurous game designer". Now, with a picture of me in my Arbetaren t-shirt on page 206, this magazine will lose its metrosexual appeal. I'm sorry for that.

Arriving in Istanbul

I dreamt that I went into a supermarket to buy peanutbutter and jam for a PB & J-sandwhich - named after my English flatmate in Taiwan's two boyfriends PB & J. But instead of buying peanut butter I looked at the kilo price of chocolate and then I tried three different kinds of candy including the red and black Ferrari cars. Then I dreamt that the truck driver woke me up and I woke up and realised that it was just a dream; he was still sleeping. Then I fell asleep again but dreamt that he woke me up, but he was still asleep. The third time I dreamt that he woke me up I stayed awake till he woke up. He went out to visit the toilet and I packed my stuff and brushed my teeth and when he came back I went and then he said "kollega, eat" and we went into the restaurant and had big chunks of bread and a white soup for breakfast.

We drank tea with a group of drivers who all knew each other and would go together to Istanbul. One of them could speak quite some English and with his translation Ahmed got the opportunity to know more about me. We had some more tea and then we were off for Turkey.

The "highway" through Bulgaria was a narrow concrete lane that dwindled through villages. Navigating between the plentiful potholes, Ahmed was seldom able to drive faster than 50 km/h; now I understood why it would take us a whole day to get to the next border.

I wasn't sleepy and we couldn't talk so much and the ride was too bumpy to allow writing so I spent the time compiling statistics for my game. As I think I've written already, I don't like games with so much detail that someone who played it 10 times before has an advantage not just because he has understood the strategy, but because he has gathered all the information in the game. In games with "action cards" for example, an old player knows that there are 6 "plus 1 move"-cards and 2 "super sword" cards etc etc and can take that into account when making her moves. That's unfair to the new player who might lose not just because she's new to strategy (which is reasonable), but because she doesn't have the time or the will to study the components for one hour and do the mathematics before playing (which no one does).

A game with action cards - or similar information issues - might be a good game, but it is in my eyes not a beautiful game. The problem is that SEIGO has this problem. The technology in the game consists of 100 kanji cards, each requiring one or more kana to be invented. If you can keep all the kanji in your head and what kana are required for each kanji, then you know what kana to keep at home in your invention stock and what kana you can send to the frontier without diverting resources from your technological progress.

Now, this isn't an urgent problem. Firstly, no one in the world but me has played this game enough to have an idea about what kana are good to keep at home. Secondly, this problem goes away once you acquire more kanji cards. Japanese uses 2000 kanji, and all can be played with Seigo. When playing with 2000 kanji, not even Rain Man could have a clue as what kana to keep at home.

Nevertheless, there are players who like winning and for whom a game session is fun only if they feel they played at the best of their ability. This kind of player gets frustrated when there exists a lot of information that affects the winning conditions but that is out of his control. And I feel the same, when I am presented with a game that includes pages of tables and heaps of random action cards then I feel that the game doesn't give me a chance so why should I give it a chance.

So in the next edition of SEIGO the kana will be presented with their "Invention Power". There is no obvious formula for calculating this Invention Power, but I made a simple one and don't expect more sophisticated formulas to give radically different results. This kept me busy the whole morning. "Arbeit" I said to my puzzled friend.

We had lunch at a Bulgarian restaurant for a change. The whole gang gathered there and the English-speaker explained that I was their guest and shouldn't be afraid of ordering soda with my meal. They recommended a salad of cucumber, tomato and goat cheese that they said was a Bulgarian speciality.

The whole afternoon I kept on working on the statistics. Here comes the figures:

Invention Power
(Hiragana/Katakana)

A = (3/3) I = (3/8) U = (2/7) E = (1/2) O = (4/5)

KA = (3/7) KI = (3/6) KU = (1/3) KE = (0/2) KO = (3/6)

SA = (1/3) SHI = (2/10) SU = (2/2) SE = (0/2) SO = (0/0)

TA = (6/6) CHI = (1/2) TSU = (3/5) TE = (1/2) TO = (3/4)

NA = (3/3) NI = (1/2) NU = (0/0) NE = (1/1) NO = (2/2)

HA = (1/2) HI = (2/2) FU = (1/2) HE = (0/0) HO = (0/1)

MA = (3/3) MI = (4/4) MU = (0/0) ME = (2/2) MO = (2/3)

YA = (2/4) YU = (1/3) YO = (1/3)

RA = (1/1) RI = (1/1) RU = (1/1) RE = (0/0) RO = (1/1)

WA = (1/1) N = (0/7) WO = (0/0)

Average: 2,2 Hiragana = 1,6 Katakana = 2,9

I know this table is gibberish to most of you. But to summarize; make sure you get:
O (Can be produced in Okinawa, Fukuoka, Oita, Okayama, Osaka, Shizuoka and Aomori),
TA (Can be produced in Oita, Saitama, Niigata, Yamagata and Akita) and
MI (Can be produced in Miyazaki, Mie, Miyagi)
and keep them out of battle.

Then there is the issue of combinations, some kana like to appear together and if you know popular combinations then you can try to keep these on the gameboard. The most popular combinations are: NA+KA, YA+SU, TO+MO and A+MA. After shifting to Katakana, SHI goes well with U, YA, YU, YO and N.

The figures above do not take into account what Kanji are the most valuable. For example, a Move is more desirable than an Air Defence, so Kana inventing the former should get higher Invention Power than Kana inventing the latter. But this is not the kind of calculations one undertakes in a shaky truck on a Bulgarian mountain road, so I suffice with saying that the most efficient Kana for getting the precious Move Kanji are I, TA and KI.

To summarize and close this chapter: Do not attack your enemy with O, TA, I, MI or KI

We arrived at the border. Hundreds of trucks were waiting for hours to cross. As long as it was bright enough I did SEIGO calculations, now trying to divide Japan into 6 "Invention Power-equal areas". Ahmed and his friends were watching Shrek on a laptop. At some point we all got to go to a little house and show our passports. A poster inside said "Bribery is bad for everyone" and Ahmed told me to go back to the truck when it was his time to pay a 5 € bribe. Imagine getting 5 € from every truck that crosses the border between Turkey and the rest of Europe.

We had to run around the whole gigantic border area to find someone to stamp my passport - as a "civilian" in a truck I didn't fit into the routines. But it was just a matter of time and time was something we had, hours of it. As darkness fell I just relaxed and listened vaguely to the sound of Shrek while looking at all the million trucks. After a while Shrek started to make very weird sounds and when I glanced on their computer he had changed into naked people exercising and the truckers looked very happy.

The night was old when we passed the last control and entered the European part of Turkey. We stopped at a restaurant where I was served a white soup with big white pieces of what looked and tasted like nothing but fat. I found it very disgusting to eat pure animal fat, but I had some kind of principle to be perfectly assimilated so I forced myself to eat it. It wasn't so bad after I came up with the idea to put all fat pieces on my bread and spread them out like butter. After drinking tea we ran back to the truck; Ahmed had decided to not sleep here but drive straight to the company and was in a hurry. He asked for the number to my friend in Istanbul and then he called him. It turned out that by the time I would arrive in Istanbul there would be no public transport whatsoever and I would have to take a taxi from the transport company to Alp´s place. He said the taxi would be 40 € or the like. I would prefer to stay outside for free than staying at Alp's for 40 € but I had a strong feeling that none of my friends would accept that. It was like Ahmed had done his part, Alp would do his part and this taxi ride was my contribution to our common project of taking responsibility for my life.

"Kamera!" he said and I got it out and took a ton of pictures on the bridge between Europe and Asia as we passed it. After driving through the Asian side of Istanbul and arriving in the transport company, Ahmed flew out of the truck and started arranging things in an extreme frenzy. The taxi was already standing there, honking its horn. We had spent 41 hours together and I wanted to shake his hand for 5 minutes and take his address and send him an audio book on CD. I want to send all truckers audio books; they spend most of their days just watching the road, listening to music at best. If they would listen to audio books then they could go through the whole world literature within a year.
The Swedish Transport Labor Union has established 8 truckers' libraries along the country's highways where their members can borrow audio books for free and these libraries have become very popular. But in the world outside Sweden, "truckdriving" and "literature" are still not synonymous, so I'd like to send him a Turkish audio book but it was impossible to get his attention as he was rushing around cleaning the truck and throwing out stuff; I had to struggle even to shake his hand for one second and say "teshekur teshekur teshekur".

I should have understood that it wasn't in his interest to be associated with a hitchhiker. But I thought it was cool since he had brought me all the way to the company; usually they drop you off at a safe distance since they are not supposed to jeopardize their cargo by accomodating random bums. But it wasn't cool, Alp later told me that he had said: "I'll just have to take the risk, there is no other place where the taxi driver could find him."

The taxi driver was as stressed as Ahmed, honking his horn and looking like he was wondering what hell he was doing in an industrial area in Istanbul at 1 am so I felt I had better throw my stuff in his cab and get out of there.

It took some time for us to find Alp's place. The driver got out of the car and went into shops and asked, called Alp repeatedly and drove around at random. Finally I saw a man on the street who looked like he was looking for taxis and it was him. I love people like Alp; he had got to know me from an internet forum where I had made a most healf-hearted profile without even a photo, and now he was running out of his home at 2 am on a Wednesday night to lend me 20 Euros for my juicy taxi bill.

It was freezing cold outside, worse than ever in Romania. Alp said it was because the air was so humid from us standing between two oceans. Alp lived on the highest floor in a big apartment that he shared only with innumerous fantasy figures and games. He treated me to a sandwhich in the kitchen and as we talked it came up that we both loved Go and Civilization. I was revealed; it would have been kind of weird if it would have turned out we had nothing in common. You might think that you share interests with everyone on Boardgamegeek.com, but "boardgame" is a wide category. Show up at a boardgame meeting and suggest a game of Monopoly and a Puerto Rico-player will hold your arms while a Tigris&Euphrates-player punches you in the stomach and a Settlers-fan stuffs your throat with a sock to prevent your screaming (his own lucky-sock, worn through 12 boardgame conventions without being washed). You think I am exaggerating, but the scary thing is that I'm not.

But of course I had done some investigations; I would never risk getting trapped in the den of a sordid Carcassone-player and be tortured by his empty eyes and limited vocabulary all night. I knew Alp was a man of culture. But what I didn't knew was that he had received an award from the Japanese embassy for privately teaching 500 Turkish people how to play Go. 500 people! That's a soldier I want in my army. I was impressed. And I think Alp was impressed when I told him that my father and I once played Go 11 times in a row, for 18 hours straight with no breaks but short toilet breaks.

Then he showed me to the guestroom. Wow, they call it couchsurfing but so far it's been guestroomsurfing.

Romania

2:25 am the owner of the gasstation woke me up. Don't know what he said but I guess he said "don't sleep in here punk".

I staggered to the counter to buy myself an espresso to keep awake. But all coffee in the world would have been chanceless against the last 19 hours of hitchhiking so I had no choice but to get out and let the cold keep my eyelids up.

I went back to the truck lane. I had had a few nice talks there, and some trucks stayed there for a while and you could catch them when they came out of the customs with their papers. After an hour or three the police came and told me that I couldn't be there, so I went up to the gasstation and thumbed until sunrise. When the sun came up I thought about that parking place they had been talking about. Most truckers I had talked to had said they would sleep a bit further into Romania, so if all of them were at that parking place 1 km from here, then there must be a 100 trucks there. And perhaps they're all brushing their teeth right now, perhaps I should hurry.

With the light disappeared the fear of dogs and border mosquitos and I walked and walked and walked. After one kilometer I saw a road sign indicating a parking place after another 3 kilometers. After those 3 kilometers I found the parking place. It had 4 trucks on it and was big enough to accomodate 4 more. Thanks a lot for your wonderful advice, assholes.

2 trucks were sleeping, the other 2 weren't going anywhere and I bought 2 packs of cookies for breakfast and found it better to walk the 4 kilometers back to the border rather than staying at this meaningless place. After 1 kilometer I saw a truck parked by the roadside; its driver seemed to be taking a piss. Keeping an eye on the pissing man I walked as fast as I could, ready to start running if he started to shake it and put it inside. Then the truck started moving; it wasn't the driver pissing but somebody totally unrelated. I saw it was a Turkish truck, started running towards it, waved my arms and shouted "hey!" "hey!"

He stopped and made the "what-the-hell-do-you-want-from-me"-gesture. I opened the door to the cabin, climbed up and said "ich faren nach torkai". He looked very suspicious: "really?" "where are you from?" "Sweden" I said. "Passport" he said. I showed him my passport and he shone up. He was driving a Swedish truck and working for a Swedish company, transporting Volvo parts from Göteborg, Ericsson stuff from Stockholm and chainsaws from Småland, so picking up a Swedish hitchhiker just made his Swedish life complete.

He didn't go very far, only to a restaurant where he would rest 8 hours. But I guessed that the restaurant would be a place full of Turkish truckdrivers and that I could get another ride from there, so I broke my principle of waiting for someone straight to Bucharest and joined him. One doesn't have too many principles left after 11 hours.

"Do you like Romania?" he asked. I hesitated, thinking that I shouldn't draw any conclusions about this country from my night on the border. "No, you don't!" he said and laughed. "Do you?" I asked. "Yes", he said "very much". "Romania Bulgaria komplett madam sex keine problem" he continued. Those 7 words came in various constellations during the ride.

He also asked me if I was Christian and I proudly declared that I was a third generation atheist and he said "satanist? hahaha" and then he started complaining at France sabotaging Turkey's membership negotiations with the EU because of their religion.

After an hour or so we came to his truck stop, which was full of trucks. The first one I asked was going in the Hungary direction. The second one as well. The third one tried to sneak away in the opposite direction and I thought that might be Turkey so I ran towards him and waved my arms and my sign. He stopped and also made the "what-the-hell-do-you-want-from-me"-gesture, I opened the door to the cabin, climbed up and said "ich faren nach torkai". He looked very suspicious: "really?" "where are you from?" "Sweden" I said. "Passport" he said. I showed him my passport and he shone up. Sweden seems to be a good nationality with Turkish truckers.

He was going to Istanbul. I had a very good appointment in Istanbul and I was afraid to jeopardize it by letting go of this ride, so I sent a text message to Adina in Bucharest and said that I had been unlucky hitchhiking and wouldn't make it in time. Then I passed out. He woke me up at a Turkish restaurant. "Kollega" he said, "eat". We got in and I had a big kebab. He knew everyone in there. The food was very real. Tasted like home but with more food and less sauce. It was very guzel. When my belly was full like a balloon and we had drunk our tea I tried to go up and pay but Ahmed was faster than me. "Teshekur" I said and we got in the truck.

Transylvania was very beautiful. Every time I woke up I just sat back and enjoyed the river on our left and the green mountains on our right. After a few hours we stopped at another Turkish restaurant. "Kollega" he said, "eat". He knew everyone in there. He ate another breakfast but I was still full like I've never been before and only had some glasses of Turkish tea. Then we got in the truck again and continued through beautiful Transylvania. We couldn't talk much; he only knew 10 words or so in German. Our communication consisted almost entirely of him pointing at girls on the street saying "madame guzel" and I made a gesture to comment his comment. Sometimes I joked with him by saying "guzel" while pointing to a man and he thought that was very funny. We stopped at another Turkish restaurant and had some tea. He didn't know anyone here. We didn't eat so we didn't have to pay anything, the tea was for free. That's civilization!

After a while we were out of the mountains and the landscape got flat and rather depressing. As we approached Bucharest we got caught in a traffic jam and he got a problem with the truck; it sounded "ssskrinkaklong" every time he made a right turn. Luckily there was a Turkish restaurant outside Bucharest where he could get some help. There were about 40 Turkish trucks parked here. I thought that if I could get into town from here, and back here tomorrow morning, then I'd probably be able to get another Turkish truck soon enough to be in time for my game session in Istanbul. I sent an sms to Adina to see if Bucharest was still game but she replied that everyone had made up other plans now that I had canceled on them. Damn. Well, well, next time. One day I will come to see the good side of Romania and then I and Adina and all her strategy game-loving Japanese-studying friends will play boardgames.

But the Turkish restaurants were also a really good side of Romania, would have been of every country. The friendship that these houses were built of instead of stones and plank and that poured over oneself was only matched by the neverending streams of Turkish tea, so strong that I needed sugar to get it down. My friend Fredrik would have liked the tea, he always wants it "black as death". He was in a bit of a hurry so we didn't eat there. We drove until night fell and we passed the border to Bulgaria, where we stopped at a Turkish restaurant.

And now I would like to add the statistics from Romania into the lists. Unfortunately I stopped counting cars, but I guesstimate that roughly 400 cars were - one way or the other - given the offer of my company on their ride. As for the time, 11 hours is quite an accurate estimation, I did spend some time inside the gasstation, but on the other hand I spent some time at the first Turkish restaurant. The figures from all the countries are to be interpreted carefully of course (if at all), but this Romanian observation especially so. Remember that it was dark for most of the time. On the other hand, I was at a border loaded with trucks, which should be a prime location. Here is the statistics for whatever it's worth:

Ratio Ride-offers/Cars-waved-at

1. Switzerland 10 / 270 = 3,7%

2. Spain 28 / 1188 = 2,4%
3. Hungary 14 / 716 = 2,0%
4. France 15 / 1222 = 1,2%
5. Romania 4 / 400 = 1,0%

6. Portugal 3 / 1516 = 0,2%

Ratio Minutes-waited/Ride-offers

1. Switzerland 45 min / 10 offers = 5 min/offer

2. Spain 413 min / 28 offers = 15 min/offer
3. France 237 min / 15 offers = 16 min/offer
4. Hungary 239 min / 14 offers = 17 min/offer

5. Portugal 192 min / 3 offers = 64 min/offer

6. Romania 660 min / 4 offers = 165 min / offer


Proportion of trucks

Switzerland 0/10 = 0%
Hungary 2/14 = 14%
France 4/15 = 27%

Spain 8/28 = 29%

Portugal 2/3 = 67%

Romania 4/4 = 100%


Gender

Switzerland Male: 8/10 = 80% Mixed: 1/10 = 10% Female: 1/10 = 10 %
France Male: 13/15 = 87% Mixed: 1/15 = 7 % Female: 1/15 = 7%

Spain Male: 21/28 = 75% Mixed: 6/28 = 21% Female: 1/28 = 4%
Hungary Male 11/14 = 79% Mixed 3/14 = 21%

Portugal Male: 3/3 = 100%
Romania Male 4/4 = 100%

Ahmed had said that he would spend the night at this border, and then sleep again at the Turkish border. It suprised me that Bulgaria would take a whole day to cross. I was worried about where I would sleep. We hadn't really talked about how far I should join him. We hadn't talked about where I should sleep. In fact, we didn't talk much at all because we couldn't talk. All he could say was "madame guzel" and all I could answer him was a face of approval or disapproval. The dogs were barking and I didn't mind the cold but my Romanian hitchhiking friend had said that I shouldn't spend the night outside in Bulgaria and if a girl who hitchhikes alone to China says that then I should comply. I looked at Ahmed's face as he sat and wiped it after a long day's drive and tried to figure out what he was thinking.

"Kollega" he said and gestured me to follow him inside the Turkish restaurant. It was the cosiest restaurant there ever was. Needless to say, it was full of Turkish truckers with moustaches who ate a sturdy stew. We cruised the premises and he introduced me to all the guests and the staff and then we squeezed ourselves down at a thick wooden table occupied by a man who was drinking a special kind of Turkish spirits that turned milky when mixed with water while watching some exciting show on the Turkish television. I got myself a generous plate of the stew and I am sorry for all you culinaric people out there on the internet by I haven't the slightest idea of what it was before, during or after I ate it. But the taste was wonderful, I deem say perfect. It was - as my friend Östhammar would have put it - an honest dish.

After dinner we went back to the truck and I made my face a question mark and pointed outside and inside and asked "schlafen?" and he said "keine problem" and arranged the bed. I got up in the upper one and fell asleep rather soon.

Border mosquitos

The alarm went off at 7 and Balazs woke me up again a quarter after that. We had breakfast - milk with cereals - and then he went to his work and I went to look for a train station. I hadn't found any advice for how to go South from Budapest, so I decided to just take the commuter train to the Southern end station. In the metro station there was a city map and there I saw that there was a bus from here to the commuter train station. There I queued up to buy a ticket and got extremely stressed by a woman with so much business with the ticket clerk that I would miss the train and have to wait 40 minutes for the next one.

I considered getting on the train without a ticket, but the 100-kilo train guards with scars all over their faces made me stay in line and give the tedious woman the evil eye till it was my turn. "The end station" I said, the ticket clerk held up a piece of paper with a question on her face and I bought the thing and ran to the nearest car and got in.

On the way to Rackeve I sat working on my linguistic strategy game of 30 languages. It's quite a huge project as you can guess, and a dozen games will produced before that game will see the light of the day, so it's completely irrational to work on it now. But it's the perfect thing to do when sitting on a train. An old man in a uniform came and said that my ticket wasn't good enough and I paid him a bit more money and got a new piece of paper and continued working on the game of 30 languages.

In Rackeve a dog was resting and there was a map that I tried to interpret. I walked through the city, which was very charming - situated next to a river and with an old church in the middle and just idyllic. I bought a langos and ate it. A drunk man had a conversation with me. Dogs barked at me and I barked at them. When I thought I was on the other side of the city it was sunny and 11:27. After 5 minutes car #2 stopped and explained to me how to walk to get to the road to Szeged. I was far from the highway, but it felt good that I was far from Budapest and hitchhiking on country roads. At 11:37 I had found the right road and after 28 minutes and 63 cars an old man picked me up in his jeep and gave me a 10-min-ride while listening to ABBA. He let me off at a junction and there I waited for 10 minutes and 5 cars till another old man picked me up in a jeep and gave me another 10-min ride; this one was not listening to ABBA.

I stood by the roadside for 58 min during which I got a ride offer from two men in a car full of trash. I don't mind being uncomfortable. In fact, those uncomfortable rides are a big part of the whole charm of hitchhiking. Once I got a ride from Southern France to Paris back in a truck full of shampoo bottles. My hair has never smelled better. Once I got a ride from Southern Norway to Trondheim lying on a bed of boxes full of "frozen" hamburgers that were to be fried and sold on the main square (remember to never eat hamburgers in Trondheim). Once I got a ride from Örkeljunga in Southern Sweden to Västerås in Central Sweden on the tray of a small truck that was totally empty, which meant that I rolled around whenever they turned, all night long. I was soaked when I got in there, and somehow the humidity and rollercoasting made my muscles so stiff that I could hardly walk when they let me out in the morning. Anyway, my point is that I don't mind uncomfortable rides - it's part of the adventure. But the back of this car was full of trash - it looked like I'd be scratched by nails and pieces of glass and that's not my cup of tea so I had to say no but thank you very much for your kindness.

Car # 133 was a better ride; a small truck that took me to the main country road to Szeged. Needless to say I fell asleep. At a sunny 14:13 I stood on a bus stop and thumbed and after 8 minutes car # 25 stopped and contained what looked like two sober alcoholics, a man and a woman. Despite their rough appearance they were both unusually good at English and they told about their kids who were working all over the world. One daughter in New York and one son in Ireland and a third kid somewhere else if I remember it correctly. They let me off in a city where I thumbed while walking along the road. After 18 sunny minutes and 64 cars I came to what looked like a small restaurant and I was hungry and got in. They had no food but only coffee and beer so I had one of each. At 15:10 I continued walking and thumbing and after 18 minutes and 67 cars I got a ride with a young man. He took me to the highway onramp where I stood for 19 minutes and 27 cars after which I got a ride with another man who drove me to a highway junction with a service area with one truck on it. The truck was going nowhere so I stood at the sunny highway-to-highway road for 17 minutes. The 8th car stopped and contained three middle-aged men. The driver spoke English and was appearently the boss of the other two. When we arrived in Szeged I saw that there were fake plastic policemen along the road that were ridiculously unrealistic compared to those produced in Atol Production. I told myself to remember telling Radim that Atol should offer its services to the Szeged municipality. We stopped at the parking place of some company and the boss told one of his subordinates to take me to the other side of town.

The subordinate had a very old car that broke down the whole way. It was very exciting, we'd sit in the queue waiting for the traffic light to change to green and when it did he tried to start his car but failed while the cars behind us honked their horns and overtook us with irritated faces and when the engine finally started the traffic light changed to red again and he had to turn the engine off. It took us the whole day to get to the other side of Szeged, but at least it was faster than if I'd walked. I thought I was practically in Romania now, but no no, I still had to look forward to the slowest and most frustrating hitchhiking in my life.

It was 17:41 and the extremely potent sun was shining right into my eyes, blurring the sight of the millions of cars that crowded the dusty road in front of me and that I thought were all going to Romania. After 14 minutes and 60 cars a little mom'n'dad'n'kid family pulled over and picked me up. They got out a map and some English vocabulary and tried to make out where to let me off and then they let me off there. It was a junction, with the right road leading to Romania. The road was really crowded and narrow and I started walking backwards as I thumbed, hoping to find a parking spot or anything where cars could stop.

Dozens of cars passed me at a worrying speed. After a while a guy pulled over at the other side of the street. I got suspicious of course, why pick up a hitchhiker when you're not going in his direction? But I got over to his side to hear what he had to say. He opened the window and put a golden ring in my hand and said "present for your mother". For a second I thought "why is this stranger giving me a golden ring?" but then I realized that him and his equally toothless wife were selling stuff to foreign-looking people so I gave it back. Then they offered to drive me to the border for some cash, but since I had hitchhiked from Sweden to Portugal to here without paying a cent I declined their generous offer.

I would never come to a parking spot or any other kind of decent hitchhiking spot. Walking along this obnoxiously fast, impossibly narrow and annoyingly crowded country road waving my thumb and fearing that dark would fall before I reached the border was boring, frustrating and embarrassing. And it got scary as well, a car slowed down and honked it horns aggressively and the people inside gave me the fingers, their faces expressing as much hatred as faces can do. I nearly shit my pants and as I continued walking along the road waving my thumb (what else could I do) I looked around me to see if anyone had stopped and I fantasized about them beating the shit out of me just for the fun of it. Then, far far away, I saw another hitchhiker. He was thumbing on the other side of the street, so he must have been hitchhiking in the other direction. I was delighted to find a like-minded soul in this desert where all human sympathy was hidden in 100 km/hour. I was so looking forward to a conversation, and wondered if he could speak English - perhaps he could give some information about Romania. I walked, thumbed, glanced over my shoulder, walked thumbed, glanced over my shoulder and the closer I got to the hitchhiker, the weirder he looked like. Eventually I saw that what was moving wasn't the body, it was a little tree just in front of it. And when I got closer I saw that the body wasn't a body; it was a big Hungarian roadside crucifix.

After 38 minutes that felt like 38 hours, and 173 cars that felt like 173 thousand, I saw a small parking spot far away. A truck was parked on it and I walked as fast as I could without running, trying to keep the truck waiting with my mental powers. It didn't work very well, when I was still more than 100 meters away it left. Nevertheless, finding the parking spot was like finding an oasis in the desert. And the very first car took advantage of the large safe area to stop on. As they slowed down I saw it was full of people and furniture and was puzzled that they'd bother squeezing in a hitchhiker. But they did agree to take me to the border, but rubbed their fingers against their thumbs and screamed "money!" "money!" with their tiny moustaches.

After 7 minutes and 40 cars a decent guy stopped and picked me up and I thought that I was finally getting to the Romanian border. But he let me off at yet another little town. This distance between Szeged and the border felt like a mathematical riddle: "After doing half the distance you have half the distance left. After doing half of that distance you have the half of the half left. And then you have the half of the half of the half and you will never get to point B, the distance will just keep getting infinitly small". After thumbing at 20 cars for 10 minutes I found a parked truck that agreed to take me to the border. In fact, he said that he could even take me to Bulgaria. Eat that, stupid mathematical riddle! I had decided to go straight to Bucharest so I declined, but it did warm my heart. It was like I was in the world again.

I walked across the border and now I can add the statistics from Hungary to my lists:

Ratio Ride-offers/Cars-waved-at

1. Switzerland 10 / 270 = 3,7%

2. Spain 28 / 1188 = 2,4%
3. Hungary 14 / 716 = 2,0%
4. France 15 / 1222 = 1,2%

5. Portugal 3 / 1516 = 0,2%

Ratio Minutes-waited/Ride-offers

1. Switzerland 45 min / 10 offers = 5 min/offer

2. Spain 413 min / 28 offers = 15 min/offer
3. France 237 min / 15 offers = 16 min/offer
4. Hungary 239 min / 14 offers = 17 min/offer

5. Portugal 192 min / 3 offers = 64 min/offer

Proportion of trucks

Switzerland 0/10 = 0%
Hungary 2/14 = 14%
France 4/15 = 27%

Spain 8/28 = 29%

Portugal 2/3 = 67%

Gender

Switzerland Male: 8 /10 = 80% Mixed: 1/10 = 10% Female: 1/10 = 10 %
France Male: 13 /15 = 87% Mixed: 1/15 = 7 % Female: 1/15 = 7%

Spain Male: 21 /28 = 75% Mixed: 6/28 = 21% Female: 1/28 = 4%
Hungary Male 11 /14 = 79% Mixed 3/14 = 21%

Portugal Male: 3 /3 = 100%

It was well over 8 pm when I entered Romania. As I walked towards the gasstation on the other side a white car drove up to me and asked if I wanted to go to Arad (nearest city). "How much?" I asked just out of curiousity. "50 €" he said. It amused me. That's about what I've paid in total for ships, trains, buses and subways during my 1 1/2 month through 9 countries. "Fara bani" I said (without money), "I am hitchhiking". He told me it wasn't possible to hitchhike in Romania and came with other offers, all including money and therefore out of the question.

When I was almost at the gasstation I was approached by a man who tried to sell me a chessboard or a drum. I was definitly not in want of a chessboard right now, not to mention a drum. But he wouldn't give up, he thought that a gasstation by the border at 8 pm was the perfect spot and time for playing chess. Perhaps the drum was for disturbing the other player's thinking when it's his move. After I had convinced him about my total non-interest I stood hanging by the pump, waiting for a car to stop. After 30 seconds a car came and I walked up to it to ask for a ride towards Bucharest. But before me came another man trying to sell them chessboards. Then another one trying with drums. "Hey mister, get this drum, nice drum, listen to it drum drum drum". I could hardly believe my eyes, but there were ten people hanging by the gas pumps with chessboards and drums in their hands. From an economic-scientific point of view it was so odd. I wanted to take a picture of the whole scenario and put in an economics textbook as an example of something.

From a hitchhiking perspective it was a disaster. The drivers were approached by all kinds of entrepreneurs and were in a very defensive mood when it was my time to harass them. "Hey mister, buy a chessboard." "No, thank you" "Hey mister buy a chessboard" "No, I still don't want it" "Hey mister, buy a drum" "No, thanks." "Goood drum goood drum" "NO!!" "Wanna change money?" "No" "I give you good exchange rate" "No" "Sex, mister?" "No" "I make you feel like a man" "No no just let me be" "Hi, can I go with you to Bucharest?" "No no no!"

I was one of the trash. So I gave up on asking people by the pumps and went to where trucks entered the country and stood there hitchhiking for 20 minutes and 10 trucks. Then I went up to where the small cars entered the country and stood in the light of the passport control with my neat "Bucharest" sign. After 25 minutes and 13 cars a policeman walked up to me, had a look at my passport and told me to not hitchhike there. Further away from the passport control it was too dark so I went back to the litten-up truck entrance and tried it for another 15 minutes and 17 trucks. Then I went to where the truck- and small car-lanes merged, which was lit-up by a streetlight and the light from the (legitimate) exchange booths. There I stood for 57 minutes and 104 cars. I got two ride offers, both with truckers to Bulgaria (plus the Bulgarian guy I went with before who came by and repeated his offer).

But I insisted on waiting by the border till I had a ride straight to Bucharest. I had read on hitchhiking webpages and talked to hitchhikers and I had heard the following: 1) Hitchhiking is very common in Romania. However, it is custom to pay your driver in relation to the distance you cover. 2) Dogs follow you in growing numbers, waiting for you to drop dead.

At least the first one is true, and it seemed weird to - as a relatively rich person - hitchhike without paying people in a country where this is comme-il-faut. But paying people would feel even weirder; hitchhiking across Europe is hitchhiking across Europe is hitchhiking across Europe. Like I tell everyone who interpret my raised thumb as me having money aimed for their wallets: If I had money I would take the bus. So to avoid a situation where I would stand in a village in the middle of the country, stranded by own non-paying principle, I decided to wait by the border until I had a car all the way to the capital. After all, borders are supposed to the best places.

But not this one. At 22:27 I stopped counting the minutes and cars. Let's just say that I had a miserable time. Sometimes I stood by the truck entrance, sometimes by the exchange booths, sometimes by the gasstation and sometimes I walked up and down the street to ask parked trucks. All the time I was harassed by the mass of entrepreneurs who crowded this desolate oasis of asphalt like were they mosquitous on midnight sunshine hunt in a Lapland swamp. They all got familiar with me since I was quite an odd man in this environment and they came up to me every 5 minutes to sell me stuff such as chessboards, sex, drums, cell phones, chessboards, currency, drums and - most of all - rides to Arad.

If someone would have given me 1 cent for each time I heard "Arad" then I would have flown to Bucharest in a Concorde. "No one will pick you up. It's impossible to hitchhike here. C'mon, go to Arad with us. 5 Euro". "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad" "Arad"

I will never go to Arad for as long as I live.

I tried to be nice to them because deep under all the cynical and ironic smiles they gave me I felt some kind of ... annoyance.

"I don't want to go to Arad. I will stay here by the border until I find a ride to Bucharest. For free. Fara bani."

"hahaha you will never get one"

23:00

"you will never get one"

23:15

"arad" "arad" "arad"

23:30

"Hey, you should go to the big parking place. It's 1 kilometer in that direction."

23:45

"I have heard you are interested in a ride"

0:00

"All the trucks are sleeping one kilometer in that direction"

0:15

"Please give some money"

0:30

"I want a drink"

0:45

"you will never get a ride hahahaha"

1:00

"Why don't you go to the big parking place?"

1:15

I thought the trash - if you excuse the label that my tired and sad brain put on these people who were just trying to survive this deprivation of all dignity that is poverty - would never leave. But when they finally did I decided to check out the big parking place they had been talking about. But after walking 100 meters into the dark I heard the many dogs howling. "Aoooooo" "Aooooooooo". Didn't want to walk in the dark with the dogs. Didn't want to walk in the dark with the border mosquitous.

I altered between hitchhiking by the truck entrance and the gasstation. There were so few cars that it was hardly worth it. And most of all - it was incredibly cold and I was freezing my ass off and I didn't want to snuggle down in my sleeping bag anywhere, I just didn't feel safe enough. At 2:15 I got into the gasstation and bought a sandwhich; the first thing I ate in a very long time. There was a table with chairs inside and I decided to sit there and eat a bite every hour so that the sandwhich would be there as a reason for me to use the warmth and safety until the sun rose. To entertain myself during the night I bought a map of Europe for 4 Euro and decided to study it till I knew every city and every road in the Union. The map was boring. I ate my sandwich in 5 minutes. I fell asleep.

Bullied in Budapest

Woke up, brushed my teeth and went back to the hitchhiking spot from yesterday. It was 6:05 and the sun was up. The first car stopped, but he was going to somewhere very close so I found it better to stay. After 121 minute and 45 cars I regretted it.

I took a walk around the area to see if any trucks were eating breakfast and waiting for hitchhikers somewhere, but there were none. Then I went back to the same spot as before and stood for another 15 minutes and 9 cars. I sent a text message to Scott in Budapest that I wouldn't make it there till 11. I had now spent 2 hours and 21 minutes at the same hitchhiking spot. It wasn't a bad spot, so it felt like something was wrong here. I walked back to the service area again and asked a small-truck driver if he was going to Slovakia. He was, but only to the border since trucks are forbidden on Sundays in that country. I joined him to the border.

There I showed my "Budapest" sign and after 1 minut the second car stopped. It was an orthodox priest in black clothes and a big, grey beard. I was excited, so far I had only had Swedish protestant priests. On the dashboard he had a bible. It looked funny since the mirror image of the bible's cross in the windshield was upside down. After a mere minute's driving into Slovakia a young man with shaved head looked like he was dancing next to the highway. My orthodox priest friend stopped and picked him up. I silently disagreed; this man wasn't hitchhiking like a sane person. He should have stood after the border with his thumb up like me, not staying next to the highway 2 kilometers into the country dancing some kind of rain-dance. He sat in the backseat and I got worried for my luggage that I'd thrown there. You can never be sure with them hitchhikers.

It turned out that he had been on vacation with his girlfriend and that they had had an argument after drinking all night that resulted in him walking home by himself. My friendly priest drove him to some village somewhere and then he continued towards the Southern border of Slovakia. He laughed when I asked if he was a priest; he was in fact a physicist and a horseriding instructor. He let me off at the bank of the legendary Danube river and I crossed the bridge to the other side, which was Hungary. A girl on Couchsurfing.com had told me that she had been fined when hitchhiking in a Hungarian village. That's awful; village-hitchhiking is perfectly safe and is only fined by dictatorships and other kinds of oppressive regimes. I decided to take the risk and hitchhike right after the border, in front of all the policemen, thinking that they must understand that I didn't know it was forbidden to hitchhike in Hungary and therefore would inform me before fining me.

But the police didn't mind at all. After 1 minute car # 5 stopped. It was two Romanian women and one man. In the front seat there was a young couple, and in the backseat the boyfriend's little sister. The girlfriend was smoking and very talkative. She was going to start school in Romania and that's why they went there, otherwise they all used to live in Bratislava. She gave me soda and asked if I liked her boyfriend's little sister and wanted to marry her and I ensured her that she was very appealing but that a very special person was already waiting for me at the end of this trip.

They let me off outside Budapest where the highway to Romania takes off. At 13:55 I stood at the sunny onramp for 23 minutes and 8 cars. I walked further South till I found the next onramp and stood there for 14 minutes and 14 cars. The guy who stopped was from Cameroon and was going to central Budapest where he had been living for many years. He was happy to speak English since Hungarian made him exhausted. He liked life here a lot. He was importing electronics from Germany; business was so-so but social life was great. I asked if he had a Hungarian girlfriend and he said "yes" and then was quick to add "but that's not why I came here, I am a political refugee!". In university he got into politics and joined the opposition to the ruling regime. He had to flee to Nigeria and stayed there for 10 years but didn't like life too much so he thought it might be better in Hungary and it was. I tried to ask about the politics of Cameroon but his accent was way over my head. The only thing I could understand was that he thought the rich world was living large from the fruits of Africa's resources and labor and he said that "I decided to also enjoy the labor of Africa by coming here, and it's really nice".

He brought me all the way to the right metro stop. It took some time to localize the premises where Hungary's national boardgame gathering was taking place, but eventually I found it and got in and said hello. It was already 5 pm and the event had been on since 10 am, but they were still about 20 people there, everyone engaged in various boardgames. I introduced myself and was given coffee and cookies and a table where I could set up my game. After a while 5 people came and joined me. As always, I let everyone choose starting prefecture before me. When they had done so, they were all so evenly spread out across Honshu (and of Kyushu) that I didn't want to squeeze in anywhere, since I would give my neighbour a hard time. So I did the fatal mistake of starting at Shikoku. I even said "this is so stupid but I really feel like it will be interesting", with the excuse that "I haven't done it for two years". Well, since rules have changed since 2005, it makes some sense to see "what happens" when playing Shikoku. But perhaps the first game ever of Seigo to be played in Hungary wasn't the best occassion for this experiment.

It's not just that playing Shikoku is bad for my chances to win. Since it's a small island, all I can do after turn 15 is to draw Kanji cards. And when someone is sitting drawing Kanji cards every turn, the table gets full of them. In a game with experienced players this is not a probem; the Kanji cards don't stay long on the table since someone Invents them sooner than later. The obvious benefit this gives the other players prevent a reasonably sane person from continuing flooding with Kanji cards. However, when you are on Shikoku, there is no other option. And when you are playing with new players (with no experience of Japanese) there is no one to take advantage of the abundance of Kanji cards and they are just piling up on the table, making the game even harder to grasp for a new player.

Besides from the Kanji flood, my absence from the game had another serious disadvantage: there was no one on Honshu to show how to play the game. Therefore the players were lost as what to do and played with empty eyes. I could give them suggestions, at least to those who could speak English, but telling is not as good as showing; there is nothing like "teaching-by-winning".

After 1 1/2 hour of slow play they suggested we stop and count the score. The Hungarian players later gave very bad reviews on the internet. They found it "impossible to familiarize" with the Hiragana. One guy even suggested to replace the Japanese characters with fruits. Wow, changing the Japanese characters for fruits - that's quite a blow to the very foundations of my life philosophy.

Then we played StreetSmart. They found "some potential" in it. They thought it too difficult to move in unaddressed areas, and too easy to move in addressed areas. It seems like that criticism has found its way through the Berlin Wall that is my childlish pride; in the present version of StreetSmart, moving without addresses is easier than before, and with addresses it's not as easy as it used to be. We played the most complex version of the game, and Scott - who got everything a bit faster than the rest - claimed a pretty quick victory after upgrading his title deed-protected stores with electricity. I felt the game ended to abruptly, and to make the Consumer less of a super-character once Addresses and Electricity are in place, I have changed the rules so that the Consumer refuses to consume on Shops covered with garbage. Ironically this causes the Consumer to pollute even more, which makes for better Cholera epidemics. Moahaha

I got a ride with two of my boardgamemates all the way to Balazs' place. They dropped me off at a beautiful square and I looked around for a while till I found a big gate with the right number. I pressed the "Benedek" button and a voice said "hello" and I said "hi it's harald" and the door opened by itself like magic. I got inside the very old elevator and shook a few storeys up and when I came out a lady looked at my backpack and said something like "oh, a visitor to Balazs" and showed me the way. I came out on a balcony overlooking an inneryard and on the other side of it huge doors opened up and between them stood a smiling Hungarian programmer with glasses saying "hi, come in".

This was my first Couchsurfing experience. As I entered the luxurious apartment I thought to myself "what's the drawback? Will he start touching me?". But he didn't. He was just a very nice person. We sat down in the kitchen and I told about today's hitchhiking and today's gaming session. We had a look at my game and he asked for the price. He used to arrange programming contests. He had already eaten but asked if I was hungry and I had to admit I was starving and he apologized for not having anything at home but recommended me to go to the gyros shop next door. I asked if there was a cash machine in the neighborhood since I had no currency yet and he said "but I can pay you half in Forint and half in Euro if you want". Pay me? Wait a second, why is he paying me money for staying in his home? Aha, he is buying a game. I don't think he knew it, but it was the first game ever to be bought from this printed edition.

I got the cash and got out and got a gyros. It tasted excellent. It wasn't just the juicy taste of just-a-little-bit-crunchy Greek-style pork, it was also the juciy taste of profit. After coming back it was bedtime. He showed me my room; it had high ceilings, white walls and a huge bed. "There's your 'sofa' he said". I was his 9th Couchsurfer. I wondered if he changed sheets between each one.

36 hours of dust, sunshine and roadside grass had passed since i tried to wash myself in that shower-like thing in the Praha hostel. I got down in the bath tube, felt the hot water massage my worn muscles, laid down and looked up at the family's clothes drying two meters above me, and got clean. Clean again!

Bitter in Brno

Woke up and had a big breakfast buffé. We went to the central station and said goodbye. I got on the train to Chodov metro station and tried to follow the directions from Hitchbase.com. The directions made no sense at all; it said "walk 10 min to the highway" but the highway was only 5 seconds walk away. I started walking South next to the highway, but the sun was shining heavily and my backpack enriched with 10 kilos of strategy games on top was just unbearable. So I walked back to the metro station; there was a small onramp from there. It seemed highly unsuitable but I gave it 7 minutes and 10 cars.

From studying the map I saw that there was a an onramp/gasstation that looked excellent a little bit to the north. I started walking along the highway but didn't see a gasstation till I was on the Praha highway ring, which was too far up north. There were a few cars parke there, but I was too shy to ask any of them, except for a Volvo that made me feel safe. He was very nice, but not going South.

I figured that this gasstation was serving cars to all thinkable directions and I found it better to hitchhike on the onramp in the Southern direction. The onramp was a bridge - not an ideal situation - and I gave it 33 minutes and 74 cars. One of them stopped, it was a couple that were going somewhere else but South. I went to an onramp upstreams and stayed there for 7 minutes and 14 cars, but I found the onramp too fast.

I figured that I must have missed that perfect gasstation/inramp I had seen on the map, so I walked back South again. This time I literally kept the highway within a meter's distance from me, thinking that the sneaky gasstation must have hidden in some bushes that I had walked around. And there it was. It was pretty empty, so I thumbed on the sliproad next to it. It was too busy for hitchhiking, but yet a car with two women and a dog stopped to tell me they were not going in the Brno direction. After 10 minutes and 138 cars I stood thumbing at the less busy gasstation. After 60 minutes 53 cars had passed by without stopping. The only conversation I got was with a truck driver who had his day off and was wandering around with a beer in his hand.

Except for the fact that I was not getting anywhere, I felt good. The sun was shining and I was reading my exciting Svinalängorna book. After an hour I tried the busy sliproad again; this time for 30 minutes and 356 cars. Another hitchhiker came and scouted the area and then left. He didn't talk to me and that was very rude. Among the hundreds of cars there were many Hungarian trucks. I figured that they must be coming from somewhere and I decided to find the source of these Hungarian trucks. Like an explorer in the Amazonas I voyaged upstreams the river. At every junction I waited for a few minutes to see from where most of the the Hungarian trucks came. This was a very stupid idea and I knew it, I just couldn't resist the beauty of it. After an outrageous waste of time I realized that most Hungarian trucks came from an inner-city highway, and that I was walking up this highway and would sooner or later end up in central Praha. I flipped a coin to randomize myself out of the madness but when it didn't work I just slapped my face and told myself to forget all kinds of monkey business and smart ideas and just old-school crazy-walk towards the South till there was a decent place.

I walked for an hour. The highway was lined with construction works but the workers didn't mind me. Sometimes when I had to climb fences and jump down from places I felt that the ends of the two aliminium bars at the top of my backpack frame were penetrating my box of games every time I bent forward and the box hit my head so I stopped when I found a pile of old newspapers and wrapped them into tubes that I squeezed in between my backpack frame and the game box to protect it.

Eventually I found a perfect onramp. It was so perfect it already had two hitchhikers on it. I talked to them and suggested that I wait in the grass till they were gone, but they said "no no, thumb here". After 1 minute and 2 cars one of them had got a ride to Brno and we were all invited. Two of us got in while the third person kept cool and waited for someone straight to Bratislava.

The driver was wearing only boxers and a big beard. He was suntanned and looked like a motorcycle gangster and treated us with chewing gum. It was hot in there and we shared the water I had bought in the gasstation where I spent a 100 damn minutes.

They woke me up in Brno and he said: "here is the road to Bratislava". I walked up the offramp, crossed some tram lines, and found the onramp. I considered getting on the tram to some kind of tram hub where I mighth find any of the trams mentioned on Hitchbase.com. But it felt like I could get lost, and since sunset was approaching I stayed on this onramp.

It was 18:48 and sunny. At 19:10 101 cars had passed by and I started crazy-walking along the highway. It turned out to be a good idea; I soon came to a crossroad where the cars for Slovakia took off from the rest. There was an IKEA here, which made me delighted. Not just because civilization had come to Czechia, but also since this was one of the hitchhiking spots mentioned on Hitchbase. From here there was one direction "Brno" and one "Bratislava"; straightforward enough. IKEA-customers are perhaps not the best hitchpickers, but there was also a large gasstation here that seemed to serve long-distance drivers pulling in from the highway.

I stood at the narrow onramp after the roundabout at 19:43; the sun was going down. At 20:48, 215 cars had not stopped and I gave up and took a walk around the area. There were many trucks sleeping here, and in a bar next to the gasstation one of them was sitting with a beer. I thought that he was perhaps my ride to Slovakia/Hungary and got in and sat working one of my language game ideas for a while. After one glass we started talking. He was not my ride from here, he had some kind of bureaucratic problems and would have to wait here for days to get new papers from his company. He was from Antalya in Turkey and taught me a lot of inappropriate vocabulary. We tried hard to communicate for an hour or so, and then I found it best to just have some sleep so I bought some food in the gasstation and looked around for a forest and found nothing better than a bunch of trees next to a river so I got in there, snuggled down in my sleeping bag and fell asleep. Goodnight!

Pardubice - Praha

Roman was the first to come to work. He looked at me for a second and said: "You haven't slept all night. Bloody eyes ..."

At 10 am I was done with the game. Then I realized I hadn't even started on the game box. I asked Roman what he thought it might cost if they did the box design for me - after all they are the professionals here. But Roman was already sleeping behind his desk; to save money he had taken the bicycle to work instead of the car and the bike ride had knocked him off completely. I went down behind my desk and fell asleep as well.

At 12 they woke me up to tell me my telephone was ringing. It was my mother and sister on their way out to Semtin. I met them at the bus station and we took a tour of the printing company and had a look at my work. Roman and Milos took us out for lunch at our regular place, which has served us excellent Czech food every day. On the way back we took a tour of the dominions, including a stop at the lake. I took out the flat stones from Dali's beach in Cap Creus and we had a throwing competition. My stone jumped 4 times in the water. Roman, who usually kick ass on this game, had chosen a very flat stone that flew like was it a napkin and didn't jump a single time. Dali is, as you can see, on my side.

After lunch I treated my family with some Czech coffee and they absolutely loved it, and then Radim took us to the printing company to pick up the first 10 copies of Seigo. I felt mighty proud holding the pile of babies in my arms. My sister got inspired and inquired Radim about what it would cost to print X number of t-shirts, with Y kind of print of quality Z. It's wonderful how cheap it is to do your own thing these days.

My family stayed in Pardubice to harass the cloth stores and I went back to Atol to count the markers, to make sure that each copy had the correct 276 unique markers. It was an extremely tedious job, but I didn't want to sell something incomplete. Everything was in order. Radim's brother came and said that he was going back to Pardubice and that I could go with him and I ran around the company to find a cardboard box in which to carry my games. Radim's brother turned a box of straps upside down and shook everything out and my 10 games fit perfectly.

In the car to Pardubice I said "this is a very hospitable company". He replied: "you are interesting to us".

I met my sis and mom at the train station and they had bought three kinds of chocolate and we got on the train to Praha where we has a short evening walk and some family time.

Tomorrow I will hitchhike to Turkey.

An e-mail day

I am sorry, but this day ain't to fun to read about.

I sent e-mails to half the world to find places to sleep and people to play with. And then I worked on StreetSmart. When the gameboard was done I printed myself a prototype to bring with me on my trip. Don't tell them I did. Then I worked all night on the rule book - didn't sleep a second.

But stay tuned, adventures are sailing up!

The box factory

Today we went to the box factory. It was a long car ride there. They made boxes for everything; chocolate, pens, perfumes you name it. And they made boxes for my game. They also made the markers for my game and they had some problems with getting them circular since they needed to order a special cutting board. They had one for bigger circles, which they used for a Spiderman game they were producing. It was really really cool to be in the factory and look at all the big machines and the workers and the products.

Back in Atol I had got mail; it was my new Visa card (I had been without money for a while) and forms that I could fill out and send to Försäkringskassan to keep getting my entreprenur's salary.

Then I sat and worked on my next game, StreetSmart. I had felt it was a waste of opportunity to go around all Europe with only one game an therto a game that is so specialized, so I wanted to quickly produce the next game to get value for the money.

Praha - Pardubice

Ladies and Gentleman, guess what happened today. Hold tight to something solid in your proximity such as a table or a lamp post while I reveal the shocking news about what happened on this day, this Tuesday the 10th of April.

Are you ready?

Ok, here it comes:

I took the train.

Oh yes, you heard right. I (harald) bought a train ticket (with my own money) to go to Pardubice, a city connected by hitchhikable highway and country road to Praha (a distance I had covered before).

Was my feet bleeding again? Did I lose my appetite? Did my ass double in size from last night? Was there a warning on the radio saying that "don't pick up hitchhikers today, 20 mental patients with chainsaws escaped this morning"?. Was it raining acid cats and dogs?

No, today I had an appointment with Radim, to fix the last details in the production of my game, and to determine it's price. I didn't want to let him down. I didn't want to once again leave Czechia without at least 10 copies of the world's first linguistic strategy game in my hand. I didn't want to live another day in the life of a person that hasn't published a boardgame. I know it's not a problem for most of you to live such a life, but for me it isn't an option.

(I hope you understand that I am not talking about suicide here, I am just being melodramatic.)

Last time I hitchhiked from Praha to Pardubice it took me 6 stupid hours. That's an average speed of 15 km/h. Hitchhiking towards a meeting with my creator (that is, the creator of my boardgame) at a speed of 15 km/h would stress me out to the point that my stomach would fly out my throat and wrap my head till I suffocated. So I got the 6 € out of my tight ass and got that embarrassing piece of paper with my destination written on it and put it in my file to deduct it from my taxes.

I sat down in the train car and wasn't expected to small-talk to anyone in there so I just tried to relax and read Susanna Alakoski's Svinalängorna that my mother had given me.

Although I took train and bus I arrived in time to meet Radim. He didn't have that much to say yet - still kept in uncertaincy by his own suppliers, he didn't know what numbers to give me. But he said that we would go to the factory and have a look at the production and he promised to have at least 10 copies ready on Friday.

Then I wrote e-mails the whole day.

Pardubice - Praha

I am a chicken. I don't like taking cold showers. So today is the day when I turn into an animal (it happens on the third day without washing).

I got an e-mail from a seasoned Romanian hitchhiker. She had done Praha - Istanbul, alone. She had hitchhiked to China. I am a whimp in comparison. But I am not ashamed of it! I am proud of my cowardness. In fact, I wish had been more of a coward in the past. From now on, I'll be as cowardish as it takes to achieve courageous deeds without risking the life or legs of my girlfriend's boyfriend.

I went to the bus station in Semtin and raised my thumb; it was sunny and 9:30. After 24 minutes and 68 cars a man picked me up and took me to the beginning of the Praha highway. There I stood on the onramp for 14 sunny minutes and 28 cars till I was picked up by a Polish guy who was just passing through Czechia on his way to his work in Frankfurt. He seemed like such a friendly person that I thought he would let me off at IKEA in Cerny Most which would be very convenient, but he was clinging to every minute of his time and let me off at the highway ring, giving me a long nice walk through the Commie-style suburb.

I got an sms from my mother saying "we are on the train to Pardubice" and I wrote her back: "get off the train, I am in Praha". Obviously she didn't read my last e-mail, although I sent it half an hour before the scheduled time.

The signs at the subway junction confused me and I got on the wrong line and it took me some time to get to the central station. There I looked all over the place but my family was nowhere. They called me now and then saying "now we're by a foodstand" but they weren't. Then I figured they must be at another train station so I suggested that we meet by the huge statue in front of the parliament building and finally they made it there. My mom had checked his e-mail at 2 pm as I told her but there had been nothing further from me. Then I realized that the printing company hadn't changed to summer time.

I had booked beds for us in a dormitory at AZ hostel, but my sister made a face when I told her. She had been partying with her friends in Berlin on her way down and they had been living in a dormitory and she was sick of it. "We thought we had the room for ourself, and then one night when we came home there was this pair of big shoes standing on the floor and this Retno guy sleeping there." Retno hadn't given them any trouble, in fact it was them who bullied him, by coming home late and loud at night and by accidentaly locking him up in the room with the only key. "I am zorry to tell you but I could not get out of the room yezterday" Retno said.

And my sister was terrified at the thought to become his roommate again so we tried another hostel where we got a family room for no money at all. The name of the street was Senovazne Namesti; it was very close to the central station. The view from the room was just beautiful, overlooking a square with picturesque trams that made cosy sounds.

Then we had an enormous lunch and then we went back to our nice room to sleep and then we went out on a long walk to find that pub I came to when I was 18 and then we gave up and had fried cheese in a nice restaurant and then we walked around and then went home to sleep.

It was a day of conversations, you know, quality time.

Planning in Pardubice

I woke up behind my desk at Atol Production and made myself some Chinese tea and Czech coffee and ate from the very big bread and the salam that I bought yesterday morning.

I tried to arrange something nice for my sister and mother's visit to Czechia. I had suggested that they should get on a train straight to Pardubice, but I also asked my mom to check her e-mail at 2 pm to get the last instructions. At 1:30 pm I wrote her that they should stay in Praha and that I would come to meet them there; there are no hotels near the printing company anyway, and the space behind this desk is not big enough for the whole family and there is no hot water here.

Then I spammed all Hungary to arrange SEIGO sessions. I wrote Romanian friends for hitchhiking advice. I wrote my friend Haga (who - until I did this trip - was my only friend to hitchhike more than me) to ask how he made it from Greece to Italy. I wrote to Essen Spiel to tell them that I wanted to book a mini-booth for the boardgame fair in October. It was a day for planning. But I won't bore you by telling about my plans. Instead I will write about how the plans turned out, starting from the next page.

At night Radim (the manager) called.

"Hi Harald! Are you in Atol?"

"Yes"

"Will you sleep in Atol tonight?"

"Yes ... if it's okay ..."

"Of course it's ok! Sleep as much as you want! Eat all the food! Drink all the beer! Smoke all the marijuana!"

I don't smoke marijuana, but I obeyed all the other orders. One has to behave when conducting business in Bohemia.

Hradec Kralove - Pardubice Sat Apr 7

"Wake up, it's 6 am, we're closing now!" some big shaved man said and I took my stuff and got out.

I followed the street signs towards Pardubice and thumbed the whole way, except for when I went into a gas station to buy some Mr Brown coffee, cookies and water. The sun was up and I forgot to write down the time and number of cars, but a guesstimation is that I walked an hour along the road and waved at 100 cars before a man stopped and took me to Pardubice.

He woke me up at the train station and I went into a shop to load up on water, bread and sausage and then I took the bus to Semtin. There was no one in the printing company of course, since it was the morning of Easter Eve, and Saturday as well. It was too cold to sleep and I didn't think of getting my sleeping bag out so I sent sms:es and called Roman and Radim every hour. At 11:30, when the sun had just come to warm me some sleep, Roman showed up, unlocked the house and let me rush into the toilet.

We sat working next to each other. I wrote my blog and wrote people in universities and on gameboardgeek.com. I wrote to my BA thesis supervisor to ask if he would like to be MA thesis supervisor as well (he never replied). I had a long chat with my good old friend from Japan Johann, or as we called him during the Waseda year: the Businessman. He had a crazy proposal. If I could send him all the images from my game and give a piece of information for each image, then he would arrange so that if someone took a pic of a character in my game and sent it with his mobile, then he would get a reply with info connected to the picture, at no cost. I don't know how many are running around with camera cell phones in Europe, but if someone does, then this feature could actually be really helpful. Let's say you're looking for where to produce " A". Instead of using my extremely user-friendly Reference Sheet (which some players find intimidating since it's full of Japanese characters), just take out your mobile, "snap", "mail" and in a second you have the answer in beautiful, easy to grasp images: "A can be produced in Aomori, Akita and Aichi."

However, to create the 500 images needed to make the system work, I'd need days in front of a good computer. I didn't have that time. So I sent some huges files to the Businessman with instructions just in case he'd be free one evening and wanted to help me making it possible for him to do me a huge favor. But the Businessman isn't the type of guy that has evenings free. So this little project will have to wait till that day when I have no boardgames to produce, no blog to write, no highways to hitchhike and no game sessions to organize.

Later at night Milos and the rest of the gang showed up for some Saturday night beer and I told them my stories.

Bern - Hradec Kralove Fri Apr 6

Woke up, had a shower, wrote "goodbye" on a flyer, stole some breakfast and walked to the highway. It was 10:02 and sunny. After 7 minutes car # 27 stopped. It was a man who took me to a big gas station further down the road. There I stood at 10:13 thumbing at the exit. In front of me there were two families sitting and I got a feeling that they would eventually walk up to me and ask where I was going. After 2 minutes and 11 cars they did, and offered me a ride to St:Gallen in the North-Eastern corner of the country. I got in with one of the families - father, mother and baby - and off we went.

The father was working for the UN with making maps. When a disaster occurs somewhere on the planet, maps need to be made quickly in order to allow help to get there and that's what he's doing when not taking his family on beautiful trips picking up hitchhikers. The mother was a chemist and we talked about genetically modified plants. They told me that they had had a referendum and that the people had voted in favor of forbidding plantation of GM seeds on Swiss soil. Personally I don't know where to stand on this issue, but I had to agree with my hitchhiking host when she said that "GM technology is associated with some risks that might be worth taking in order to save a country from starvation ... but Switzerland isn't really starving, so why take the risks". Sweden isn't starving either, so I'd vote no to GM on Swedish soil if I got the chance. But I never will. Still German citizens despite years of Swiss residence, they hadn't got to vote either.

They used to hitchhike a lot before they got their own car and baby. In Italy they had been encountered by the police on a service area. "What do you do here?" "Eeeh ... we are waiting for some friends to pick us up." "Yeah right, and how did you get here?" "Eeeh ... we were taken here by some other friends." The police couldn't prove that they had been - and intended to - hitchhiking so they just gave them a stern warning and left. I was shocked. I can understand the police who fined my friend Haga when he hitchhiked on the Autobahn in Austria. I can understand that the police in Germany get all grumpy when they find you walking there. It's a non-pedestrian zone where hitchhikers might disturb the traffic. But hitchhiking on a service area is the safest thing in the world. The cars are standing still and the drivers may if they want have a look at your passport and you can have a look at their driving license and hitchhiking can be just as safe as you want it to. To prohibit the resource-efficient and social capital-building voluntarily exchange that is giving a car ride for company is fascism. I know that is abusing the term "fascism" but that's how I feel about it. Civilized, developed and democratic countries do not have their policemen harassing hitchhikers on service areas. I hope this was something Berlusconi introduced and that Prodi will abolish.

Prohibiting hitchhiking is prohibiting knowledge exchange between people. My Swiss/German host for example, asked me about the Swedish education system, at what point students are being sorted into eligible or not for university education. I said that until now there are no such stratification, that as long as you don't drop out of school you are on your way to university, but that since September we have had a new government that has expressed the opinion that vocational high school programs should not necessarily give university eligibility. My drivers said that in Germany they divide up the kids at age 10-11 and if you are not a good student by then, then you are put in the blue-collar-worker-pile. This got me all upset of course. I told them about one of my best friends who got the highest grades in the whole school when we finished junior high and who went to the most prestigious business school in the country and got her MBA at the age of 22. If she´d been sorted out at the age of 11 she'd for sure got into the lowest kind of school there was since she hardly knew any Swedish by then, fresh as she was from the civil war in former Yugoslavia.

It's a shame that Germany - in some respects a very progressive country - has such a segregating education system, especially since it has such a high proportion of immigrants. I remember a discussion we had about Turkey's membership in the EU on a convention for European students of Public Administration. "We already have Turkish immigrants in our country" one participant said "but they don't integrate". They don't integrate? If you put them in a school class with other immigrant children plus German kids from shaky social backgrounds, then how are they supposed to "integrate" with you? It takes two to tango, my dear Wolfgang.

Sorting the population into alpha-, beta- and epsilon-people like in Brave New World is not just disastrous from the perspective of inequality and it's consequenses material dissatisfaction, jealousy, lack of self-confidence and criminality. It is also bad from a macroeconomic perspective. We have a little thing called globalization going on. We have no idea what Pakistan, Vietnam and Tanzania will be exporting in 10 years; any of our industries can be wiped out in no time. The European economy needs to be able to change shape like the evil robot in Terminator 2. To come out on top from every wrestling game, our economy needs to mutate faster than a banana fly. Every economist needs to be able to double as a construction worker and every car mechanic needs to be ready for a 10-week course in accounting. We don't achieve that flexibility by having our largest member state branding its 11-year-olds as university-material or non-university-material.

My drivers (both decent alfa-people) weren't as emotional as me about this and changed the subject in the same way I try to do when I'm stuck in a car with a high mouth-to-brain-ratio-person. We stopped and had a look at the alpha-men sailing boats on the the Bodensee and then they dropped me off at the Swiss-Austrian border.

I walked across the border, showed my passport and concluded that Switzerland was a prime hitchhiking country:

Ratio Ride-offers/Cars-waved-at

1. Switzerland 10 / 270 = 3,7%

2. Spain 28 / 1188 = 2,4%
3. France 15 / 1222 = 1,2%

4. Portugal 3 / 1516 = 0,2%

Ratio Minutes-waited/Ride-offers

1. Switzerland 45 min / 10 offers = 5 min/offer

2. Spain 413 min / 28 offers = 15 min/offer
3. France 237 min / 15 offers = 16 min/offer

4. Portugal 192 min / 3 offers = 64 min/offer

Proportion of trucks
Switzerland 0/10 = 0%
France 4/15 = 27%

Spain 8/28 = 29%

Portugal 2/3 = 67%

Gender
Switzerland Male: 8/10 = 80% Mixed: 1/10 = 10% Female: 1/10 = 10 %
France Male: 13/15 = 87% Mixed: 1/15 = 7 % Female: 1/15 = 7%

Spain Male: 21/28 = 75% Mixed: 6/28 = 21% Female: 1/28 = 4%

Portugal Male: 3/3 = 100%

I know I've told you a 1000 times, but let me tell you again how much I love borders. I always try to be picky when hitchhiking in these prime locations, but after only 4 sunny minutes and 18 cars I got in with a car to Nürnberg. The driver had dyed his hair a bit reddish and drove us through a city known for its lingerie production after which we were in Germany. We talked about stem cell technology and I joked that "since Christians are against it it must be good". He smiled but toldme that one shouldn't bash religion. At one point, where he had lost his job, his wife and his father within a short period of time, he had been desperate for answers and had found comfort in Dalai Lama. I asked him if I should buy a Lama book to my stepbrother who recently lost his legs in Thailand, but he said that Lama was something one should find oneself and not to be applied by relatives. Personally I found Lama grossly overrated after reading one page from his autobiography that was all about his first Rolex watch. But maybe the explanation was on the next page that I didn't read, maybe he there analyzed his material pleasure of the watch and came to some great conclusions.

Anyway, I don't know if it was Lama who told him or if it was his own idea, but eventually he reacted to his new life situation by selling his house and all his stuff and got ready to move to Africa and just start over. An excellent plan if you ask me. But before taking off to Africa he went on a short tourist trip and there he met a Swiss woman and moved to her little village in Switzerland. Not as far South as Africa, but still a change. Now he was doing accounting for a minibar company and was really happy about his life, which didn't just include Swiss love and cats, but also a big room full of toy cars. It wasn't just any minibar company, it was the minibar company, the one that invented the original "Minibar". "What's the difference between a minibar and a small fridge?" I asked. "A Minibar makes no noise" he replied.

We had a very nice conversation till he dropped me off at the largest raststätte before Nürnberg. There I thumbed for 8 sunny minutes and 20 cars and then my friend red-haired minibar friend stopped for me again and offered to take me to the next raststätte, which was smaller but closer to Nürnberg. It felt better somehow so I joined him there.

It was just a gas station and it was at some distance from the autobahn, so I walked back to the onramp. After 15 sunny minutes, the man in car 48 stopped and offered me a short ride. This was kind of a good spot that might have been worth more than 15 minutes, but I was impatient and got in.

At the next onramp one man stopped and offered me a ride to Nürnberg city, but I preferred to stay on the autobahn of course. After 8 half-cloudy minutes a woman stopped who was going to the other side of town. I was happy to pass Nürnberg and got in and she asked me if my mother wasn't worried about me hitchhiking.

On the other side of Nürnberg I stood for 44 sunny minutes and 17 cars on a highway-to-highway road till a young Turkish man stopped. He was working in a car factory in Amberg and had a Turkish girlfriend in Göteborg in Sweden and was saving money to go home to what he said was "the perfect country" and start a business there; his father already had a gas station. He got all excited when I said I was going to Turkey and he made me write down a lot of phrases and made me promise to visit Kapadokia.

After he let me off I stood at a good old onramp again. It was 18:42 and the sun was shining, but not for much longer. After 37 minutes and 17 cars I started eating my last almond cookie from that gas station outside Lyon, but I threw it away when two women picked me up and took me to a small village. The onramp from there was a real "desert onramp" and I got the feeling that I would stay here till dark. A sign said "Theuern 1 km" and I decided to have a hell of a night in Theuren later on.

For 51 sunny but depressing minutes I started thinking again about what an outrageous waste of time it is to hitchhike. I spent another whole hour of my precious life smiling when there are cars and throwing stones when there are no cars. I really need to get an MP3-player with language learning files or something so I can use all this time.

Car # 10 stopped. It was a man who took me to where the new highway ended and there was an onramp to the old highway. He wasn't going in the Czechia direction from here and it was now completely dark. I had three options: I could sleep in the forest, I could walk along the old highway to see if I there was a gasstation or other lit up area or I could thumb here, in the dark. Since the cars slowed down so much before getting on the old highway I figured it could be worthwhile to stand here for a while although it was kind of a crazy place. After only 9 dark minutes and 13 cars a car stopped. I said "nach chechien" and he said "ok" and I got in. He was a small freight driver, driving little stuff all across Europe. He had had an accident this morning in Holland, which didn't feel too assuring.

Stenek was driving to Strakonice in South-Eastern Czechia. He wouldn't cross the border where the main highway to Czechia does, but generously offered to do so anyway to drop me off in Plzen. I didn't want that, I preferred to come to Strakonice, but he didn't believe me. I tried to explain that if I hitchhiked from Plzen then I'd get a car to Praha and then I'd never get out of there. Starting from Strakonice and following local roads to Pardubice would be much easier. Each city has its gravity, and a city like Praha in a country like Czechia is like having the sun in your living room. But there was no way I could communicate this to Stenek, who knew as little German as I did, so he took me to Plzen anyway.

When we came to the border he said that starting from 2008, Czechia will be a part of Schengen and we won't have to show our passports here anymore. That's good for everyone in this world, except for the hitchhikers. I wanted to change money, but he looked at the exchange rate they offered and offered me the same. When we later arrived in a raststätte outside Plzen I gave him all my Euro and he gave me lots of Korunas back, more than I'd have got at the border. I guess it's illegal to change money with private citizens, but since he was my driver and friend it felt fair enough. He really went out of his way to find me a ride further. He was more concerned about me than if he'd been my dad. It was nice of him of course, but I got almost annoyed. Hitchhiking isn't about getting people worried about you and having them make sure you are alright. Hitchhiking is about joining them as long they are on the highway and then say goodbye - and perhaps change e-mails. Hitchhiking might even be about joining people home to play a boardgame or share a coffee and get some shelter. But when someone assumes responsibility for you, then that person has gone too far. Just drop off your hitchhiker at the next gas station or onramp and you have secured your place in drivers' heaven. "Even if it's raining?" Yes, even if it's raining. If he doesn't like rain then he shouldn't have hitchhiked.

But Stenek stayed almost an hour at this gas station and asked about 15 people. First we asked people together, but then I stood thumbing at the exit - thumbing at cars that Stenek had already asked since he kept hanging around the pumps although we had already said goodbye. It paid out, finally he found me a guy to Hradec Kralove. In case you don't have a map of Czechia in front of you, let me tell you that Hradec is not just on the other side of Praha, it's also a mere 20 km north of Pardubice, my goal for today.

Vladja was like Stenek a small-freight driver. They are the best rides; in the trunk they have a few kilos of crucial electronic components or the like that they need to take to some factory on the other side of Europe fast as hell. Vladja was going to Poland and would drop me off at Hradec Kralove. Wrrrrrrrrrrooom we went. He didn't like Poland since their highways are not as fast as in Czechia or Germany. But he liked American jeeps and we made our only break on a gas station where they had a jeep shop and there he stood and drooled for a while.

From the Northern outskirts of Hradec Kralove I started walking towards the centre. It was to late to hitchhike so I decided to wait in a bar all night. The first establishment was a shady house full of extremely drunk Czech middle-aged men. They were dancing wildly with the only woman in the house, whom was as drunk as they were. They were friendly without being pushy, but I still felt a bit odd and left after 15 minutes. The next establishment was a "herna" - a bar with slot machines and the like, and there I stayed for a humble sandwich, the first since Switzerland. Then I passed a club I didn't dare to enter due to the entrance being packed with big guys with shaved heads and instead walked on till I came to "Bacardi bar", a stylish place expensive for Czechia but cheap for Europe. There I talked for a while with two students from India and one from Portugal. One of the Indian guys was talking at length about in which countries people treated him politely when he called from his telemarketing company in India, and he claimed that receptionists in Sweden treated him as a human although he was a marketer.

When they left I joined a big group of Norwegian students. They were all studying medicine here and one of them repeatedly called me "snutjävel" ("police pig"), which was the only word she knew in Swedish. They were all a bit too drunk for meaningful conversation, but one of them decided to walk me to a club where he said I could wait for sunrise. On the way there I asked him why they were studying medicine in Hradec Kralove.

In Norway and Sweden the trade unions for doctors keep their salaries high by keeping down the number of students at the med schools. So in a time when both countries have a shortage of doctors, students still need the highest grades possible from high school to get into the education. Even if you got the highest grade in every subject - including that drama course in first class or that extra French in second class - you can't be sure to get in since there are more students in the country with a grade of 20.0 out of 20 than there are available med school positions. So besides from not having a life for 3 years you need a portion of luck. If you did not get the right lottery ticket, then you get to study in Hradec Kralove.

The bad-luck Norwegian doctor-to-be told me to continue forward till there was a blue sign to the right and then he took left and said goodnight. The place with the blue sign was the same as the one I had passed before and I still didn't dare to go in because all those big guys with shaved heads were still there. Instead I started talking to a Norwegian girl on the street and she brought me in and downstairs where she introduced me to her Norwegian friends, which included a Swede. He got really surprised to get another Swedish guy hitchhiking from Bern to his table at the night club in Hradec Kralove. I was glad to speak some Swedish too, it was the first time since Heidelberg. He proudly showed his t-shirt stating: "Jakobsberg" (NW Stockholm) and I wished I'd had one stating: "Fisksätra" (SE Stockholm). After a while he and all the Norwegians went to the dance floor. I didn't join them since I wanted to watch my luggage, so I just sat by our table, leaned back and enjoyed life - the warmth and the safety of the night club and my new Scandinavian friends. After half an hour they still hadn't come back so I left my seat and took a tour around the dance floor. It was empty, and there was no sign of Scandinavians in the whole building. They had left. Why say goodbye to the random Swedish guy who just walked up to your table like if he knew you? No, just leave him talking to the furniture.

Hello, Mr Table, how nice to meet you! Who knows, maybe we bump into each other in Stockholm one day! Wouldn't that be cool?

In the big laundry machine

We woke up and reluctantly accepted the arrival of this Swiss Thursday. Roamed the apartment and ate everything edible like dinosaurs and concluded that our plan for today had already failed. We took our bikes through the beautiful beautiful city to the museum where Holger is working and had a short tour there. Then I went to a strategy game store and showed my game. They were interested in buying a copy but didn't want to pay the freight cost from Czechia but advised me to take the game to Essen boardgame fair, to which all serious game stores come with an empty car to load up on unusual releases.

Then I went to the university to find the Japanese department, but they had none. Then I went towards the great viewing point. On the way I stopped and had a rest outside one of those houses where heroin addicts get their stuff. I found a hole with two depressed bears in it and then I joined the Japanese in walking up the hill from which there is an amazing view over Bern but yesterday night didn't allow me to get up there so I went home instead. I had planned to visit Huyen in Zurich today (she is also from 7th Heaven), but she suddenly had to go on a business trip abroad so I stayed at Holger's and sat in front of the computer, e-mailing people, writing blog and uploading photos. Holger himself had to drink beer with some biologists. In his native Liechtenstein there are only 3 positions for his type of profession, and the next one of those 3 to retire will retire in 7 years. But if Liechtenstein will build up its own spider collection, then Holger is the man for the job, but it will require some beer.

Sète - Bern Wed Apr 4

Jean-Marque woke me up and we had some coffee and talked for a while before he drove me to the péage where I arrived at a sunny 10:17. After 12 min and 154 cars a man picked me up and let me off at the péage outside Montpellier at 10:40. This one was full of policemen who were stopping cars and searching them, and I was wondering how this massive police presence would affect my hitchhiking. At 11:11 car number # 304 was a small truck of the perfect kind, big enough to fit all my stuff and yet be comfortable, but still really fast. The driver was a Marockan who had left his family in Marseille and moved to Paris where he had got a job and we had a long and for me very exhausting conversation in French. He drove me all the way to Lyon where I walked for a while along the highway to find the road to Geneva. I had to climb fences and wade through bushes and climb up on bridges and walk between double-lined fences and things like that. A bit dirty and tired but happy enough I arrived at a service area on the road that I thought lead to Geneva.

There were one restaurant and one shop and I walked in between and calculated the food/euro ratio for each food item and finally settled for a box of 6 heavy almond cookies for 2 euro. They were sweet but so good.

At 14:30 I started hitchhiking; it had now gotten a bit cloudy. After one minute car # 3 stopped. It was a big truck with a driver that said that I wasn't on the road to Geneva but that he could drive me to Chambery and put me on the right road from there. Confused, I looked down on the copy I´d drawn from Guillame's map and thought "whatever" and got in. The driver was from Marocko and was living in Modena in Italy.

When I got off I could see the alps for the first time in my life. I stood at an onramp some 50 meters after a péage at 15:33. After 4 minutes car 21 stopped. The driver was an old but very muscular French man who told me that he had been working on an oil rig all his life and now did all kinds of sports to keep up his condition. He said that he was so angry on the lazy French people and that he would move to another country if the Socialists won the presidential election. One thing that especially made him furious was the 35-hour work week. Personally I believe that since our GDP/capita has already reached that level where additional production does not cause additional happiness, it doesn't make sense to spend further productivity gains on increased production but rather on increased leisure time. But I kept my mouth shut, this wasn't the reasoning kind of guy.

In Annecy I stood at 16:04 on a tight onramp. After one minute car # 10 stopped. It was a limousine taxi and the Tunisian driver was quite a character. After graduating as a system engineer in Friburg, he had worked for a bank in many years. One day he had had enough of it, took out some savings and bought this limousine cab. Now he drove rich people from the airport in Geneva to various places in the area. He was self-employed, had no loans and worked as many hours a week as he felt like, which seldom was more than 35 hours a week. My last driver would have accused him for being a lazy French Socialist, wrongly so since he was in fact a thrifty, Swiss-Tunisian Capitalist. In his youth he had hitchhiked a lot and told one story after the other.

The stories typically went like this: "Once I hitchhiked to Paris. On my way home to Friburg I happened to get a ride to Hamburg. 'Whatever' I thought and decided to check out Hamburg. There I met a racist who told me to go back to Africa and eat a lion so I punched him in the face. Later I met a Norwegian girl and stayed a few days with her. She tried to bring me back to Norway but I was like 'hey, I hardly know you' and hitchhiked back to Friburg instead. We wrote letters to each others a few times a year, but when she wrote she had a boyfriend I stopped writing her."

I also liked this one: "I never bring my credit card on my travels. I only bring cash and I put it here and there on my body; in my socks and some other places I won't tell you about. When I get robbed I pretend to be scared and give them the wallet and let them run away with a few euros. Once I got off the ship from Greece to Italy and fell asleep on the ground on a service area in Bari. When I woke up I had lost my wallet, and the thieves had even cut a hole through my shirt to get the stuff inside my shirt pocket, including my passport. 'Damn' I thought and needed to piss and went to the toilet and there was my passport on the floor. I still had enough cash on the rest of me to have a nice time all the way through Italy to Switzerland."

Then we passed the border to Switzerland and it's time to sum up the statistics for France:

Ratio Ride-offers/Cars-waved-at

1. Spain 28 / 1188 = 2,4%
2. France 15 / 1222 = 1,2%

3. Portugal 3 / 1516 = 0,2%

Ratio Minutes-waited/Ride-offers

1. Spain 413 min / 28 offers = 15 min/offer
2. France 237 min / 15 offers = 16 min/offer

2. Portugal 192 min / 3 offers = 64 min/offer

Proportion of trucks
France 4 /15 = 27%

Spain 8 /28 = 29%

Portugal 2 / 3 = 67%

Gender
France Male: 13 /15 = 87% Mixed: 1/15 = 7 % Female 1/15 = 7%

Spain Male: 21 /28 = 75% Mixed: 6/28 = 21% Female: 1/28 = 4%

Portugal Male: 3 / 3 = 100%

He let me off in Geneva, on the way towards Bern. I asked 3 people on a gas station if they were going in the Bern direction but they said they weren't. Then I walked along the road - which was very busy - and thumbed. After 12 minutes car # 175 stopped. It was an Afro-Swiss man who belonged to an old Bern family (with it's name in the cathedral) but now lived in the Lausanne area. We passed through the neighborhood of some of the world's most powerful people, including the IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad. My friend said that no one like Ingvar since he never buys anything. I am personally very proud of the richest representative of my country being so modest in his consumption, at least to the extent it isn't a PR-trick.

He let me off at a highway entrance and said that if I wouldn't get a ride there then I could always go back to the fashionable lakeside road and continue that way. But already after 8 minutes I had got 3 ride offers out of 18 cars. I accepted the third one, a man going to some village somewhere on the right side of Lausanne. Before he went off the highway he let me off at a gas station where I went to the exit and thumbed there. It was surprisingly chilly up here, a big change from the Mediterranean coast where I had been this morning. It was 18:13 and now very cloudy. After 8 minutes I got a ride with car # 20, a man who took me some kilometers in the Bern direction and let me off at another cloudy highway entrance where a woman stopped and said that she was probably not going my way. "Ok" I said and then figured that she probably was going my way but it didn't matter since car # 5 stopped after 1 minute.

It was an obese man who surprisingly didn't speak any English, the first Swiss non-English speaker I've ever met. In silence we went through one shiny tunnel after the other. When he took off for his little village I got out and walked for the next onramp. The place was depressing and so was the weather and the vehicle density. I stood between 18:47 and 18:59 when a man (#11) stopped and brought me to Bern. He was working as a purchaser of defense materials for the Swiss army and he had gone to some small city for negotiations but there hadn't been any meeting today. His job seemed nice; he traveled all around the world to buy supplies for the most redundant army on the planet. His car was full of small edible presents and he gave me chips, chocolate, cookies and a special kind of Swiss drink made by apple juice and that stuff which is left of the milk when you have processed cheese out of it. This very healthy leftover is in Sweden and Norway made into a special brown cheese of delicious taste, but in Switzerland it is mixed with apple juice into a drink of doubtful value.

The defense material purchaser brought me not just to Bern but all the way to Wankdorf stadium. Yes my friends, the name of the football stadium is Wankdorf. It is not a funny name, wank means something very innocent and sporty in German. I sent a text to Holger and went inside the shopping center under Wankdorf stadium to avoid the merciless Swiss spring wind and eat my loot of cookies and chocolate.

Holger was an exchange student in Uppsala in the autumn of 2003. I met him first time at the ground floor of our building and since he looked like a confused exchange student and since I was a professional exchange student helper I asked him if he needed help and it turned out that he was coming to live in our corridor, in "Seventh Heaven", which is on the seventh floor of house # 1 (to the right from the elevator). It is the best corridor in Flogsta, which is the best student dorm area in Uppsala . We had a great time with Holger that semester and he created a number of anecdotes. Unfortunately I think none of them is suitable for a weblog, not even a blog that contains place names such as Wankdorf, although I have been tempted to tell the story of "The Night of the Swiss Army Knives".

After eating some chocolate and cookies I saw Holger's famous silhouette run into Coop and grab a 6-pack of beer and some more chicken fillet. I caught him by the cashier (after he had paid) and he surprised uttered a "Haaarald" with that special Liechtensteinish "aaa" which always take me back to the roof parties of the autumn of 2003. It was a short walk back to the apartment he shares with Sarah, his golden love. There a wonderful dinner was waiting and as we ate it we summarized our lives since we last saw each other and talked nostalgically about past times like one does when meeting old friends. And of course there was a lot of "Have you heard from Huyen?", "from Richard?" "Kerstin?", " Kristina?"

After dinner I borrowed Sarah's bike and hit the town with Holger. It was wonderful to cycle for the first time on this trip. We arrived too late to the pub we were going to, and Holger said: "Now there are only 2 places still open in all Bern. One pub that is totally empty and one were we would definitely get beaten up." "Well ... sometimes the worst places are the best" I said, meaning that we should try the empty place, but Holger said in his holgerish way: "Ok, let's go and get beaten up".

The pub we came to was full of drug addicts. Holger talked proudly and at length (and in a low voice) about the Swiss drug policies, which include free heroin to addicts, keeping crime and disease rates low.

We also covered lots of other ground of course, but nothing of general interest. It was a a great great night.

Sète Tue Apr 3

Woke up in a very dark room. It was 10 am. I recalled where I was and happily established that I had slept for 11-12 hours. Went upstairs and drank coffee for breakfast. I got to put my clothes in the washing machine and then hung them in the garden to be dried by the ocean wind. We had a nice lunch, after which there was cheese. Then they gave me a key so that I could explore the town on my own. Sète was a charming little place with stairs and old churches. There was a fishing harbor in the middle of the city, giving everything a nice fishy smell. There was an octopus statue spurting water. There were immigrants. There was a poster of racist presidental candidate Le Pen on whose face someone had painted a Hitler moustache.

After walking the whole city I climbed the streets back up to the Lozenguez' home. I spent some more time on the internet and got the latest news about my stepbrother's stay at the hospital where his doctors' were slowly reconquering his most basic functions from the chaos brought up on his body by the gravity of our planet in combination with the absence of fences and streetlights.

Then Jean-Marque's friend came from England. We had ravioli for dinner, served with a special French kind of spirits that turned milky when mixed with water. This is the second French family I visit, the first being Thibaut's family in Paris. 2 out these 2 families have the habit of serving cheese after each meal. I know that 2 is not a big enough sample to satisfy a statistician, but since these two families are randomly drawn from each side of the big country, I think I have a fairly strong indication on that all French families serve cheese after the meal. And wonderful cheese as well, 4 different kinds. They asked which one was the best and I had to taste all of them again and again and again to make up my mind. I forgot which one I chose, I think I have to taste them again. Jean-Marque and his friend Stephen met on a language-learning student exchange when they were teenagers. Since then they have met every year. Stephen had a look at my game. He didn't seemed overly interested, but promised to set me in contact with lots of people once I make it to England.

Perpignan - Sète Mon Apr 2

I woke up every half hour or so since the ground was too hard and forced me to change from one painful position to the other. At one such occasion I could feel the sun shining and the next time I woke up after that I reached out for my glasses, put them on and had a look around. A garbage man was standing looking at me. Probably he was considering whether to put me in "cardboard", "hard plastics" or "combustibles".

Put the sleeping bag in my backpack and brushing my teeth I walked back to the highway-to-highway road. I was there at 6:56 and it was a foggy, chilly morning, perfect for hitchhiking. Early bird catches the worm or whatever the saying is. After 28 frozen minutes car #9 stopped. He was going a very short way and let me off at the highway where there was like a parking spot. After 10 minutes car #39 stopped at this parking spot and picked me up. It was a man in his early 20s who had a rat and a cat in his car. It was the first time I hitchhiked with a rat and a cat at the same time. Every now and then the cat would come and sit on my lap and receive my love. It was a perfect ride, but I was too tired to be able to enjoy it and fell asleep repeatedly. He woke me up now and then and pointed to my right where the Mediterranean was rolling up the sandy beaches. It was beautiful and then I fell asleep again.

Arriving in Sète he asked me if I wanted to come to his house for a cup of coffee. I accepted, hoped for breakfast and got in. We drank coffee and ate biscuits and I showed him my game. Then suddenly he told me to "do whatever I wanted in the house" and left me to go the dentist. I interpreted "do whatever" as it being ok to have a shower so I took out some kind-of-clean clothes from my backpack and started opening doors to see which one hid a shower room.

Behind one door there was a young, undressed person with long hair lying in a bed, turning its head and looking at me with confused eyes as I opened and quickly closed the door and said "Sorry!" Let's just hope it wasn't a girl. The next door revealed a shower room and I slipped in, locked the door and washed myself for the first time since that morning in Barcelona three days ago. It was wonderful. When the clean version of myself stepped out I was still alone in the house. The sleeping person didn't seem to have gotten alarmed by my intrusion. I ate an orange and had just found the buscuit package from our previous coffee break when Guillame came back home and caught me red-handed. He took another look at the game and I asked if he wanted to play and he wanted to. We played for 2 hours; he was a quick learner and got the strategy and it was a pleasure to play with him. Another great pleasure was that he got hungry during the game and boiled a big pot of pasta for us. Excellent.

Towards the end of the game we got company from his little teenage brother Thibaut, whom I had ran into earlier that morning. After I had kicked Guillame´s ass, Thibaut wanted his kicked as well so we played again, 3 people. They were both surprisingly good at the game so I had to employ the most cunning deviousness I could find in the shadiest corners of my soul to defeat them. Guillame played Central, I played East and Thibaut North. I traded with Guillame until we didn´t need anything from each other anymore. Now I only needed to conquer the most Northern prefectures, Aomori and Hokkaido, from Thibaut. To do this in peace, I gave away all my unique characters to Thibaut who got suspicious of course, but couldn´t find any reason as why not to take them, so he took them and now he needed only to conquer "SU" from his big brother´s Shizuoka to win. So the two brothers charged against each other in a final effort to win the game. They slowly ate each other´s core areas in a classic "Seigo rotation" of the kind you usually see at the final stage of this game. Only that I was at the axis of their rotation, building up my strength in peace and quiet. When Guillame had finally conquered the Northern prefectures from Thibaut, I could simply move in and take them for myself. Now the brothers woke up from their dreams of an easy victory and joined forces in an all-out assault on me. But it was too late, they were both too far South and I could easily take Hokkaido, build "HO" and complete the Hiragana alphabet.

It was now 5 pm and I packed my stuff and said "I guess I should continue to Switzerland now ...".

"If you want to stay tonight and go tomorrow, then that is also possible", Guillame said. "I will go to Montpellier at 6 am tomorrow morning, you can join me then." That was just perfect. I hadn´t slept in a bed for three nights in a row so I happily accepted his offer. Down the stairs, halfways to the cellar, there was a big ledge with a big bed on it, which Guillame laid with clean sheets. The place looked a bit dangerous, if I would move too much while sleeping I could fall down the stairs to the cellar. But the stairs was at the foot end of my bed, and I've never moved in that direction while sleeping in my whole life so it felt safe enough.

After installing myself I got on the internet for a little while. There was an e-mail from my mother saying that my step-brother had fallen down some stairs in Thailand. There had been no fence between the level on which he was walking and the level below and in the absence of streetlights he had stepped over the edge, fallen 4 meters and hurt his back and would have to sit in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Quite shocking news. It was so unreal.

After writing e-mails for a while I sat down in the living room sofa. This house was situated on a hill, overlooking the mediterranean as well as the cute town of Sète and the view was just marvelous. Guillame was playing with his rat and his parents' cat. His own cat had grown up with the rat and they were good friends. But his parents' cat, who was the son of his cat, did not know the rat that well. To him, she was just a piece of meat that deserved to die immediately. Guillame let go of the rat and watched the cat trying to catch her. When the cat was too close he catched him and scolded him for trying to eat mademoiselle Rat. Then he let go of the rat and cat again and continued like that. It was a weird game of life and death. The cat was furious. He went away for a while, pretending like he didn't care. Then, when he thought we weren´t watching, he rushed for the rat. At times he was only seconds from catching her. I got alarmed and went down the floor myself to protect the poor rat, who was used to playing with cats and didn´t feel the danger. Death was imminent in this room.

To kill some time - and behave as a good guest - I started washing our dishes. It was good timing, the brothers' parents just came home. "Who is this foreign kitchen helper?" they asked. "It's a Swedish hitchhiker I picked up and brought home to eat", Guillame said. "He is staying here, is it ok?". Well, that's at least my interpretation of the French words that filled the room. The parents were very nice and curious. We had beer and talked about this and that. Dinner was nice, consisting of a special, canned pork product, potato, salad and tinned sprats. After we had eaten, mademoiselle rat got her share. Then, there was cheese. Reeeaaallly nice cheese. Jean-Marque said that his friend was coming the next day. That he was producing language-learning products for BBC and knew all Japanese teachers in England. He suggested that I´d stay for another day to show my game to him. It felt like a good idea so I accepted gratefully. Then I went down to my parking lot-smelling sleeping bag on the ledge bed and slept with the cats. Bon nuit

Roses - Perpignan Sun Apr 1

It was cold outside and the last thing I wanted was to step outside my sleeping bag so each time I woke up I ignored the world, rolled up like a fetus and fell asleep again. But after a while my hunger overtook my freezing and I went up to eat bread and enjoy the faboulus view from the kitchen. I climbed down and continued along the cloudy coast, hitchhiking from 9:35.

All houses were vacation houses and since it was off-season the area was quite deserted. After half an hour walk a walking man with a stick asked me where I was going. I said Cadaques and he said that the coastal road was a dead-end for cars, but that I could walk across the mountain to Cadaques. Walking is not my cup of tea if not accompanied by the possibility of a free car-ride so I turned around and walked back again.

At 10:25 car #9 stopped. It was three French women on vacation in a big van they had turned into a little house. I was a bit embarassed to sit on their bed with my two-nights-without-shower-smell. They took me back to Roses city and dropped me off at the road towards Cadaques. After 7 minutes and 4 cars I got a ride with a middle-aged Spanish couple to a crossroad nearby. There I waited for 3 minutes and 3 cars till I got a ride with a young Spanish couple who were on holidays and took me to Cadaques.

In Dali´s autobiography, Cadaques was a small fishing village. It wasn´t anymore; it was quite a city, but a pretty one. I walked up the steep slopes and stairs till I found a place with a good view over the fishing harbour and there I sat on the wall and ate my bread in a very touristic lunch.

Unaware of that I was out on a peninsula pointing nowhere, I tried to hitchhike further along the coast. After 1 minute the first car stopped, containing an old man who asked if I was camping. Yes, I said. But when I said I was going to France he got angry and let me off, he had asked if I was going to the camping. At the crossroad where I stood there was a sign saying: "Portlligat". I realized that it was my destiny to visit Dali´s house today so I hitchhiked in that direction. During the 9 minutes it took to walk there 7 cars didn´t stop.

Entrance was 10 € and I had to wait for an hour till it was my turn. In the meanwhile I sat on the stony beach and washed my feet and picked up flat stones to save and throw in that lake between the lunch restaurant and the printing company in Pardubice. Two girls were also waiting with me, drinking beer and kissing each other. Dali´s house was interesting. It was quite modest considering his wealth and megalomania. I liked the yellow room.

After the house I hitchhiked towards Cap de Creus. After 6 minutes car number 4 stopped. It was a young man who was working on a restaurant there. "I use to say that I work at the end of the world" he said. The road dwindled up the mountain out in the ocean. Up there we were surrounded by ocean on every side and the wind was neck-breaking. I saw a cave far away and decided that that was my cave and climbed down the verge to reach it. All thoughts on my game and my plans were long gone, I was apparently on vacation today.

Down the mountain I waded through a jungle of sea-whipped thorn-covered bushes. I lost track of the cave but found some other lost tourists who were also exploring this hidden corner of the world´s land mass. I followed where they came from and found the huge cave, which wasn´t a cave but rather a stone bridge over a thin bay being carved out by the most aggressive part of the Mediterranean.

After sitting there enjoying the wild scenery for a while I climbed up to the restaurant again and started walking back towards Cadaques waving my thumb. Interestingly, some other people were doing excactly the same a few hundred meters behind me. Since they were frequently hidden by cliffs and curves I couldn´t tell if they were picked up before or after me, but I got picked up by car #18 after 26 minutes walking. They - a young Spanish couple - took me to the beginning of the road from Cadaques to Llanca. It was cloudy now, and I waited for 2 minutes till car #8 - another young Spanish couple - picked me up. They were tourists as well and exploring this part of the country in almost the same way I did. They had been out in Barcelona, at the Dali museum and in the Dali house. Now they were driving through this amazingly steep and green and foggy landscape to Port de la Selva, which they had heard to be amazingly beautiful. As we left the car and walked in the city I was a bit frustrated, but hoped that this involuntarily diversion from my trip to France would at least render me something to eat.

They were disappointed of Port de la Selva, finding it no different from any other coastal town in Spain. I thought that the landscape might open up and get all crazy if we just passed the cape, but as the big France-longing egoist I was I kept my mouth shut and instead secretly smiled inside as we entered a food store. They treated me with bread, cheese and ham and some kind of very typical pirogue with Sobrasada inside. We sat in the harbor and ate and they cursed the high tourist-prices and then we went on. The girl in the couple was a podiatrist and she gave me her card.

They let me off in Llanca were I waited in a very good spot after a traffic light for 43 minutes during which I got two ride offers. I accepted the second one; car #114, a man listening to trance music and driving to Portbou, right before the French border.

I walked out of the city and thumbed again. After 5 minutes I was picked up by car #4, two middle-aged French guys who were driving a very old, blue car, smoking rolling tobacco and listening to experimental jazz.

Statistics:

Ratio Ride-offers/Cars-waved-at

1. Spain 28 / 1188 = 2,4%

2. Portugal 3 / 1516 = 0,2%

Ratio Ride-offers/Minutes-waited

1. Spain 28 offers / 413 min = 15 min/offer

2. Portugal 3 offers / 192 min = 64 min/offer

Proportion of trucks

Spain 8/28 = 29%

Portugal 2/3 = 67%

Gender

Spain Male: 21/28 = 75% Mixed: 6/28 = 21% Female: 1/28 = 4%

Portugal Male: 3/3 = 100%

Our road was on a high altitude and passing over many beautiful cities along the coast, each situated in a small bay and with a church in the middle and an old railway going through it. The men stopped in one of the cities to call a woman to ask her if they could sleep in her house. They left me in Perpignan, where they took off on a small road to Carcassone. I didn´t want to join them further since I hate playing Carcassone. At 20:02 I stood on a regular onramp; it was raining and getting dark. After 3 min car #3 stopped, containing what looked like a stereotypical immigrant-dense-suburb couple with classical gender roles and club music pumping at a volume unmatched. They took me to an outlet area north of the city where there was a nice highway-to-highway road for getting towards Narbonne/Montpellier.

It was really dark now, and the rain was getting worse. I stood between 20:15 and 20:46 while 14 cars who hardly could see me passed by. It was pointless to hitchhike any longer. I wanted to snuggle down in my sleeping bag among the trees, but it was raining too much for that. I went to the outlet to scout for good hide-outs. There was a bridge over a small stream under which I might possibly fit, but it looked too dirty down there. Then there was a Carrefour supermarket which had long rows of shopping carts under roofs to protect them from the rain. I examined all those little houses; in one I found a curious dog, and in another I found three rows of shopping carts of which the middle one was much shorter than the other two, and thereby forming like a room with three walls.

But the best sleeping place seemed to be a playground outside a fast-food restaurant. It had a big structure on it with slides and tunnels for children to crawl around in. The tunnels were big enough to allow me to crawl in and be perfectly protected from rain and even from wind. While waiting for the restaurant to close I sat in another, cheaper, restaurant, bought the cheapest thing they sold and ate it as slowly as possible while waiting for the time to pass and the rain to not rain on me. After they´d closed I sat on safe distance from the restaurant with the playground and watched it as the employees cleaned and closed the place. When everyone had been gone for a long while I approached the darkened buildning to sneak into their walled playing ground and crawl into the tunnels.

But when I was only a few meter from the place I saw a car with two people parked on the restaurant´s parking lot. They both looked at me, wondering what the hell I was doing there. I didn´t want to play on the playground with these two ghosts watching so I sat 50 meters away and waited for them to leave. After half an hour they were still sitting there. It was creepy; this outlet was totally empty now - everything out here was closed. What were they doing? And they must have been wondering what I was doing. It struck me that if they had any relation to any of the legitimate businessses out here, then they´d probably call someone to tell them that a 20-30 year old man, about 190 cm tall with a blue backpack was sneaking around, probably a criminal or a mental-case, or both.

So I went to Carrefour instead and sat between the rows of shopping carts. I tried to roll up like a ball to save body heat and sleep, but a cold French wind always found its way between my trousers and my shirts and chilled the lower part of my back and kept me awake. So after an hour I just took out my sleeping bag, put it on the naked asphalt, went inside, stretched out my legs and embraced the night. Bon nuit.

Barcelona - Roses Sat March 31

Woke up at Catalunya station. Followed the train one more stop to Diagonal and there I changed for the other direction and went back again. It wasn´t so cold anymore and when we got out of the tunnel I saw that the world was bright again. There were two Montcada stations and I got off at the first one. There was a café and I went to the toilet and then tried to ask if there was some kind of menu but the bartender just poured up a glass of spirits for himself despite the early hour and gave me an irritated look like I was some kind of homeless who is sleeping on trains and using his toilet without asking. Not getting a meny, I pointed at some bread in front of me and got a piece for 1,50 and then continued penetrating the foggy, chilly morning.

The road description from Hitchbase didn´t make sense at all. So I went to the other Montcada station. Now the road description made even less sense. There was a river, but on the wrong place. There was no pedestrian zone anywhere. I went back to the first Montcada station and tried again there. Then I saw a sign indicating that this commuter train line was number "4". I took a look in my notes; my Montcada station was on line number "2".

So I went back to the Central Station and tried to find commuter line #2. I thought I did, but after one stop it diverted from the route I thought it´d take and came to some kind of end-station. Three Americans were also on the train and they asked me: "Is this the train to Figueras?" "I hope not" I said.

Later that day I met the same three Americans again, on another station. "I think the next train is yours" I said. They were going to the Dali Museum and recommended me to go with them. "Maybe I´ll see you there" I said. They went on the train, and I took the next one, which was number 2. At last.

Arriving in Montecarda i Reixac - the right Montcada - the road description made perfect sense. I especially appreciated the line "on the left side you see the warning: ´dont cross. only for authorized personal´. just do it and enter this zone. there is a small way which you follow for 300m. then you arrive the patrol station."

It was 11:20 and very sunny when I started thumbing. I had gotten the advice to be picky and not accept a ride shorter than to France. I decided to accept cars to Figueres but nothing shorter. If a car went to France, I would go to France and go on with my life. If a car was going to Figueres but not to France, then I would go to Figueres and let Salvador Dali take command of my life and melt my precious time like was it a clock on a rock.

I got two offers to places shorter than Figueres, one from a couple and one from a young man. Car number 254 stopped at 12:22 and was a couple to Figueres; one smoking Spanish man and his very elegant Belgian girlfriend. We had a very nice chat, but eventually I capitulated to the legacy of last night, let my head fall forward and went to the land where anything can happen but nothing is for real.

They woke me up in Figueres. I was a big admirer of Dali when I was 17, which also was the age at which I went on my first hitchhiking trip. Back then I wanted so badly to visit Figueres but in San Sebastian my money ran out and I had to steer towards home as soon as possible to avoid starvation. But now I´m here, and like as if fulfilling a promise to the younger version of myself I bought a 10 € ticket and got in. Sadly, Dali didn´t impress me anymore. He had abandoned me. Nevertheless, I examined every square millimeter of the building; competing for the space with hundreds of proud Spanish school children. My three American friends were nowhere. With the ticket to the Dali museum came a ticket to another museum, which combined modern art films with dug-up stuff and dresses from the 18th century. It wasn´t fun enough to compete with last night´s lack of sleep. I tried to find Dali´s birth house, which should be more interesting since I have a clear picture of the house in my mind after reading his autobiography "Secret Life of Salvador Dali" five times, but couldn´t find it. But I did find the bar where he used to come for a glass on every visit to his birthtown and I had a very touristic glass of "something Spanish" (as I asked for), which wasn´t expensive at all.

Then I went towards the city end; not to go to France but to do some hitchhiking in Daliland. The autobiography told so much about how the landscape of Cadaques inspired the paintings, so I I couldn´t resist hitchhiking through this country in order to become a piece of Dali art, as a tribute to my teenage idoling. I passed a bakery and bought the loaf that looked like most bread per euro. I hesitated for a second, thinking that it might be difficult to get a ride if carrying a gigantic bread. But then it struck me: a huge bread is of course the best travelling companion one can have in Daliland!

I walked and walked but the city of Figueres never ended. At its outskirts I found some abandoned economic farm buildings and I looked inside to see if they´d be good as shelter in case I wouldn´t get a ride from here before dark. But they looked horrible on the inside; full of trash and with deep holes in them.

I didn´t find a good hitchhiking spot until 18:56. It was on a busy roadside right after a roundabout. It was raining and it felt like I´d have to stay there forever. But it only took 7 minutes for car #80 to stop; a Moroccan electrician who took me to Roses.

In Roses I had my first physical encounter with the Mediterranean, walked on the beach and dipped my feet. I decided to sleep here and kept my eyes open for shelter. I found a wooden structure that would protect me from rain as well as from the damp of the ground, but it was open from the sides which meant that the wind would get me, as well as the eyes of everyone passing and I don´t like that. Homeless people typically sleep either where no one sees them, or where everyone sees them. Not where just a few people see them; as in the case with wooden structures by the beach.

Then I saw an old castle on the horizon, that looked like it was being renovated. I decided to check in there and speeded up my walk. My worned-out boots protested and tried to blackmail my feet but it didn´t work and I was soon at the foot of the mountain and started climbing uphill. The hillside was overgrown with thick bushes that did their best to slow down my pace and tear my clothes. Halfways up the mountain I saw that the castle was not merely undergoing renovation; it was being rebuilt into a fancy sort of building; probably a top-end hotel or the like. That means that someone was putting a lot of money in it, which means that money is also invested in people coming every night to protect it from vandals and thiefs. The image of angry security personnel lightning up my face with torches intimidated me and made me instead have a look at the many rocks that were scattered over the hillside. It looked like there must be plenty of rocks that provided shelter enough for a human beneath them. So I climbed around, trying to fit my body in crevices here and there. But it was always too narrow, too uncomfortable or too dirty. The best place I found was one where a big leaning rock formed a roof only with the cooperation of some thick bushes. It was dry under there and I bet on that no water would find it´s way down during the night, squeezed inside the bushes, snuggled down in my sleeping bag, ate from my big bread and fell asleep, happy as a boyscout.

Barcelona Fri March 30

Woke up and had a terrible breakfast in a jam-packed room. I wanted to wash my clothes but the washing machine for guests was broken. The dry cleaner worked though, so I brought my clothes into the shower. I really wanted to be clean and tidy for tonight´s game presentation; the clothes I had right now were all stinking to the limit.

As I stood in the shower for the best part of an hour washing the clothes, a lady came in to clean and I got a bit embarrased since I felt one wasn´t supposed to do what I was doing. After washing I squeeezed the water out of the clothes as hard as I could. Those 2€ dry cleaners never really do their job and I hate travelling with the clothes in a damp mess in the backpack since it makes life so creased and smelly. So I wringed, wriiing wriiing wriiin... OUCH! I had wringed off the skin of my right thumb. Injured by the laundry; I am a professional when it comes to hurting myself. Don´t battle me; I´ll drop my head before you can cut off your finger.

I put all the clothes in the dry cleaner and wore nothing but my towel, which I wrapped around my waist. It was check-out time and since I didn´t want to pay for another night (especially since they had no beds for the next night) I gave them my key and asked for my passport. "We won´t let you out on the street like that" they said, looking at me and my towel like I was insane. "The police would take you."

After drying my clothes I spent the day walking around looking for the game bar "Queimada", which was situated in the crossroad of Carrer de la Independencia and Carrer de Provenca. On the way I saw lots of lots of cool architecture.

After localizing the bar I skimmed the area for a really cheap hotel and then sat on a terrace waiting for the evening, working on "Nice Weather". Nice Weather is not the railroad game to end all railroad games. The railroad game to end all railroad games must involve the physical building of railroad tracks; the laying of growing snakes of tiles that crawl out over the plains, connecting desolated cities and bringing them into the blood circulation of the economy. Nice Weather would become too complicated if also featuring this kind of track building. Or would it?

At 7 pm I entered Queimada, took a table and set up my game. I was soon joined by game designer Fran Garea and his friends and we played the Basic version 5 people. After a while we were interrupted; a game designer was buying champagne to everyone to celebrate the release of his new game; Proxima Obertura. Oops, do I also need to buy people champagne? We were toasting and cheering and looking at the components. The designer was proud. But for some reason the game wasn´t played. Someone whispered in my ear that this wasn´t Oriol Comas´ best game.

Some of my Seigo players liked the game and started pulling money out of their pockets. I didn´t have any copies yet, but gave them flyers and wished that they´d go to http://www.mondainai.eu/ and push the button. Fran Garea took pictures of the game and later entered it into the database Boardgamegeek, the by far most comprehensive database of boardgames (and also the site I've used to find most of the people I´ve met). My game is the second boardgame ever about the Japanese language, the other being "Kanji Battle". Seigo has got a significantly higher user rating than Kanji Battle, why I think it is safe to conclude that Seigo is the world´s best strategy game about the Japanese language. A big fish in a rather small aquarium.

After our long sweet Seigo session, they asked how the Advanced and Full versions work and I explained it to them. Then they showed me a historical game about the Reformation, called Here I Stand. Historical games are different since reality has been allowed to heavily influence the design of the game. The players typically play different agents, each with different winning conditions. It is a very special challenge to design a historical game; one has to do careful historic reasearch, face plenty of delicate trade-offs, and the rules tend to become rather heavy and full of tables of the kind that I usually dislike but that´s needed if history is to be somewhat properly illustrated. I don´t think I´ll ever design a historical game but I respect those who do (and those who take the trouble playing them). But I would like someone to design a game on the Great Northern War; I have some ideas that I´d be happy to share with anyone interested.

At the end of this very nice evening I went to settle my bill. We had a little misunderstanding; as a Swede with a phobia about bills I had payed my orders before getting them, but now they wanted me to be Spanish and pay everything afterwards. The bartender got a bilingual person to translate and we sorted it out. Then this English-speaker started talking to me and introduced me to another game designer in the house; Ulric Roth."Uli" never publishes game for money, but publish them on his website as pdf-files for everyone to download, print out and glue on stiff paper. I explained my Seigo game for him and his friends and they said it was original, that they had never seen a linguistic strategy game before. A young guy came up to our table, had a look at the games and presented himself. "I can´t believe it" he said when Uli told his name. "Is it really you? Wow." They were all playing his " Fauna" game; children and adults alike. I played it too. I was sceptical at first of course; but I came to like it. I admired it for being a game that suited small children but yet was challenging and interesting for hardcore adult gamers. The game gave the same kind of playing satisfaction as a good game of Chess, Shogi or XiangQi, but with a well-balanced element of randomness.

I almost got jealous at him for all the people happily playing his game and really enjoying it. After each completed game they gave Uli the results and he wrote it down to later adjust his World Ranking (on which he is number one). If you download Fauna and play it with your friends, send the results by e-mail to Uli and he will put you on the ranking and your way to fame has begun. Among the happy players I met a Dutch girl who had hitchhiked to Barcelona from Amsterdam and would go back by bicycle. We decided to meet up and play boardgames once I move there.

At 2 am I said goodbye to everyone and took the Metro back to La Rambla. On the way from the metro a Jugoslavian guy started talking to me. He was looking for a hostel where no one answered the phone and recommended me to go with him. Someone had cut a hole in his backpack and taken something out of it and he asked me: "Are you going to stay out tonight in La Rambla? Hahaha, maybe it´s ok now, but at 4-5 am there is only the Urban Scarysomething and if you´re lucky they´ll be satisfied by just taking your stuff. It´s a better deal for you to come with me to this hostel, I don´t want to search for it alone."

Maybe I would have followed him if he wouldn´t have laughed and given an insane impression in general. But at least he managed to scare me, thanksalot.

At La Rambla I asked around for a pub that would be open all night where I could wait for sunrise. There were clubs open all night, but I wanted a pub where I could sit with my luggage without being a total freak. I got directions to such a pub and went there and ordered a beer and didn´t get any change. I sat there drinking as slowly as possible, staring at the world´s laziest clocks as it dragged the minutes forward. 2:35. 2:36. 2:37

At 3 am they closed, I had been misinformed. I got directions to another place that was supposed to be open; but I wasn´t the only one on the rainy streets; hordes of Spanish and foreign party-animals were hunting for shelter and the doormen didn´t give priority to apparently homeless tight-ass bums. I had been standing for a while under a roof when a drunk man about 24 years old came up with a 10 € bill and asked for change so that he could call his sister, his own cell phone being out of battery.

I had no change and asked him if he knew a pub that was open all night. He took me to the small square where I had spent a miserable 10 minutes the night before. We walked close to the walls to escape some of the rain and every 50 meters he turned around and looked into my eyes to see if I was still there. The square was full of people sitting under roofs drinking beer. But all the establishments there were night clubs with queues of dressed-up people. I asked people on the street if we could borrow their cell phones so that he could call his sister but they said no. Then it struck him that he could put his Spanish sim-card in my Swedish phone and it worked. "They are in a club" he said after talking to her, "I am going there. It´s open till late, you can stay there all night." We went off to the club. Some gangster-looking people started talking with him and he followed them into a dead-end street and I got a bit anxious, but then he came to his senses and shook his head and smiled and we were out of there. They had tried to sell him something too heavy for his taste. We walked and walked and walked and every now and then he called his sister to ask for directions again and each time he said: "aha, now I know where it is". I had a feeling that we´d never find the place but I was fine with that; at least I had company. He was working for Citibank and they had had a little party in which he got too drunk and somehow he had lost everyone and spent the rest of the night alone. Now and then he turned his head, looked into my eyes and said "you saved my life".

We came to some big park that was lined with small artifical canals. We walked down one of them and after a short while someone was shouting and waving at us. It was one of his friends who told us to jump over the canal to his side. My friend tried to make me jump as well; but with my backpack and all I felt it was a 100 % stupid idea. My friend´s friend on the other side made the idea even less appealing by pulling out his little friend and empty all his digested beers and mojitos and pinacoladas in the water. So we walked down along the canal till there was a bridge. Then we were joined by the police who confiscated my friend´s friend´s ID card for emptying his little friend in the canal. There was a heated discussion between my friends and their friends (who were all Portuguese btw) and the police. I hoped that they would just swallow any pride and sincerely apologize, which I would have done, but their persistence payed off - the police handed back the ID card which meant my friend´s friend wouldn´t get any ugly papers in his mailbox the next week.

The club was already closed and we stood waiting for a taxi for a good half an hour till we gave up and started walking. It was my friend, what looked like his girlfriend, his sister and her boyfriend that were walking with me. They wanted to walk me to the Central Station since they could never understand that I was going to hitchhike to Switzerland, and I had to repeatedly assure them that any commuter train station would be perfect for me. Finally we made it to "Arc de Triomf" station and there we took pictures of ourselves, I said "Obrigado", bought some kind of ticket and went on the platform.

It was an hour to the next train, yet it was full of people. Everyone was freezing like me. When the train arrived I got on and continued freezing. I woke up at Montcada, my station, but it was still completely dark and it looked so cold outside that I fell asleep again. Someone woke up me up at the endstation and I found the train back and fell asleep again.

Madrid - Barcelona Thu March 29

I had a so-so breakfast in the hostel and walked towards Principie Pio station admiring the desert flower gardens and thinking up games. The commuter train took me the long way all around Madrid; I should have taken the metro straight to Atocha and got on the Cercania from there and I´d have saved an hour, but I didn´t know that.

West of Madrid, Alcala de Henares is a town well worth a visit for its own besides being the place to go for hitchhiking to Barcelona. By walking straight into the town center from the station I came to the central square, and from there I found bus #6.

I got off when coming to a big shopping center, which was the advice from hitchbase. I searched for the highway but it was nowhere. Eventually I found a map and saw that there was a bus #5 leading to the "La Dehesa" shopping center. "Carlos" had written the wrong bus number on Digihitch, and thereby owes me a few hours. It took me the whole day to get there; I somehow kept on getting on the wrong buses in the wrong directions and every time I changed bus I had to buy a new ticket.

But finally I found bus number 5 and La Dehesa shopping mall and the highway entrance. I stood there in the sunshine for 15 minutes. 2 trucks and 1 man in a small car offered me rides back to Madrid. 1 truck offered me a ride to some other place. Car # 31 was a small truck that took me to a service area down the road that he thought was better for me. I stood there for 7 minutes; Car number 3 was a truck that took me to a service area outside Zaragoza. The landscape on the way was wonderful; dry and with fantastic stone formations. It looked so alien to me, like we were in a desert or in a Western movie. "Beautiful" I told the driver. "No, it´s awful" he said. Maybe he was the endless-green-forest-interrupted-by-blue-lakes-kind-of-guy. Maybe he should drive in Sweden. Our language barrier prevented deeper conversations than that and I could start developing my "nice weather"-game. It will only require 4 small gameboards (one for each world average temperature), wooden/plastic markers (10 each; to show who owns what train line and what ticket price they charge), player pieces and money.

I got off at the rest area outside Zaragoza. The sun was shining and it took less than a minute for the first car to stop and pick me up. I hadn´t had time to eat anything and had to take the liberty to ask him if I could eat my bread in his car. He said that he took classes in English and needed to practice with me. He was working as an engineer for a big international company and if he could just get better in English then they would send him abroad to work in some exciting country. "Excellent", I thought and looked forward to exchanging English for a car-ride; a perfect example of the mutual benefits of hitchhiking and how hitchhiking contributes to the development of the human species and its society. Or it could have been, if I wouldn´t have got so tired of trying to understand the sentences he put together with a vocabulary of about 200 words that I fell asleep as soon and as hard as I could. I woke up now and then, such as when he lit a cigarette. Manuel took me to a commuter train station in the South of Barcelona from where I got to Diagonal where the hostel he recommended should be. But it happened to be on the other side of town so I took the bus there. Arrived quite late and the hostel was full. The receptionist called other hostels for me but they were all full so I took the Metro to downtown "La Rambla" where there were supposed to be cheap hotels. There was nothing suiting my budget so I walked around by myself, trying to enjoy the crowds of people that were hanging out on the street drinking beer. It would have been a great night if I could just get some peace of mind and some place to put my backpack. On a small square I sat down on a small bench and asked myself if it was possible to make a good game presentation after not sleeping during the night. Maybe I could find a hotel in the morning instead, and sleep and wash during the next day. A sudden faint rain settled it. I felt miserable.

As I randomly walked down a back alley I could suddenly hardly believe my eyes; there was a hostel with available 20€ beds. It was packed with 16-year-old Americans who were engaging heavily in mommy-is-not-here-and-I-don´t-have-to-be-21-to-drink-drinking, which resembles a lot Swedish I-don´t-have-to-be-18-to-drink-drinking, which resembles a lot Danish I-don´t-have-to-be-15-to-drink-drinking, which resembles a lot what I wish I was doing. But first I had to find an internet café to fill my bank card and then a cash machine to empty it again. When that was accomplished I paid my bed and got to stay with an English pensioner couple. Hey, if I pay more, can I stay with those American kids?

When I felt safe and secure i went out again. I walked up and down La Rambla, which was full of young entrepreneurs who were selling beers for 1 € a can. I eventually settled for a lonely Asian guy, hoping that he wouldn´t take me for some kind of swindler. "Hi!" I said. "Where are you from?". He was from Thailand and he was selling beer. He wasn´t selling it in the same way as the guys on the street, but by being the sales representative of Singha in Europe. It was a great job, every month he got to go to a European country of his own choice. "Singha is a premium lager", he said, but he soon confessed that he liked whisky a lot more than beer and that he liked it straight from the bottle and not from sissy glasses like Europeans. I promised to not risk his wonderful job by telling anyone about his true preferences. Don´t worry pal, I am just writing a book about it. He had enjoyed Barcelona a lot and recommended the guided bus tour. In August he will come to Stockholm and since I´ll still be abroad by then I told him that Mumin the passionate Singha-lover in my dorm would take him on a 2-3 hour historic walk around Uppsala. Are you fine with that Mumin? I know you are, this should be an honor for you.

We went to a club together, but without asking him explicitly I felt that we might have different expectations of this night, originating from our different marital statuses. I wouldn´t talk to girls, I would just talk to him and be in his face. So when he went for a 9 euro discotheque we shook hands and thanked for good company and I hope we´ll meet again. I walked around alone for a while, fought my way trough persistent prostitutes and then found a place full of teenage- and twenty-something Spanish boys and girls with big dreads and torned-apart clothes. There were dogs inside, but I was the only foreigner, breathing the sweetish air of massive, random weekday decadence and philosophising about their clothing style. They might have been anarchists but they were nevertheless uniformed like an army. No one had a sweater that hadn´t big holes in it; the holes were like stamped out in a factory. When I was 12 I tried to always wear brand jeans. Yet I was stressed by the need to fit in. So at the age of 13 I said "fuck it" and tried to become a punker; I shaved the sides of my head and bought a leather coat and steeled leather boots. I was the only one in my junior high school (there was one girl with the same style in the hood but she´d dropped out of school). But as soon as I had adopted the style I realized I wasn´t much of a rebel; I just belonged to another society. A smaller society, but yet a society, with minifying rules for what to look like. As society as conformistic and intolerant as the big one outside it. Before, it was required to buy expensive trousers. Now it was required to not buy expensive trousers. A cheaper requirement, but yet a restriction on personal freedom. I started to realize that confidence and freedom wasn´t found in any clothing style. It´s found in the absence of style. The only way to fit in is to not fit in.

Madrid Wed March 28

Woke up and laid for hours in the world´s smallest hotel room thinking about what to do with my life. One thing was for sure; I cannot afford to sleep in hotels anymore. I have to stay with friends. I should have friends in Spain, but who are they ...

Aha, the Spanish maffia! Exchange students in Uppsala 2002-03. Didn´t know each other before they came but were united by their common language and interests such as attending roof parties in Flogsta Höghus and telling me that I´m not a real Swede. I had only taken the contacts of Julio, the Spanish maffia boss famous for his stinking cheese, and I had it in a cell phone that was stolen in Shanghai 2005.

But then I recalled that my friend B. had a romance with one of the Spanish maffia girls so I texted him to ask if he by any chance still had her number, which he had. She responded after a short while: "We´re having a party tonight, let´s meet up at Tribunal Metro station 8 pm"

Excellent.

I packed my stuff and did the city. I ran into some cool architecture. I ran into groups of monks that for some reason filled up the streets. And I ran into a 1€/hour internet café where they also served breakfast. I had got an e-mail from Alex, one of the players from yesterday night. He told me that he was Basque and that he had set up a game meeting for me in Barcelona on Friday night. Friday meant the day after tomorrow and that was absolutely perfect. Thank you Alex!

I searched for the cheapest hostel in town but it wasn´t cheap. Then I had kebab with vino tinto - a modern Spanish classic - and then slept again. I walked to Tribunal metro station and found Eva and she took me to a bar in Lamasaña, the famous Madrid bar district. They were celebrating a friend who had finished her PhD degree. Congratulations! I was horrified by the size of the beer glasses here, about 1,5 dl. Eva and Ana were now doing PhD studies in material sciences. Pablo told me that his brother was a big fan of Go and recommended me to check out Go-associations since they should be interested in Japanese. That´s a brilliant idea - Go players are also patient and intelligent and should be better Seigo-players than the average restless, theme-addicted and colors-craving eurogamer. Pablo had to go home before midninght since he was studying journalism all day and working all night in a news agency. They would send him abroad again for another year, but hadn´t decided if it would be US, UK or India. He thought India. I iinquired what the rest of the maffia was up to. They told me that Julio was in Valenica. They told me that Raul had finally broken up with his Swedish girlfriend. They told me that Juan was still together with his Finnish political scientist and that they were moving to Norway. They told me that I was not a real Swede. But they are wrong, I am extremely Swedish.

Salamanca - Madrid Tue March 27

The alarm went off and I put the piece of bread in my mouth and imagined that the energy from it made me get packed and showered faster than ever. When I came out it was still dark. Found a bakery with 50-cent baguettes. Found a busstop and studied the map for a while and decided to take some kind of bus but couldn´t find it and walked all the way out of the city. For being a famous city it is very small.

At 9:25 I stood on a highway onramp; it was cloudy and depressing. After 1 hour 285 cars had passed and I started walking down the highway. The road was lined with garbage and after 45 minutes of unpleasant walk I came to another onramp. This one had much less traffic, but it came from an industrial area and I liked that. It is my experience that commercial drivers are overrepresentated among those who pick up, not just truck drivers but also people in small cars that for some reason have to drive around all day.

At 11:10 I started exploring the area waving my thumb. One man stopped but he was going back to Salamanca. After 15 minutes car #10 stopped and it was a man who was going to a village further down the road. The highway passed through the village and he let me off at a construction site right after a traffic light. He put on a helmet and went inside to supervise his young Arab workers who were entertaining me as I was waiting by mixing concrete and hoisting it up and down. An economist, I love hitchhiking inside the economy.

It was a perfect hitchhiking spot. It was now half-cloudy and I stood between 11:29 and 11:40. Car #95 was a very old man with working clothes covered by paint. We couldn´t communicate and I repeatedly fell asleep while he took me to a city called Avila. There the highway onramp was no good so I had to stand on a narrow road leading towards it that carried cars in all directions. It was windy and sunny and I stood between 12:47 and 13:30 when a middle-aged male #174 who was talking in his cell phone the whole time picked me up and dropped me off outside a restaurant where I went in to shake my sleep brain with a tiny white cup of pitch-black content.

This sunny village was called Villacastina and there I stood for 5 minutes till car #26 stopped and a young man offered me a ride in the wrong direction and told me that I was standing right before a crossing. I thanked him and walked to the crossing and stood at the appropriate onramp for 5 minutes and 6 cars but found it unsuitable and thought "this looks like the kind of highway that passes through villages rather than outside them" and started walking along it. And I was right, I was soon in a village and stood on a wide space right after a traffic light. Sunny and windy, 12 minutes and 33 cars. A truck that took me to a gas station very close to Madrid.

I stood at the sunny exit of the gas station and waved at 16 cars for 21 minutes. A truck picked me up and said he could take me to a Madrid commuter train station. His name was Jorge and he had driven in Romania. "It´s coming up" he said. I got a bad feeling when he started touching my backpack asking me how much money I brought on my travels and if I was sleeping in hotels. "I sleep ouside" I said and started looking for a good place to get out, although I think one has nothing to fear from a truckdriver. Driving around with millions worth of goods, they have eyes on them, and with a relatively well-paid job they have too much to lose to care about the humble belongings of a dirty hitchhiker.

Nevertheless, the way in which we seemed to bypass Madrid in direction "Toledo" without finding that commuter train station got me uneasy and when I complained he suggested I get out at a traffic light. There was a bus from there towards the center and I found the metro and took it to "Tribunal" and entered boardgame café "El Laberinto" at 17:05.

I apologized for being 5 minutes late, but they didn´t mind. We played the Basic version 6 people and some of them kind of liked it. Then we played " Age of Steam ", an out-of-print legendary railroad game. I borrowed as little money as possible and made a number of smart investments I think. My fellow players were very nice people, but I really wanted to kick their asses hard. During the night more and more people showed up in the café, many whom had come to look at my game. "Let me first win this railroad game" I said and the others laughed at my fanaticism. But they should have cried, it was unbelivably irrational to travel all the way to Spain and then turn down potential customers to instead play a stupid boardgame.

I didn´t even like the game; it was unnecessarily complicated. Every game has benefits - the fun, and costs - the trouble to learn them and think out a strategy. The more rules to keep in mind, the more "costly" the game is and the less the "profit" from playing it. So for every rule you have you should consider whether it´s really adding to the fun. In Seigo for example, I have canceled rules about "secondary fire" (that would make cannon fights more realistic), and rules for limiting the number of kanji on the table (to prevent the kanji inflation that occurs when bad players are playing) and I claim that my game has simple rules considering that it is a linguistic Civilization-type strategy game. (However, if you have no interest in Japanese characters then the benefit is not worth the cost. But how people can be not interested in Japanese characters is a big mystery to me.)

This railroad game had many unnecessary rules. For one thing, winning conditions were "who gets the most points" and points were given for a number of things. So it was another spreadsheet game. Performing spreadsheet tasks are no fun; if it would then we wouldn´t have Excel in our computers. I want winning conditions to be clear-cut, such as "kill the others", "build the spaceship", "capture the flag" or "get all the hiragana". If there was a god creating boardgames, then those would be games like Go.

Another thing I didn´t like with Age of Steam was that if you carried goods an unnecessarily long way then you got more money. No boardgame is a perfect illustration of reality of course; in fact there is often a trade-off between realism and play-value; make it more realistic and you lose pace. But getting more money for carrying a sack of potatoes from New York to Chicago the long way via Euroasia is the opposite of reality and it annoys me. I felt a strong urge to make my own railroad game. On the gamebox it would say "The Railroad Game to End all Railroad Games". In the perfect railroad game, the mechanics behind the need for transport should be "real". It should not be a bunch of passengers showing up every turn wanting to be transported anywhere like they were some kind of hitchhikers; "I was hoping for Paris, but Berlin could also be fun, (I´ve heard it´s cheaper, friendlier and full of young, creative people)". And a player should not get paid according to a table full of figures that the most experienced player has learnt by heart and therefore wins. The player should be paid by the other players; there should be a market for her transport services.

I finished second. When we were done, everyone else in El Laberinto were already engaged in other games. And when they were done, they had no time for my game. I cursed myself and promised myself to always make the customer king from now on. I did get to play with one guy whose girlfriend was Japanese. But it´s seldom fun playing two people, I have to stop doing that.

I won, he left and I was alone. I sat surfing for a while. My plan ended here; I had nowhere to go after Madrid. I had thought that I would continue building the plan and make new appointments as I was traveling. But I hadn´t got that much internet time. I should have had a laptop with super-bluetooth so that I could surf and blog from the trucks.

I guess I ought to move up towards Czechia now. But first I have to rest somewhere, I´m exhausted. Somewhere where it´s cheap.

I found a cheap hostel on the internet and the friendly El Laberinto staff drew me a map. When I came out I was totally taken by surprise by the vibrant Madrid night. An ordinary Tuesday in its wee hours should be quiet and dull. But the streets were crowded with people who thought nothing about sleeping. I followed the directions on the map and enjoyed the atmosphere. I was also a little little bit anxious. There were beggars, hawkers, prostitutes, people who wanted to bring you to places, people who were just looking at you, and lots of happy people.

I found the hostel but it was full. He called other hostels for me but they were full. I walked up and down on Calle Gran Via and found a staircase with lots of hotels. In one of them they had a very small room for 25 €. The smallest I have seen, not more than a bed.

Porto - Salamanca Mon March 26

Woke up from freezing again. I had turned on the heater, but not put it between me and the window. Packed my stuff and went out. The tourist information next to the train station wasn´t open so I just went down in the shining metro and went to the South-Eastern-most station. Following the highway signs I came by a cafe and had one of those evil little caffeine bombs and some bread for breakfast and then I found an inner-city stretch of highway.

There was no good onramp but next to the highway there was plenty of space for cars to stop. In fact it looked like the perfect hitchhiking spot; not legal to stop, but perfectly safe. It was 10 am and cloudy when I put the thumb in the air. A police car came and naïvely I waved my thumb at it to make it obvious that I had no idea it could be forbidden to hitchhike on the highway. The police car passed me without stopping, but just when I started to feel accepted by society the car said something with its loudspeakers. It was in Portuguese so I didn´t understand it so to be on the safe said I stayed. After 206 cars I made a cardboard sign saying "Aveiro", a city near where the highway to Spain takes off from the Lisboa road. Another police car came by but this one didn´t complain.

After another 200 cars it was 11 am and I gave up. I walked upstreams to stand on a busstop where many cars were going towards the highway. I ate some bread and drank some water and then raised my cardboard sign at 11:35. After 1000 cars it was 12:20 and I figured I needed to get further away from the city center and took the city bus to "Vilar de Andorhino". I really enjoyed the busride but forgot why. From the endstation I followed the highway signs to the onramp. It was not a good place; I could either stand upstreams - where cars where still going in all directions - or I could go down to where the Southern cars took off from the rest - where they could hardly see me since it was after a curve. I went for the second option. Luckily I had no cow with me today. It´s forbidden to bring a cow when hitchhiking in Portugal.

The sun was shining as I raised my thumb at 13:00. After 28 cars I tried with the sign again. After another 48 cars a small truck stopped. The driver was middle-aged and had already lost most of his teeth. He had the face of a poor person, yet an incredible English came out of it. Perhaps it´s because they watch TV with subtitles in Portugal, like in all countries with brains bigger than budget. He claimed that Aveiro was totally wrong for going to Spain and we had a little discussion about that and other things.

He dropped me off where the highway to Spain starts. It wasn´t ok to hitchhike there, so I started walking. A crazy-walk as I call it, simply walking as fast as possible along the highway without any idea about for how long it will be. I hate those walks sometimes and sometimes love them. The Portuguese nature did everything it could to make me love it, with lots of flowers, mountains, rivers, valleys and a strong smell of spicy summer.

After 45 minutes I came to where a major road crossed the highway and stood for a while with my good old "SPAIN"-sign on the first onramp. It was a 270 degree curve so after 8 minutes and 12 cars I crossed the crossing road and found the 90 degree onramp. This one had much fewer cars so it was a trade-off between quantity and quality. I chose quality and after 17 minutes and 7 cars I was proven right; a truck stopped and picked up me up.

He brought me to a gas station halfways to the border. I was screaming hungry and terrified by the prospect of letting me be raped by the usual gas station prices. But this was the most humane gas station in Europe; I got a bag full of small breads for 1 €.

It started raining and I stood at the gas station exit with my umbrella in left hand and SPAIN-sign in right hand. It only took 27 minutes and 15 cars for a car to stop. It was a man who communicated with me in French. He was going to a Communist meeting in Villa Formos (which is right by the border). He asked if I wanted to join and it seemed interesting of course but I wanted to get to Madrid and thought I wouldn´t understand much anyway. He was talking a lot with a high-pitched, hysteric voice. Well, he more screamed than talked. I don´t know what it was about but it appearantly involved "Communista! Communista! "

The rain was now pouring down on his car and the noise from the water on the windshield mixed with his stressful agitation and I fell asleep repeatedly and woke up now and then drooling and passed out again. Near the border he drove around looking for something. Then we crossed and were in Spain. I thanked him and stepped out and it is time to summarize hitchhiking in Portugal:

Cars waved at: 1516
Rides offered: 3
%: 0,2

Time waited: 192 min
Rides offered: 3
Avg waiting time: 64 min

Single male drivers = 3/3 = 100%

Trucks = 2/3 = 67%

The rain was like a wall all around me and fell on me like a roof. I fled into a big kind of restaurant that was there. A one-arm man watched Spanish TV. The bartenders in their red vests were looking at me with unconcealed smiles. A man with a big backpack showing up at a place like this where everyone is arriving by car is a strange thing. Perhaps even dangerous. What he is up to? I bought a coffee and thereby became a customer. I don´t know if it was Tiego´s talk that was commanding my tounge or if the coffee here a bare 100 meters from the border was really bitter and sour like it had been reheated in the microwave after standing on the kitchen table since breakfast.

It was already 6 pm and it was raining too much to hitchhike. I decided to get a ride back to the city and stay in a hotel and wait for an early morning with sunshine and relaxed happy drivers with good visibility. I went out and ran to the gaspumps, freezing like a dog, afraid that the falling ocean would break my umbrella, get inside my backpack and destroy my digikamera and make me too wet to be accepted in cars. The Portuguese Communista was still there. I asked if he could take me back across the border to the city. He got all upset for some reason. I stood outside his car, peering in through the window - probably with a pathetic and confused look on my face. He held his hands on his wheel and sat staring straight ahead into the cloudburst and thought for a long while with an annoyed an increasingly determined facial expression.

He was so full of solidarity and of trust and understanding between peoples of all the world and he was such a staunch friend and member of the struggling classes and he really wanted to share his humble car with a Social Democratic comrade from far away. But something was definitly going on with this Swedish hitchhiker. He wanted to go to Spain and now he was in Spain. And now he wants to go back to Portugal since it´s raining in Spain. But it´s raining in Portugal too, stupid. I´ve gotta go to my national Communista meeting now. He drove away without turning his head.

And I was happy he did so. The second truck driver I asked was going to France via Salamanca and I could join him after he had washed his car; "lavaro! lavaro!". Interesting to wash your truck on a day when it´s getting washed by a ton of water a minute for free. I´m not ironic, it really was interesting to watch the truck getting washed. The driver also enjoyed it a lot. It was like it was his soul that got purer and purer the more those long cylindric brushes were rotating up and down the walls and windows and between the cabin and the trailer.

He didn´t talk much. Nothing at all in fact. Except for that he had excactly one cigarett per 60 minutes to spare his stomach. It was a Renault truck and required some agility to climb into, but in return it made for an excellent view. We went through Spain during sunset. After some hours Salamanca showed up. He let me off at the edge of the city since he was just passing it and not in the mood for precision-bombing it with Swedes. It was all dark and empty but I found a woman and asked ger if she was driving towards the city center and she walked me to a busstop. Ah! Finally in the safe and comfortable hug of subsidized public city transport. The bus was 1 euro and I rode it all the way to the litten-up historic city centre and then a few minutes more to get away from the most inflated prices.

The first hotel was 35 €, the second 42. The third 25, the fourth 25 as well as the fifth. But the next one was only 22 and the seventh hotel wanted nothing more than 20 € to let me inside. The toilet was in the hallway, the window led to an inneryard with nothing on it, the TV had three channels with everything dubbed to Spanish (that´s why communication here is so tricky for us no-Spanophonics) and a remote control that was available upon request. The bed cover was penetrated by cigarette marks. It was a perfect room.

I went out for a long night-walk and sat for half an hour in a bar with a mirror in which I could stare on my own face. Sometimes I glanced at the man on my right side. Then I went back to the hotel and ate some of my bargain-bread in my bed while watching a TV-program with people dancing and being commented by a jury of seemingly charismatic and popular people. I saved one bread for breakfast. It always takes me such a long time to get going in the mornings, and I thought that perhaps a piece of bread would kickstart me tomorrow to get me clean and packed on the highway before 9 am. Who knows, it might be worth trying, so don´t eat it now, save it for tomorrow.

Porto Sun March 25

My clothes had finally dried.

I took a long, hot bath and came up with an idea for a travel game. The name is "Nice Weather" and it´s about climate tourism. The objective is to travel around in order to keep outdoor temperature around 20 degrees, and to make money from the other players´ travels. The players get to buy railroad lines between different countries. Each turn it is a new season and the temperature changes. First, each player set a ticket price for each of her railroad lines this season. Then, in order to get the most Comfort Points, the players have to pay money to each others to move along the railroad lines between the countries to keep their temperature as close to 20 degrees as possible. In summer they move North, in winter they move South. If a player thinks the other charge too much for rail transport, then she can go by car instead. The more players that go by car, the warmer it gets, which benefits the players who bought the most Northern railroad lines.

One of my travel companions knocked on my door and asked if I was coming down for breakfast. I love hotel breakfasts. The others waited patiently while I did my best to finish everything there were, and they listened to the morning´s game idea as it slipped out in portions between the plates of eggs and sips of coffees. They weren´t too convinced. But I´ll make the game anyway, or at least a prototype to see if it´s fun.

"You´re in the news today", Pedro the Organiser said as we entered XXL for the second day of Portugal´s first national boardgame convention. The convention had got a full page with the title "Adults surrender to boardgames". I had got about one third of the page. It told about my game and there was a picture of me with it. They had misspelled both the name of the game as well as the website address, but I was too excited to get angry at the drunk journalist who had spoiled the most publicity I have ever got in my life. Pedro said he would scan the article and e-mail me.

We played "Ra", another Knizia game. Now I understood how the guy has been able to publish 220 games; Ra was the same as yesterday´s High Society, but with pictures from ancient Egypt. It also had lots of rules such as "if you did not purchase at least one green card, lose -3 points. Gain 1 point per field in case a river has been bought. Gain 1 point per artist card in case at least 3 artists have been purchased" etc. Ra is what I call a "Spreadsheet Game"; in order to maximize your victory points you have to perform the same tasks as an Excel spreadsheet.

Another journalist showed up and interviewed me and took pictures. Then four of us played Seigo. We played the Basic version, since the Full game was a bit too advanced for these people. I had started to realize that "Boardgames" are not the same as "Strategy games". In fact, I was surprised by how stupid some of these games were. Anyway, one guy started up North, one in the middle and one in the West of Japan. For some reason I squeezed myself in next to the Western guy. I was afraid that he would fight feriously like a rat in a corner, so I immediately struck an alliance with him against the Central guy, who was easily defeated. At 5 pm we went for lunch.

We went to a restaurant and had fried chicken for an astonishing 10 euro (it was the cheapest dish they had). Except for the cheesy meat mountain yesterday I haven´t paid 10 euro for a lunch since I had that oyster soup on the roof of a Shinjuku scyscrape in 2003. As we gnawed at our fried chicken we talked about the future of boardgames. We were all quite optimistic since boardgaming is a social hobby that makes people sit around the same table, which will make it more popular as people get tired of sitting at home staring at screens of different kinds. Pedro the Organiser predicted that the hobby would grow in popularity in especially upper- and middle classes since it requires understanding of probabilities and since worker class people prefer physical activities.

We walked back and continued the game. When the Central guy had shrinked in power and grown in desperation, while the Western guy had become big, I attacked the Western guy and started methodically conquer his territory and built up a stable empire. The Western guy (who wasn´t that Western anymore) didn´t defend himself, but concentrated on rushing for victory by completing the Hiragana alphabet. The Northern guy did the same, and finally they both needed only "NO" to win. NO can only be produced in Nagano, in the core of the Central guy´s land. I have never seen this situation before, that two players both require the same unique character to win. I thought the West and North would keep each other locked there until the end of history, so I concentrated on building up my long-term strength (like I always do). But I was wrong, after some struggle the Central guy was almost terminated and the Western guy (who had seemed like the weaker part) moved in a Cannon in Nagano and conquered the Central guy´s NO and thus won the game. By then we had played for four hours. "I like the game", the Northern guy said, although he just lost. "It´s not a game you just start to play on a random night. It´s a game that you plan with your friends in advance to play for a whole evening."

The Northern and the Western guys continued their struggle with a game of Go, the most beautiful game on the planet. The Portuguese champion of Go was also playing. He was going to the world amateur championships in Japan. I was honored to meet him, he was a really cool guy. If I´d been a girl then I´d be sorry that he already had a girlfriend. But now I was just happy about it. I hope she likes playing Go as well, since he need to play for hours every day to keep on top.

When everyone had left I was tired and happy. I was very grateful for having been invited to take part in this event. Pedro the Organiser was 10 times as tired and happy as I was, although he seemed a bit empty, a bit post-stressed if you see what I mean. But nevertheless, he took the trouble to drive me to a cheaper hotel, recommended by the Go master. The manager knew no English but I managed with my poor French and then I hit the Porto night to search for my own copy of the morning´s newspaper.

Downtown Porto was very beautiful at night, hilly and with blue mosaic churches and stuff. I could see whay it´s a UNESCO world heritage. All shops were closed, including the one on the train station so I walked around peering into all bars. Eventually I saw a man standing reading a newspaper and I went in and saw it was "Noticia". I said hello and asked if I could have a look in the paper and he immediately surrendered it to me. It made me feel a bit bad, so to somehow make up for it and explain myself I quickly turned to page 27 and showed him the picture of me. He got all excited and went around the premises to show everyone. The newspaper belonged to the bar and I could buy it from them for € 1,25.

The room was full of drunk men. I sat down next to a middle-aged man in a blue worker´s jacket and dirty skin who sat all by himself. He looked like a hard laborer who had been unemployed and drinking for about five years. After two beers he turned to me, looked me in the eyes and said slowly: "Excuse me. I have been sitting here trying to come up with an excuse to talk to you." It sounded like he had been preparing the sentence for a long time, like I use to do when I could still speak French before my Japanese chased it out of my brain. I was surprised by the command of English he had, which didn´t go in line with his overall appearance. First I thought he might have been a truck-driver, but he didn´t talk that kind of English. He alternated between a perfect British pronunciation and a perfect American pronunciation. He asked questions like "What kind of music do you like" and "Do you do any sports?" and sounded just like he was taking English classes. He told me that had been watching Rolling Stones in Lisboa. That he once went to Spain to see Pink Floyd. And about when he went to Lisboa to stand outside the stadium and listen to when Jefferson Airplane played. He had many memories of that kind, I could write pages about it if I had had better memory and more time. Every time he recalled a new band that he had seen or listened to from the outside, he shone up in excitement and each time he had told the story about it he sat looking at me for a while with eyes full of expectations.

I was puzzled by his mysterious kind of English; he didn´t look like the kind of person who spends a fortune on private classes. It turned out that when he was 19, in 1982, his mother had sent him to an English school. Some teachers were British and some were American. He went there for a year and then he failed the exam so his mother stopped paying for the school. Then he started working with tools (here he showed his jacket) until 5 years ago when they laid him off. I asked if he came to this bar once or twice a week. "Every day" he said.

Cuimbra - Porto Sat March 24

Woke up at 7 am from freezing. No summer in Portugal yet. Turned on the heater and tried to fall asleep again.

Got a message at 8 am from Vasco: "Tell me your address and see you there at 10 o´clock". I got up and found all my clothes still wet from yesterday´s hot bath. I alternatively hung them on the heater and on the curtain rod and moved them around while listening to the English TV-Channel that every half hour repeated a story about EU´s 50th anniversary, each time with a new country report: such as "Italy was a poor country after the War. But today everyone has a car."

At 10 am I stood outside the hotel looking for a small silver Peugot. I flashed a cardboard saying "Porto" just to start off my friendship with Vasco and the guys with a little haha. An old man came to tell me that I couldn´t hitchhike to Porto on a small side-street in the middle of the goddamn city. The hotel owner came out and tried to tell me the same thing and my Portuguese was not enough to explain that I was just waiting for friends so he had to leave me shaking his head thinking I was an idiot but it´s ok.

After 20 minutes Vasco and the guys came and I squeezed into the car and we went on the highway to the North. It´s easy to get along with boardgamegeeks; the strategy is to talk about games. One of them told the story about when he was playing 4-player-chess and beat two of the players and got their chess armies but nevertheless lost to the fourth player. As we spoke it turned out that I hadn´t played many boardgames compared to these guys. They were serious; when we parked in Porto and opened the trunk they revelead tons of boardgames ingeniously stored with gameboards here, cards here and playing pieces there, so that 20-30 games could fit in a few boxes. We found our hotel and after I'd hung my still-wet clothes in my luxurious bathroom we drove to Portugal´s first national boardgame convention.

Posters in the entrance advertised "World premier" for "Kanji Conquest!". I changed the name of my game to "Seigo" long time ago, and I had already played it in public in Uppsala, Linköping, Heidelberg and Paris. But I still got mighty proud from the posters, it was like I was the main event. People were already sitting around playing and I nervously took a table and started setting up my game. A journalist and a photographer from the main Porto newspaper came and took photos and interviewed me. I was a bit taken by surprise, but told how the game worked and how I got the idea and so on and they took pictures of me.

The convention took place in a restaurant/game center called "XXL", a veritable dream for adult children with it´s mass of boardgames, computers and racing tracks. The place filled up with people and I managed to get Ricardo and Filippe to play the game. After an hour we stopped for lunch and everyone walked to a nearby restaurant where we got a very special Porto dish; a sandwhich consisting of layers and layers and layers of different kinds of meat with a tiny piece of bread on top, drenched in melted cheese, topped by a fried egg and swimming in a not-so-spicy tomato sauce. I managed to eat it all, although it took some effort.

Pedro, the main organizer of the whole event, sat next to me. He asked if I had a big boardgame collection. He told me that he once used to drink everything that was called coffee, but ever since he learnt about coffee from an expert he could only drink high quality coffee. He said that in this restaurant they served an Italian brand with a burnt taste; he preferred Portuguese aromatic. He hadn´t arranged this convention to get famous or rich, but just because he wanted people to enjoy playing boardgames.

Back in the gaming hall we finished our game of Seigo. Ricardo didn´t like it, but Filippe did and said that he would import an ensignment to his boardgamestore in Lisboa. Later I played with one of my travel mates from Cuimbra. Playing 2 persons isn´t that good, but I found this game very exciting. He had a fort stopping my land troops, but I managed to put it out with my navy and then I could invade and finish the game.

I tried out a lot of new games myself. I played "Torres", in which you build towers and try to put your own knights in top of the biggest towers. It was a pointless game, but it was amusing and I won. We played a simple card game "Coloretto" a few times; it was smart and fun. Then I played "Hive", a beautiful little 2-player abstract strategy game with no luck. I won. I played "Through the Desert", a Reiner Knizia game which is a little bit like Go, but for many players and with oases with extra-points. Pointless but amusing enough, I finished second. Reiner Knizia is the most famous boardgame designer; Vasco told me that he never plays any games but his own in order to keep his ideas originial and not copy others. It still gives him quite some choice since he has published 220 games. I felt I couldn´t fully respect someone who publishes 220 games. All those games can´t be good, and what kind of designer publishes games that aren´t good? I told Vasco about my "Trade Wars" game and he liked the ideas a lot and said he was looking forward to see it published. Ok, ok, I´ll publish publish!

Late at night we played another Knizia game, High Society. It was an auction kind of game in which you try to buy cards with points and buy yourself out of getting bad cards. I really sucked at playing it (for example I bought a 1-point card for 5000$), but I liked it a lot. It was fast and simple, and thus a little creation of genious. "I don´t want to be a fan-boy", Pedro said, "but so far I like everything Knizia´s done".

It's coming coming ...

Hi friends!

Sorry, during these travels I have been too busy to write anything more. I've realized that it's better I use the internet time to create new meetings than to write about past ones.

But in June I will be home, and then I'll start writing about the last two months of adventure! So come back soon and it will be streaming!

greetings from Leiden, Netherlands

Bordeaux - Cuimbra Fri March 23

140,14 $

'

Both our alarms rang at 4 am, which was the scheduled departure time.

'

I managed to get up at 5. I didn't dare to wake him up directly, but thought that if I went to the toliet he'd wake up from the sound of the car door. However, it wasn't possible to open the door without turning on the engine. Neither was it possible to turn on the lights. Instead I started to pack my bag as noisy as possible and it worked; soon he came crawling out of the lower bed and wrrrroooom we continued towards Spain. Before I had thought it'd be weird to sleep in a tiny truck cabin with a stranger, but it was really nice, just like being a boy scout again.

'

At sunrise we passed the border. San Sebastian is a beautiful city and seen at dawn from a truck it was magical. Tiego went off the highway and started driving on a smaller road up the mountains. In the middle of the Basque country there is a service area with free showers for truckers, and that's were we went. We drove up and up and up on dwindling roads. After a while there were patches of white in the grass. Is that snow? Nooo ... there can't be snow in Spain ... but suddenly we were in the middle of Winter Land. More snow than at any time during the past winter in Sweden. A fresh chill blew in through our open windows.

'

When we came to the gas station we saw newly-washed drivers jump over piles of snow with their towels and slippers. It might be snowing up here, but hot showers are free! Tiego had asked repeatedly if I didn't want to shower but I didn't find it necessary since I had one in Paris. But then I thought that perhaps he knew more about my hygiene than I did so I got my towel and we went to the building. They wouldn't let us in till 9 am so in the meantime we had breakfast and threw snowballs. The water had only one temperature and it was a very hot one so I burned half the body while the other was freezing from the winter wind blowing through the shower room. We hang up our towels to dry in the truck cabin and continued to Portugal.

'

In the afternoon we were out of Winterland and stopped for lunch. The stew from yesterday night had marinated on the engine-warm cabin floor between my legs the whole day. We heated it on the gas stove and added some spaghetti. There were other Portugese trucks here and Tiego asked them if they went to Porto and in that case if they wanted the company of a gentle Swedish hitchhiker. One driver told that he had once picked up a girl who was going to Portugal. At night he had let her sleep in the upper bed of his cabin and when he woke up in the morning she was gone and so was his wallet, passport, watch and laptop. After Tiego had translated the story to me the atmosphere got a little bit awkward. I tried to cheer it up a bit by saying: "I am not much better than she is. When you wake up tomorrow you will have no meat or spaghetti left". I am not sure he took the joke the right way since he heartily replied that he had a gun and would come to Sweden and shoot me with one shot if I wasn't nice.

'

The stew tasted much better today. It was in fact so delicious that I had to write down the recipe. Here it is:

'

Portuguese trucker's meat stew:

Chop one onion. Fry it in a pot together with lots of oil and yellow stuff from a bottle. Add 4 big pieces of meet and let boil for half an hour. Add salt and pepper. Marinate the stew 24 hours on an engine-warm cabin floor between the legs of a hitchhiker (make sure he takes showers) and heat it again. When it boils, add spaghetti and let boil for 10 minutes. Voila!

'

Tiego ate with the fork and I with the spoon. I started making up a board game where one player plays the spoon, one the fork, one the knife and one the chopsticks and there is a stew full of different ingredients and the players get to trade and combine their cutlery skills in their pursuits to eat as much as possible. After finishing the meat and spaghetti I drank the whole soup. Then we washed the dishes and continued our journey, listening to the same eight Portuguese Eurodisco songs that we had listened to the whole day and the day before. ''Yippie yeeeeeeeeeah yeah yippie yeah''

'

A plane flew above us. Tiego said that his dream was that his son would become a pilot when he grew up. He would drive his truck on the ground and his son would fly the plane in the air.

'

The sky got dark of heavy rain clouds. But near the horizon the sky was clear blue. I guessed that the cloudy parts were Spain and that the blue sky behind was the sky of Portugal. And it was! When we crossed the border the sun was shining and it was real summer again. We went straight to the coffee bar. He had talked the whole way about the Portuguese coffee. He said that when driving in Spain or France he had at maximum one or two cups of coffee a week since it tasted so bad while in Portugal he had 8 coffees a day. Now he wanted to buy me one and was really excited about how my face would brighten up like if I had met my savior. Unfortunately I felt such respect for his long-cherished coffee ritual that I did it exactly the way he did it, including emptying a whole pack of sugar in the tiny cup. Since I never add sugar otherwise I was overtaken by the sweetness. But behind all the sugar I could feel a taste of something strong, soft and creamy.

'

At the border we sat waiting for messages. He was waiting for an answer as to whether he should drive to Southern or Northern Portugal, and I was waiting for an answer from the game convention guys who had said that someone could possibly pick me up somewhere on the way from Lisbon to Porto. He got the message that he would drive to Southern Portugal, but since I got the message that I would be picked up anywhere on the coast I joined him. (Otherwise I would have stayed at the border to look for a car directly to Porto.)

'

He rolled down the windows and inhaled the smell of Portugal in deep breaths. His face was all happiness; Portugal! Portugal! Home again. And it did smell different. A bit like Taiwan. It got dark and the highway got narrower, passing over several bridges and with sharp curves; yet cars were driving faster than ever, including our truck. Tiego, who used to be all sunshine, started complaining about living standards in Portugal. He said that 25% of the pople were rich, 20% middle class and that 55% were poor. He said that the salary of an ordinary worker was 400 € a month and that one had to choose between owning a car or sending the kids to school. He said that I shouldn't hitchhike in Portugal, that 18 (or if it was 80) per cent of drivers were bad people, with guns. In the flickering light of the cars that roared by in the other direction his face looked different and his talk got me nervous. I realized that I would soon be walking the dark streets of an unknown city like a big grilled chicken ready to be ate by anyone. I couldn't help it but started fantasizing about how it be to get beaten up and robbed of everything. And what if my glasses would be broken! I'd be completely helpless. I am so blind that they laughed at me when I was monitored for military service. ''You'd shoot your own soldiers'' they said. Hitchhiking would be out of the question. Even taking a plane would be an adventure. I went home without glasses from Denmark once and it was just by pure chance I didn't end up in Italy.

I asked Tiego if he thought there'd be a hotel in Condeixa, the town where I was to leave the safety of his truck. He had no idea, but said there would for sure be hotels in Cuimbra, a larger city on the way. I asked if he could take me to downtown Cuimbra. Hitchhikers who ask truckdrivers to take them to city centers don't come to heaven when they die. They come to hell and hell is a rainy gas station in rural Sweden where no one ever stops. But I wasn't the professional hitchhiker anymore, I wast just a scared kid who was desperate for a pair of white sheets and a door to lock behind me. Tiego wasn't too happy about my request but was too kind to not drive me to downtown Cuimbra. I thanked him a thousand times, got out of the truck and started to walk towards the lit up area pretending to know excactly where I was going.

'

The old town was crowding a hill overlooking the water. Beautiful! I came to what looked like the main square and started walking down what looked like the main shopping street. Everything was closed but people were still out and it felt reassuring since I was alarmed and didn't want to walk on empty streets. I peered into all back alleys for cheap hotels but didn't see any. When the street ended I took to the left and finally saw a sign saying 'pensionace'. I went inside and inhaled the familiar smell of cheap hotel. A television showed football, a telephone behind an empty desk looked like it was 100 years old and there was a list of prices on the wall next to it. A room with ''privacy'' was 23 € and one with ''special privacy'' 27. I rang on the bell and after some time there was a slow creaking from the narrow stairs. An old man came down one step a second and said something nice in Portuguese. He slowly went behind the desk and I pointed at the ''privacy 23 €'' line and said: ''I want one of these''. The old man shook his head and slowly reached for an old envelope and a pen and wrote ''20 €''. I didn't know I was bargaining but ok I said and gave him my VISA card and to my horror found its magnetic stripe covered with chewing gum. The old man waved my card away and said ''tranquil'' with a soft voice and started walking slowly up the stairs. I followed him to a very nice room with antique wooden furniture and - to my delight - a bath tub. I signed some paper, put my clothes in the bath tub and left the hotel to hunt for dinner.

'

The peaceful nature of the hotel manager had completely washed away my (totally exaggerated) fears and after leaving most of my belongings at the hotel (including a pair of spare glasses) I attacked the Cuimbra night.

I walked back towards the center on another road and this one had plenty of cheap hotels and restaurants. A big group of French high school students filled the street and later there was a funny-dressed orchestra - resembling some kind of fraternity - tuning their instruments. I found a cash machine and to my relief my chewing gum-polluted VISA card created a stream of sweet euro bills. I got hooked on a ''Portuguese pork'' for 6 €. It sounded touristic, but the restaurant was full of young Portuguese people so it couldn't be merely a tourist trap. They started by serving me a plate of fried sea stuff and olives. I hate when they serve you and charge you for food you didn't order, which is the custom in some countries. But my experience is that it is seldom worth to argue about it and this was not the right time. I had hitchhiked to the South-Western tip of Europe and found the majestic Atlantic ocean, so of course I had to fry it and eat it!

The pork was greasy and good and after it I started exploring all the alleys in the neighbourhood. I was the opposite of the person I was one hour ago. Cuimbra was like a labyrinth of narrow and well-lit streets lined by white walls and full of night-closed shops. I heard the sound of live music and followed it till I found myself in a jazz club. In Czechia ''a beer'' means 5 dl, in Sweden it's 4 and in France 3. So I was joking to myself that a beer must be 2 dl in Portugal. And it was. Tomorrow will be the Porto boardgame convention so it's best that I go to sleep early I thought and stayed for one or two songs, downed the egg cup, went to the hotel, hung my clothes to dry and fell in a deep, warm, safe and comfortable sleep.

Paris - Bordeaux Thu March 22

The alarm rang at 5 am and I had a shower (who knows when the next time will be) and then made one sandwhich for the stomach and six for the road.

I woke up Thibaut and he gave me a sweater to keep me alive throughout those windy days that give stupid hitchhikers in middle Europe a hard time in March. Then he drove me to the highway entrance that his family in a joint discussion had concluded would be the most suitable for me. It was still completely dark at 6 am and I realized that sunrise was about one hour later here than in Germany. Which means that yesterday I hitchhiked 1/24 of the globe! (Which is quite easy to do on a Northern latitude.)

So in complete darkness I started thumbing at 6:20 with a sign saying "Suédois vers BORDEAUX".

3 drivers stopped, all offering short rides. But since the accumulated intelligence of the Marguet family had stated this was the best place in Southern Paris I declined the rides. After 36 minutes, car number 68 insisted on knowing a better place so I got in. I got a little bit cautios from the guy being so eager to take me to a better place, but he looked too old to be dangerous. Or perhaps he had a gun to offer me? No, the only thing he had to offer was the place where A10 to Bordeaux separated itself from the other highways. "The police will take me if I stand here" I told him and felt that it was his moral responsibility to take me back where I was or to a better place now that he had said he would do so. "Ok, I'll find a better place" he said, and drove down the autoroute.

Poor man; as you might now the autoroutes cost money in France, meaning that there aren't as many entrances and exits on the way as in other countries. It was 30 kilometers to the next place, Rambouillet. On the way he asked if I had a phone so he could call his wife and tell that he was getting late, but I said I had none. It was a lie, but it costs me fortune to call with my cellphone outside Sweden and I didn't want to spend a fortune on having him calling his wife telling her that he was on a roundtrip to Rambouillet to leave a hitchhiker that he had tried to put on the naked highway.

7:20 I stood at the entrance from Rambouillet. It was bright now, but cloudy, and I ate the chips that Thibaut had given me. A nice salty second breakfast. By the way, John Cleese has written a long and witty text in which he lectures Americans on how to speak proper English. I disagree with Cleese on the letter "U". The English language is so full of unnecessary letters that just make it hard for everyone to spell it correctly. Abolishing the stupid U:s from words such as "color", "favor" and "neighbor" is a good step towards a decent spelling system. I also disagree with that chips should be called "crisps". The whole world says "chips" so Cleese has to live with it. What he calls "chips" is not worthy of being human food anyway. Chips are not good food either, but at least is not called food. It's called "snack" and now I ate it since it didn't fit into my backpack.

After 48 cold minutes (less cold thanks to Thibaut's sweater) car #56 stopped. It was a young man who was working at the next peage (pay station) and he took me there. It felt good to arrive at the peage with the blessing of one of it's workers. But they never mind you staying there, as long as you stand before and not after the peage for some reason.

I don't like standing before the peage though; you only get one lane of cars. So I stood after the peage and waved my thumb to everything the autoroute could offer. It was cloudy and 8:30. After 16 minutes car #441 stopped. It was a woman in a small truck. But after a short while she realized that she was not going in the Bordeaux direction, so she apologized and let me off. As I walked back towards the peage a highway maintenance van came slowly against me. When we met they stopped and told me to get inside. I complied and sat down on a pile of tires. When any kind of representatives of law and order approach me I always try to be as polite and obedient as possible. "Oh, I see. I am very sorry, I will not happen again." It is a strategy that has served me well so far. After picking me up they started backing back to the peage. It took ages. Then they let me off there, telling me that I could stand before and not after the ticket machines. I wasn't 100% sure they said that though, so to be on the safe side I stood after the peage. Then the van came back, they rolled down the window and explained it to me again. Now I was 100% sure.

I stood by the left-most ticket-machine since I didn't want to stand in the middle of the traffic and I thought that perhaps the autoroute gentlemen wouldn't appreciate that either. Only trucks passed in the left-most lane, and quite a few of them were Spanish, so I decided it was time for a longshot and subsituted my old unreadable Bordeaux-sign for a new clear "SPAIN"-sign. I choose the English spelling since it had fewer (and thus bigger) letters, since I was uncertain of the French and Spanish spellings, and since an English sign would make me look like a foreigner and people are always nicer to foreigners than to their own nationals (as long as the foreigners don't try to live in their country).

After a short time a trucker told me to get up. He had so much stuff in his shotgun seat that I had trouble getting in so he assisted me by pulling in my backpack. Unfortunately I had attached my open bag of chips to the backpack so now he got all of it over himself and all over his cabin. I apologized and struggled to close the door behind me to allow him to continue through the peage without frustrating truckers piling up behind us. My cellphone rang and it was Thibaut who called to check on me just as I covered a trucker with his chips the way winter covers a sprouce with snow. I didn't answer the call since I had to apologize to Tiego and sort out where he was going and where I was going and you know those crucial sentences that begin every ride. He was going to Portugal. And I could join him all the way. Excellent! Lucky day lucky day!

Hello Spain! Goodbye Spain!

Tiego spent the following 10 or so kilometers or so throwing chips out of the window. I apologized repeatedly. Then he stopped at a service area to have breakfast. I decided to take a short walk and he told me to back within an hour. An hour for breakfast? Yes, Tiego wasn't the kind of person that grabs just anything and throws it down his stomach. Nope, he neatly laid a tablecloth on the flat area of the dashboard and put up bread, butter and ham. He turned on the gas stove (that had prevented me from entering smoothly) and cooked himself a yummy breakfast soup. I have never seen a trucker so careful about his breakfast.

As I walked around randomly on the service area Thibaut called again to see how things were going. "I don't believe you" he said. Yup, Paris-Portugal one way, for a total price of one bag of chips. That's cheap. Cheaps. Chreasps.

After breakfast we set off for Spain. I just leant back and enjoyed life. Tiego was 23 years old. Two years ago he had had a job which took him to various places in Europe, including one sweet summer month in Nyköping, Sweden. The job had something to do with "bricks". With the intersection of our different vocabularies we couldn't come closer to the true nature of his job in Nyköping than "bricks". But he had had a good time in Sweden. Including a girlfriend to whom he gave me the number and asked me to call her when I came back and say "Hi! Tiego sends you his greetings!". I will call her. But it will be strange.

Somewhere before Bordeaux he left the autoroute and went on a local road through cities. I supposed that he was going to load something but he didn't. We passed a place full of cute hitchhikers. They were a big group of boys and girls, standing in pairs with some 10 meters in between and with very big signs on which they had written so much stuff in different colors that it was hard to get it all. But they were going to Bordeaux. I waved to them through the window but later I thought that I should have shown them my "SPAIN"-sign, both to say: "hi I'm a hitchhiker too and it works!" and to show them that a sign has to be quite concentrated in its information since the driver ony has one second to read it.

He stopped at a parking area in a beautiful little forest with disgusting toilets in it. I helped him refill the water tank while he cooked lunch. Tiego isn't the kind of trucker that just grabs something edible and throws it down his stomach. No, he turned on the gas stove and started cooking a pork stew. It took the whole day. We stood for ages staring at the pot, hypnotized by the steam coming out from an ingenous little spinning cylinder. When the stew was finally done he put it aside and started boiling the rice. I saw the sun hang low on the sky and was wondering if it was possible to reach Porto in time if travelling with this Portuguese gourmet. When the rice was done - or rather when it was almost done - Tiego had also got a little bit stressed and we ate half the stew and all the rice in about 7 minutes, then we did the dishes, folded the table and the table cloth and jumped up in the truck to continue to Portugal.

At 8 pm he had to finish driving for the day. Trucks usually have to rest at night. That's why you should sometimes leave your truck well before sunset if you want to travel fast. But altough this trucker was cooking five-star-meals now and them I felt he was a safer bet than going out in the unknown waving the thumb again. And it was a very cozy parking spot, with lots of truckers getting ready for the night. We sat chatting for a while (to the extent we could), painted a sign saying "Porto" (since he wasn't going to that particular city) and then we brushed our teeth and went to bed. He brought his valuables into his bed and told me to do the same, saying that there were highway burglars out there, boldly breaking into truck cabins at night. So I put my game next to my pillow, the sweater. I tried to balance my glasses on my bedlight but they fell down into his bed. "Ey my friend" said and gave them back.

Falling asleep to the lights and sound from the highway was cosy.

Paris Wed March 21

132,06$

Woke up at 5 o'clock and had no idea where I was. Then I realized I was in Thibaut's home and that my brief post-dinner nap had lasted for 7 hours. I undressed and went under the quilts and had another 4 hours of sleep.

Had a nice, hot bath and then ate lunch with Thibaut's mom and sister. Despite my promise to Thibaut not to scare his little sister we did some "English Conversation". They had learnt in school that people in Sahara were poor since there was nothing in Sahara. Then they left me alone with a big tray of post-lunch cheese. Wonderful wonderful cheese, all different kinds. Life was pretty sweet then, or at least cheesy.

I spent the afternoon trying to arrange free accomodation in Madrid and Barcelona with no success. Then I went to the game café downtown where I had an appointment with the café owner. I had also e-mailed some 10-20 Parisien gameboardgeeks who were inititially interested in the game, but none of them showed up so we played it two players (which makes for a less interesting game since there is no trade or diplomacy). The game café owner was quite used to learning new games and he also knew Japanese so he learnt the game pretty fast and was playing quite well. He was also playing very aggressively, which paradoxically slows down the game since war hampers both players' technological progress, which prevents one player to get advanced enough to be able to defeat the other player. If a weak player continuously attacks me I have to use two turns out of three to defend myself and one turn out of three to build up my long-term strength. But if a skillful player continuously attacks me then I have to use five turns out of six to defend myself and can only use one turn out of six to build up my long-term strength. So the more skillful an aggressive opponent is the longer time it takes for me to reach the point where my technology is superior enough to allow for a safe and smooth conquest.

After one hour the café owner stopped the game and declared it unfinishable. I said it wasn't unfinishable but he said it was. I said that if we kept on playing I would crush him but he didn't want to play anymore; he wanted to sit for half an hour (30 min) telling me how bad the game was. He said it was too advanced for the average Japanese student and too Japanese for the average strategy player. I totally agree, it isn't a game for the average person and it won't sell a million copies, but for those who love Japanese and strategy it's a wonderful game. But he wouldn't let me say that, as soon as I opened my mouth he cut me off short like we were having some kind of Ricki Lake-style political debate. He said it was like monopoly, that it was just a long waiting for the leading player to win, I said that when you play 3 or more the other players just gang up on the leader so that the end remains uncertain till the end and then he said that wasn't good either. He said that the game was deterministic with no room for chance, then I pointed out that the Kanji cards appear randomly and then he said the game was all about luck and with no room for skill. And so he sat for 30 minutes arguing with me like if I had insulted his mother. When he found a word he thought was spelled wrong ('kanamono' = 'hardware') he got really pissed and exclaimed "kanemono dayo! kanemono dayo!". And he didn't get any happier from from looking it up in a dictionary and finding he was wrong. So I sat and ate his shit until he was empty, took his helmet and left on a small motorbike.

I played a game with Thibaut (who had arrived in the middle of the shitstorm) and it was finishable. Then we went home to his place, him talking Italian on the phone. Just like I and Yuqin, Thibaut and Annalisa met in Waseda and have since then had a long-distance relationship, although the distance between France and Italy is not long compared to Sweden and Taiwan. One day they'll live together in Japana again while we'll live together in Holland after summer.

At home Thibaut cooked a wonderful dish of yesterday's pasta, pasta sauce, cheese and chopped meat. We also found a big piece of cold red meat in the fridge.

Heidelberg-Paris Tue March 20

132,06$

Woke up at 6. Had slept less than 4 hours. Packed my stuff, stole some breakfast and left. It was cold outside, but more still-early-in-the-morning-cold than today-you'll wish-you-weren't-born-cold.

It was only a short walk to the spot recommended at hitchbase.com and it was a nice walk through a park full of sculptures and over a simple suspension bridge over the river. It was written that "all traffic leaving Heidelberg passes this point". And indeed it did. I wished it hadn't. The highway entrance was way too busy and there was no space for cars to stop. First I thought the website must have pointed to another place further down the road so I followed the highway for a while till I understood I was stupid and went back. Between 7:25 and 7:29 I gave this place a chance, thumbing 109 cars who passed by wondering what kind of moron it was that tried to give them a serial crash in their ass. Perhaps this place is two green thumbs up at noon, but in rush hour it's definitly a red thumb down.

There was also another place mentioned on hitchbase and I walked around the whole area searching for it but found nothing that fit the description. On a map I saw there was no point in going down the highway, so instead I tried to find suitable spots upstreams. At 8:03 I started thumbing at the best place there was, and after 15 minutes and 100 cars I took the tram to Mannheim.

In Mannheim I took the tram to "Sandhofen" and walked to the first highway entrance after the place where the westward autobahn breaks away from the North-South-one. I like to get to those spots where my highway has left the others; then I know that I can join any car that stops.

Mannheim - leveled by the war and rebuilt by Americans - was supposed to not be as pretty as Heidelberg. But I found it's Northern part very charming, although I have met little understanding for this opinion. At 10:45 it was sunny and I stood at the entrance which was narrow and curved and thus a bad place. I was therefore glad that car #8, a young middle-eastern looking man, picked me up and gave me a short ride after only 2 minutes.

The next entrance was much nicer. Not so many cars, but those that were had plenty of time and space to pick up a hitchhiker. It was sunny and windy and 10:55. After 37 minutes car #26 stopped. It was a woman who once a week went to the hospital in Trier to give art therapy to cancer patients. She described herself as the "hippie type", having hitchhiked herself in the past. I think that former hitchhikers are overrepresentated among those who pick up hitchhikers. Some people think hitchhiking is dead; that no one picks you up anymore. But apparently it will always be possible as long as there are ex-hitchhikers driving on the roads. But if fewer people hitchhike today, then perhaps it will be less easy 30 years from now. But I think that hitchhiking culture will always be alive and kicking; that is the impression I get from the online communities. It is after all the ultimate travel experience; more exciting, more scenic, less expensive and with more meetings between people than when going by train and bus. (Although I would really like to try interrail once.)

She let me off outside Kaiserslauten, where I went to the nearest entrance. Technically it was a nice spot, with many cars and plenty of space. But I had no idea as whether the traffic here was of the right kind; I had a feeling that cars entering here were just going from one part of the city to the other. It was half-cloudy and windy and 11:57. After 8 minutes car number 26 stopped. It was a former truck driver who had had a traffic accident and couldn't drive trucks anymore since his injured hip prevented him from sitting down for long times. So now he was on pension and was on his way to a computer firm that would fix his computer so he could watch more movies.

A former truckdriver, he knew my needs and let me off at big service area. It was sunny and I spent 10 minutes asking 12 different drivers if I could go with them to France. Two middle-eastern-looking men asked me what I meant with "Frankreich" and I said "I don't know, how do you say 'France' in German?"

Then I got tired of asking people and just went to the exit and thumbed. After 13 minutes and 17 cars the two men from before stopped and asked what city in France I was going to and I replied "Eventually I would like to arrive in Paris, but any city in France will do".

Did you hear that? "Arrive in Paris". It was probably my Oxford-class ability to use the proper preposition that convinced them of my harmless nature and they picked me up. As I sat in the backseat of the car flying to Paris I suddenly realized that I was now doing exactly what I had been dreaming of for a long time. I leant back and enjoyed the ride intensively. Then I fell asleep.

When I woke up we had a little chat. They were Tunisians living in Germany and they ran a company - Euradöner - which produced an impressive 32000 kilo kebab a day. I was hoping they would give me free kebab vouchers for all their stores in Europe, but they didn't. But I don't give away games either. But I got a Euradöner ball pen. Now they were going to see customers in France and the ride was so fast that I triumphantly sent a message to Thibaut that I would arrive in Paris well before 5 pm. But when we had only 30 km left they stopped at a gas station and bought heaps of road maps and made a thousand phone calls to find out excactly how they should pass Paris without getting stuck in a traffic jam. Ironically, this stop consumed the last hour left before rush hour, so when they finally started driving again we had quite some company on the road. They let me off near Orly airport and I walked into a restaurant to ask how to get to Antony. The staff were very enthousiastic and helpful and gave me lots of directions and I tried to follow them all. When I got lost I asked a Chinese man who kindly walked me all the way to a busstop.

On the other side of the busride was Thibaut. Thibaut was an exchange student with me in Waseda. His Japanese was superior to mine, but we had one class together, "Japanese Government" with Hiroko Kudo, an excellent course in my opinion. But we met quite often in Hoshien, the "European dorm", where he lived and where we played the very first embryo of "Seigo". That time Thibaut got upset by the abundance of airplanes, which made the first player to discover airplane technology (me) a too great advantage. Since then the airplane kana have been replaced with ship kana, making the game a bit more balanced. And a hundred other changes have been done as well.

We took the RER to his home and ate baguettes with Nutella and drank hot chocolate. Then he had to go for volleyboll training; since he is playing at quite a high level I wouldn't like if he skipped his practice, and he wouldn't have done it even if I'd like him to. I stayed at home and had dinner with his family. This was the first time I actually visited a real French family. I have hitchhiked to Paris three times before, but each time slept in hotels. (Or in my friend Siri's au pair pad which was technically in the home of a French family but since she hid us from her employers I don't know if I can count it.) We had smoked salmon, pasta, avocado, creme fraiche and wine from the Loire valley. There was also a Jesuit priest invited for dinner. It was the first time I met a real Jesuit priest and he gave me a flyer for a pilgrimage. I should have repaid him with a flyer for my game but I forgot; they were so absorbed by a discussion of the deteriorationg devotion of French youth.

While waiting for Thibaut to come home I laid down on their big comfy guest bed for a brief post-dinner nap.

Heidelberg Mon March 19

132,06$

Woke up to Dittrich's gorgeous view and went to his kitchen to finish off every piece of bread, yoghurt and cheese there were.

I found the Japanese department quite easy; it was perpendicular to "Europe's longest pedestrian street" that we had walked the night before.

5 students from the Japanese department were there and we played the game, the full version. All 5 of them started on Honshu so I felt I had to start on Kyushu. In that way I was alone for most of the game, progressing fast while the others were fighting each other on the mainland. Especially the two Western-most players were mean to each other, making warfare from turn 3. In this game, waging war is very costly, and a long battle starting early inevitably keeps a nation in Stone age. The whole game I was trying to invent ships that would enable me to get over to the mainland and finish off the two Western players. And when I got ships I did. Since I had been living in peace the whole game, and since I've played it 100 times before, I met little resistance. The two Eastern players were a bit stronger, but we had now played for 3 hours so we called it off since we were all hungry. But it was very fun to play. Although we played the most advanced version they got the rules quickly. They said they would recommend the department to purchase one or two copies.

After the gaming session I and Dittrich tried the local döner. I have to say that Dresden did a better job than Heidelburg on stuffing the bread full of nice stuff.

After lunch we did some mini-sightseeing of Heidelberg, an extremely beautiful little city, although today it was a bit hid behind rain. We had coffee in the centuries-old student canteen and told old stories to each other (nothing appropriate for the blog though).

Coming home again, I borrowed a pair of shorts from Dittrich so that I could wash every piece of clothing I was carrying with me. It was absolutely wonderful. I played the game with Johannes and Lukas from the corridor. I started in the North, Johannes in Tokyo and Lukas in the East. Despite my attempts to explain the peaceful nature of the game, a three-front war started almost immediately. When Lukas withdrew because he had business to attend to, Johannes started eating his lands while I prepared a huge invasion on his Tokyo to achieve the "YO", the last character I needed to win. I guess it is difficult for a first-time player to figure out how to stop 12 hiragana begin landed in your core territory. And I was too much of an asshole to tell him what he should have done :) Sometimes winning a game overrides all other considerations. I don't know if it was good. But it worked.

While the corridor mates cooked a very delicious dinner for us, I and Dittrich sat in his room burying ourselves in the most melancholic Swedish music we could find. Gloominess is a national heritage of ours, and we have to nurture it when we meet, especially if meeting abroad in warmer countries.

Hořovice - Heidelberg Sun March 18

132,06$

The alarm went off at 7 pm.

I could hear it raining outside. The last guy I hitchhiked with yesterday had said that today would be even colder than yesterday. Close to 0 degrees. I could hear it raining outside. I did not want to go out there. I wanted to stay in this big warm hotel bed for the rest of my life. Please let me stay in this bed! Forever forever forever.

Breakfast cost 2,3 euro and was served in the huge restaurant in where they had laid three tables only; two for the other guests and one for me. Mine was far from the others, next to a window. There was a cold draught from the window. Don't make me go out there. Three breads with honey and jam were served with a jar of tea. On top of that I got to choose one out of eight breakfast dishes. I sat for a long time trying to calculate what dish would keep me warm the longest time. Eventually I choose rice pudding with butter, cinnamon and cocoa, which after some time came in a huge bowl. It was a little bit like what we have for breakfast on Christmas and it made me warm as if I had had a sauna.

The town was completely empty at this hour. On the map I'd seen that there were two roads leading to the highway. I figured that the Eastern one must be for cars to Praha, while cars to Plzen should take take the Western one, and I tried to get on that one. When out of town I started hitchhiking, it was 8:45 and cloudy. After 8 minutes car number 8 stopped. It was an old man who took me almost to the highway. Between 9:04 and 9:09 I walked the last part and 4 cars passed by. The wind was now blowing extremely hard, so fierce that I thought my glasses would fly away each time I turned around to look for a car.

At 9:09 I stood at the entrance for Plzen and hardly any cars came. All this time wasted on waiting for cars! I wish I'd had a small computer with headphones and language-learning software. I'd be fluent in every language by now. After 31 minutes the 5th car stopped and a young man with bad breath took me to Plzen.

I walked to the city centre and passed the Pilsner Urquell factory on the way. The museum of the world's first lager wouldn't open for half an hour so I kept on walking, eager to get to Heidelberg. The city centre was well worth a few photos. I found the road to Germany and started hitchhiking before the city border. 9 cars passed during 1 minute at the first busstop. 9 cars passed during 2 minutes at the second busstop. At 11:35 I started walking backwards, holding the thumb up. After 15 minutes #80 stopped. It was a young truck driver who drove a truck full of industrial textiles from Czechia to Holland and who had a daughter and girlfriend at home. He drove for 2 weeks in a row, spent a few days with his family, drove for 2 weeks, spent a few days at home, drove 2 weeks etc. He earned 1400 euro a month. Before he used to drive to Sweden, but now a Polish firm had that route. He said that they were bad for business, that they were driving for months at a time and for 800 euro a month.

At the border to Germany he had to stop and wait for Monday. I love borders. Especially this Plzen/Nürnberg-border. Here one can really stand and be picky about what cars to take. Last time I got a ride to Frankfurt by a guy who worked for the European space project. He was sitting making his calculations in Praha and then every other week he drove to Frankfurt with a CD full of figures that were to sensitive to be sent by e-mail or by post. This time I also got a ride to Frankfurt; after 5 minutes and 38 cars. The guy was from Budvar, city of Budweiser. He spent a good time condemning the American theft of the Budweiser trade mark for their - as he said - "bottled piss". He got very emotional about this, driving 160 km/h cursing American Budweiser. I tried to lead the conversation into something else to calm him down but whatever he talked about he got all aroused. IKEA made him furious; "I buy only quality! No I don't buy, I make myself, it's the only way to get quality!" I tried to ask him about his job, but he was very passionate about that too, which was to control the quality of automotive parts. His work was in Brussels, but every weekend he drove home to Southern Bohemia since he needed forests and lakes to relax in. In Belgium there was such a high population density that it made him bananas.

As we flew the autobahn across Germany at lightspeed I started checking the map for where to get off. Since he drove this way every weekend he knew there was no Raststätte south of Frankfurt. The only place to get a car southward was at Wurzburg in the midst of Germany, from where I could try catching a ride in the Stuttgart direction. I went off and started asking at 15:00. It was practically storm and raining cats and dogs. Quite a bad day for running around between the gas pumps. To not get all soaked I stood inside the shop and asked people there. I don't like harassing people inside shops, but what I could I do. The only person in the Stuttgart direction was a single woman who declined to take me along. Some other people told me that the road to Stuttgart was in the other direction. Never believe such people, 50% tell you such things because they are mean, and 50% because they are stupid. After 35 minutes and 35 cars I accepted a ride to Wiesbaden with an American soldier. Wiesbaden wasn't better than Frankfurt, in fact it was worse, but I was tired of this place and the American soldier looked nice and had a comfortable and dry car. We had a very interesting conversation all the way. We couldn't avoid talking about Iraq, where he had been for a total of 2,5 years. Now he was stationed in Wiesbaden, which he found pretty boring. I didn't asked about his age, but he seemed to be much younger than me but still much more an adult. He thought the train from Wiesbaden to Heidelberg was only 5 euro and took me to the train station and gave me 5 euro. I accepted the bill, not because I am desperately low on money, but because it made taking the train hurt my pride less.

But the train was 17 euro. Shocked, I staggered out of the ticket office and into a bookstore to look on a road map. I saw the extremely dense and complicated autobahn system between the two cities and realised that there was no way I'd get to Heidelberg before nightfall. I'd end up in between somewhere, standing in the middle of a highway labyrinth with speeding cars going to so many different places but mine. I put back the map and went back to the ticket office and forked over the 17 damn euro. Sometimes people ask me if I am not afraid of getting robbed when I hitchhike. But I'll tell you that it is when I don't hitchhike that I get robbed.

The train was much slower than a car, and it stopped everywhere. The most exciting thing that happened was when the conductor threw off two teenagers who hadn't have any money left for tickets after spending their life savings on stupid hiphop-gear. The conductor didn't throw me off, I would never dream of travelling for free.

A weird old man in front of me stared at me with eyes popping out of his head and talked to himself in German, making circles with his jaw. In some forest, where there wasn't even a station, the train stopped for such a long time that we'd miss the connecting train in Darmstadt. We sat there in the forest. An unbalanced person was peering out the window with binoculars and screamed "FUCK" (in English). Damn, I knew it was dangerous to not hitchhike. Personally I handled the frustration by taking photos on the sun from the train.

In Darmstadt the connecting train was disconnected, but I found a local train to Heidelberg that stopped at every single house and hut along the way. I got restless and started walking through the train to see if there were anything interesting anywere and ran into a big group of ice hockey fans celebrating Mannheim's victory against Frankfurt. I hung out with them the rest of the trip. In Heidelberg I called Dittrich who was a Gutish exchange student in Uppsala for some years. Me met up at the bus station outside his beautiful new-built dorm building. He lived on the 7th floor and the view from his balcony, over the river and castle and city, was the best view I've ever seen.

Together with his corridor mates - including a Japanese and Arabic-studying environmentalist and his friend the 16-year old musical genious already studying music at university - and a bunch of Italian exchange students we hit the city. It was a calm Sunday night with a tall Weissbier.

Pardubice - Hořovice Sat March 17

132,06$

It was hard to get up.

I made sure to take care of all the mess that I had accumulated during my days of work in the world's most hospitable graphic production company.

To facilitate my hitchhiking I left as much stuff behind as possible. One thing I left was my winter jacket. It had been summer ever since the day I arrived in Berlin, and my winter jacket had just been a burden; standing by the road with a heap of cloth next to you just doesn't feel good. Instead I put on every shirt that I had. With 5 layers covering my trunk I thought myself equipped to withstand the elements. But when I heard the door to safety snap behind me it was cold. In theory the sun had been up for hours, but a massive layer of nasty clouds preserved the chill of midnight in the industrial area of Semtin. Shivering, I walked hastily to the road.

Semtin is a really good place for hitchhiking to Praha. The road that goes through the village is the one that leads to the new-built highway, and it is dotted with bus stops. On one of those I stood at 10:00 in a faint rain. After 5 minutes car number 26 stopped. Inside was a Maroccan man who worked with making computer software for training doctors in performing surgery. I told him that they should make a Playstation version of their software, for kids. It could for example be a racing game and when you crash you have to operate your map reader in 5 minutes or he will die and you won't have a map anymore. I don't know if he took me seriously, but I really believe in the idea. But since I know nothing about neither surgery nor programming I have to throw it away and hope that someone else picks it up and makes my kids smart surgeons instead of useless monster-killers. The biological reason for why we like to play is that we need to practice necessary skills, but by creating games that gives the player nothing but sore wrists, bleeding eyes and neglected homework we cheat the human organism, just like we do when we satisfy the once essential stone-age desire for high-energy food with unhealthy products that makes us heavy and tired. So, to give us more time to play (which is the meaning of life) we need to come up with productive games that makes the players stronger in the world outside the game. Your gaming shouldn't compete with your work, it should be your work. This is why everyone should buy and play my games. My games are the only strategy games it's strategic to play.

The Maroccan surgery-software-programmer was only going a short way in my direction and soon I was back in the rain. I stood by the road at 10:12 and after 8 minutes a Ukrainan truck driver stopped and took me to Praha. On the way he stopped at a gas station and there he and his truck got carefully surveyed by the police. They didn't care about me, not even looked at my passport.

When we approached Praha I had two options; I could get off at metro station Cerny Most and take the metro to some place, or I could join him all the way to where the ring road around Praha crosses the highway to Plzen. I chose the latter.

Bad choice. All roads on which cars entered the Plzen highway where so fast that hitchhiking was both impossible and illegal. But there was a local road that lept alongside the highway. My option were now to hitchhike westward along this road to the nearest highway entrance or gas station, or to walk upstreams into the city and find a busstop there. I chose to walk/hitchhike along the local road.

Bad choice. On the map it looked like one of those gentle countryside roads, but it was a suburban road lined with houses and run by cars going to their home three blocks away or to the supermarket five blocks away. Half-heartedly I stood waving my thumb for 10 minutes and was ignored by 59 suburbians. Later I stood one minute at a busstop, looking at 18 no-we're-not-going-anywheres passing me. I walked and walked and walked but the suburbs never ended. I felt the whole day disappear like ice in Sahara. Instead of a Saturday night party in Heidelberg with friends I would sleep on some windy field somewhere.

After over an hour of walking I came to the first highway entrance. I was immediately met by a police car that informed me in German that I could not hitchhike on the autobahn. I asked if the entrance was ok and it was and I stood there at 14:13.

It was a worthless entrance. There came about one car every two minutes and no one seemed to be of the kind that goes to Germany. And it was freezing cold. I regretted leaving my winter jacket in Atol; now I had to stand shaking like a washing machine looking at the grey sky and at cars that never came and didn't stop if they did. I decided that after three hours I would take the bus to Praha, sleap there, and then tomorrow find another way to get out of the city.

But after 104 deep-frozen minutes car number 50 stopped. It was a man going to "Beroun". Had no idea where that was, but it must be better than here.

It was a village 10 minutes down the highway. I stood at the entrance there at 16:10 and the sky was grey and the wind punished me. After 8 minutes car number 32 stopped. It was a man going to another village another few minutes down the highway. I concentrated hard to let my body and backpack store all the warm air he had in the car. At 16:30 I stood at the entrance from the village under a sky more grey than ever and a wind that had sine long penetrated my clothes and was now eating out the inside of my bones. It was unbearable. After 41 minutes a mere 15 cars had passed and I was shaking like insane and I gave up.

There was no forest anywhere around here and I was not tempted to lie in the open tonight so I started walking the local road to the nearest town; Hořovice. After only 3 minutes car number 4 stopped. The driver said there was only one hotel in Hořovice and took me there. One room was 16 Euro. I asked the receptionist if there were any hostels or guesthouse in the town but she said there weren't. Since I was freezing like someone who has been hid by a glacier in 10000 years I asked her several times if they had a room with bathtub and each time she said no.

I had the longest hot shower ever and went to bed. That was very comfortable. Absolutely wonderful. Under quilts and blankets I passed out at 6 pm.

I woke up by loud disco music. It was now 11 pm and I figured that since it was Saturday there must be a nightclub in the hotel; all small cities with only one hotel have nightclub in the hotel on Saturday. It's called "Statt" in Swedish. Like you have to see the pyramids if you're Egypt you have to go to Statt if you are in a town with only one hotel on Saturday. The music made it impossible to sleep anyway, the dancefloor was probably a few meters under my bed. And I was also really hungry, had only had small pieces of bread and candy during the day.

The hotel restaurant was open till 12 so I studied the menu carefully to determine what gave most food for the money. In Czechia they often provide the exact weight of each dish, which is helpful for us nutrition-per-currency unit-maximizers. After making my elaborate choice I went to the waiter who said the place was closed. He recommended me the nightclub; in fact the only place of any kind still open.

The whole town between 13 and 50 were there. Everyone drunk and dancing. I sat in a corner with my "bageta" and enjoyed the energy from the people, the taste of food and the absense of ice cold wind. Then I went to bed again.

Friday March 16

130,82$

Today was a slow day. We started directly with going for lunch. I asked for something traditional and got fried pork with potato mash. Then I spent the afternoon making graphics for the website and getting myself ready for tomorrow's trip to Heidelberg and beyond. In my planning I had not come longer than Madrid, but I hoped to arrange meetings in Barcelona and München while on the road somewhere. Optimistic.

It's always nice to leave a place after being there for a while. My ambition was to go to sleep early, but I stayed up e-mailing the whole world till 2 am.

Thursday March 15

I woke up from the others working around me. I was a little bit ashamed to get dressed in the middle of the office, but the size of the computer monitors here did a good job protecting my decency. I think I even managed to sneak away the clothes that I had hung under the desk to dry.

I started to design a flyer to give to people interested in the game. We went for lunch at the same place as yesterday; I had some kind of meat with rice. Got no salad today.

On the way back we stopped by a lake and tried to find flat stones to throw on the water.

I finished the flyer and gave it to Miloš who is the man to speak to when it comes to transforming pixels on your computer screen into piles of tangible papers full of color and a smell of promise. Looking at the 1000 sheets with my writings and artwork on it I felt like a father again. I panicked for a second when I realised that the website address that I had copied 1000 times led to a site that was just blue and strange. So I sent an e-mail to Torkel begging him to fix it. And he did. Tack!

Then I continued spamming the world of games and Japanese.

In the evening there was a party to celebrate the move of Atol Productions to its new big premises. We got lots of sandwiches, salami and wine; Atol has a strategic connection with a wine distributor. The place filled up with new and former staff and everyone was Czech of course. It's always a bit challenging to be the only foreigner in such a party, but there were enough English-speakers around to make me involved in the family. Both Radim and Roman are proud of their geographic skills so we amused ourselves with games like "what is the capital of..." and "write down 12 countries that borders only one other country". When I asked "what city is in the middle of Czechoslovakia?" the room got teeming with guesses of cities near the Czechian-Slovakian border. When I gave the answer, "Oslo", bear bellies were shaking with laughters like if there was an earthquake. A stupid joke, but here it worked so well that I started feeling all comfortable.

I was astonished by the party energy of the older men. I tried to stand longer than at least the oldest of them, but at 5 am I gave up and went to my sleeping bag behind my desk. I was not alone this night; Roman and Miloš were already deep asleep behind their desks as well.

Wednesday March 14

I went back to the hotel last night since I had already paid it and since I needed to hang my laundry.

It didn´t dry during the night but I just packed it and went to find the bus back to Atol. On the way I ate a salami for breakfast.

Some policemen showed me to the bus and I got on.

Came in at Atol at 10:30 and started working again.

At 12 we went for lunch. We took the car to a very genuine lunch restaurant and had wonderful chicken with lots of salad and Gambrinus. Atol production is situated in Semtin, a village on the outskirts of Pardubice. Semtin is home to Semtex, a company producing explosives. In fact the whole area is full of chemical industry, so the car ride to and from the restaurant went trough an alien futuristic landscape of pipes going up and down in different directions. They told me that there was an explosion in Semtex in the mid-80s that broke windows three kilometers away. I joked that we would all be blown up one day, and - speaking of the devil - our concentrated afternoon work was suddenly interrupted by a big nice "booom" with a steady bass. We looked at each other and laughed nervously.

The other left the office one by one. I stayed and finished the work. Then I continued sending hundreds of e-mails to boardgame geeks in different countries and followed up any recommendations I got from those who answered. Since all countries have their own languages and those are languages I don't know, this is the way I get information about where to go.

The TV showed an Italian movie with Czech subtitles.

At 2 or 3 or so I crawled into my sleeping bag. It was a little bit creepy to lie alone in an abandoned office building in the middle of an industrial area far away from people, cars and shops. There were no sounds except for the creaking from the creaking door and occasional sounds from the cage mice.

Pictures from Pardubice

are found here

Pictures from Berlin and Dresden

are found here

Where is the printing company? Tue March 13

101,86

Woke up and walked around the city. I wanted to find new shoes since my old are killing me, I wanted a pair of shorts so I could go and wash my jeans, I wanted to find a laundry, internet etc etc, I wanted to find a cheaper hotel with more facilities. But I found nothing of this.

The only thing I found was The Printing Company. I was surprised that it was situated at such a fashionable address; I thought it'd be in the suburbs. I didn't dare to enter but went to the hotel and put on the nicest, cleanest shirt I had. Then I went back. In the lobby of the office building I saw the logo: Atol Production.

I entered and looked confused. A lady asked if she could help me. I said I was looking for Atol Production. She went to some other ladies and asked them and they had a short conversation, looked at me, shook their heads and disappeared.

What now? What kind of behaviour is this? What's wrong with me, what's wrong with Atol? I started to randomly walk up the stairs. Walked through a corridor, walked up some other stairs. And there it was: Atol Production. There was a picture of a cat on the door. I knocked. No one answered. Perhaps they were out for lunch? I tried the door and it opened. On the inside there was a large empty room. I looked around and there was nothing there, except for some flyers advertising some bar, indicating that a printing company had once existed here.

It was a long time since this company answered any of my e-mails. Perhaps they had gone bankrupt.

I went to the tourist information and looked up the number to the company. I wanted to ask the very helpful lady there if she could phone them for me (in case there'd be a Czech voice saying that this number does not exist anymore, so go to hell and swallow your dreams). But she seemed determined to talk on the phone all day so I took a walk to the train station instead. On the way there I was thinking about what to do now. I felt like I was thrown back months in time. Perhaps I should ask the game-crazy graphic designer in Turkey if he could find a suitable printing company for me? But what about customs? Would I have to fill out doyens of forms? I hate filling out forms. I wish this Atol Production could just start existing.

I found a phone booth at the train station which swallowed coins without giving phone calls. Then I bought a phone card and it worked. "Dooot ... dooot ... dooot ... dooot .... Radim!"

"Hi this is Harald Enoksson from Sweden. I am here now."

Radim came and picked me up at the train station. The company had recently moved to another location, to Semtin outside Pardubice. It was fortunate that I came here, because they had had trouble understanding how I wanted my game printed. Each marker has a Hiragana and a Katakana side, but it was hard for them to understand what images belonged together and so on. Now we could sit with the graphic designer and sort all things out. They said that they needed the marker graphics to have a 3 mm margin or the cutting would cause ugly white lines around each marker. I said I would like to arrange that but that I had no computer ... so they let me sit and work here in the office. It took some time to regain the graphic skills. And then when i had done all the 552 images, then we realised that I had done them wrong, so I had to go through the 552 images again. It took some time.

In the meanwhile, all the workers had left the office. And long before I was done they came back with lots of beer and urged me to stop working. We started with a night tour of the city; the old square; the castle etc. Then we went back to Atol to drink beer; talk about life and play with the cage mice.

Praha - Pardubice Mon March 12

100,95 $

There was no entry for "Praha - Hradec Kralove direction" at hitchbase.com, but I saw on a map that the highway E67 started right next to Cerny Most subway station so I went there. The main entrances to the highway were far too busy to allow hitchhiking, but where the local road from Cerny Most turned into highway there was a long stretch of road that was absolutely perfect for stopping a car. On the downside was that cars weren't allowed to stop there, and that they had high speed. On the upside was that the road was so straight that drivers saw you a long time in advance, which helps. I rose my thumb at 11:45 and after 15 minutes car number 17 stopped. It was a taxi driver going to Podebrady. He knew some German and let me off at a gas station at 12:26. There I asked people if they went to Pardubice or Hradec Kralove. They all said something that sounded like "no I am going to xxx" and since I didn't know where xxx was and couldn't speak Czech I just had to let go. So eventually I went into the shop and bought a road map of Czechia. Now I asked the drivers where they were going on the map and then - since everyone where going in the right direction - asked them if I could go with them. But I couldn't. When I came with my map most drivers seemed to think that I just asked for directions, and when I asked if I could go with them they looked a little bit surprised and like if they felt tricked in some way. So after 53 frustrating minutes and 25 annoyed shaken heads I went to the exit to try the thumb instead. At least then there is no doubt what your purpose is. After 30 minutes and 43 cars I looked on my new map and saw that there was a local road going in the right direction 5 kilometers from here. I hate walking along highways: you have to either walk next to the road and listen to the sound of hundreds of roaring engines, or you have to walk in the field below and get your shoes filled with wet soil. The blisters on my feet were already large as cherrys, but the gas station now seemed like the worst place on earth so I choose the walk anyway. To my delight I soon found a small farmer's road running next to the highway and that made life a lot better. How comfortable! At 14:37 I came to the local road. It was really fast and narrow, so I figured I had better walk to the village 3 km away where the road should slow down a bit. I waved my thumb while walking backwards (walking backwards is my specialty skill). Car number 80 stopped after 22 minutes. He took me to Kolin. Kolin was - like every city around here seem to be - very beautiful. I walked through it and at 15:41 came to a bus stop on the road south-east. It looked like a good place for hitchhiking and - tada! - a hitchhiker showed up and stood there. I was delighted, now I could just sit down and do nothing for a while. I ate some bread and watched the young man - who had no backpack - wave his thumb. Aha, they do the thumb in Czechia too; I'd better save the flat hand for Poland. After 22 minutes and 224 cars the young man got a ride and I took his place. After 1 minute and 20 cars I got a ride. The man who picked me up really liked talking so I think I used every Czech word that I had learnt. I tried to ask him to let me off at the junction outside Kutna Hora, but he thought it best to drop me off at a village between Caslav and Chrudim. Measured in kilometers to Pardubice he was right, but since I would probably have to change cars in Chrudim it would take longer time. Whatever, at least I got to hitchhike in a cute village for a while. I stood between 16:31 and 16:50 and then car number 44 stopped. It was a truck driver going to Chrudim. He let me off at the road towards Pardubice and there I found a bus stop that looked excellent. Unfortunately, a bus blocked the bus stop. It went to Pardubice and I asked for the price. 50 cent! I won't hitchhike to save 50 cent I thought, and jumped on.

When the Swedish army visited Pardubice in 1645 they were kind enough to leave a few renaissance buildings around the town square, and for those buildings I now went to find a tourist information. They were closing in 10 minutes but were kind enough to call a couple of hotels till they found a really cheap one. It was 9 euro and 15 minutes away. There was no reception, but a bar where they gave me a key and told me to pay some other day, sold beer for 40 cent and showed the Czech icehockey quarter finals on widescreen. I wanted to go to the city and withdraw cash and get a decent dinner, but my feet were threatening to fall off so I stayed in the hotel and passed out at 8 pm.

Dresden - Praha Sun March 11

100,95 $

I love staying in hostels. They are warm and they have comfortable beds and hot showers in the morning,

It was a 5 km walk to the highway. But it was ok since it passed through the city center. After experiencing Neustadt at night, it felt like walking through downtown at daytime would make the Dresden visit complete. For being totally devastated in the second world war, Dresden has quite a historical city center; small but impressing. When I found the marvelous murals of Sweden's mortal enemy Agust the Strong's castle accompanied by live flute music I was literally trapped in history and had to force myself to continue to the highway. After the historical city center there was a building from the DDR-period with a gigantic mosaic. It was the largest and most beautiful piece of Communist art I have ever seen. I am glad that they have kept it, it's really a monument of history. Unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures though, since my batteries had died just when I had finally made the opera house, the mercedes buildig and the mosque to stand on line. The DDR building following the castle of August the Strong really made the walk a walk through history. I thought that if a McDonalds restaurant would complete the picture. And there it was! What will be the next building?

The inner city street turned into highway in that sneaky fashion that is so common in Germany. There were no bus stops or other good hitching places. At 12:16 I found a thin highway entrance. I had no good feelings about the place, but tired as I was I gave it a chance. It was sunny and windy. After 34 minutes 104 cars had passed and I gave up and continued walking. The polizei doesn't like when you walk along the highways. But it's not my fault that I have to walk along it; they should have built a good hitchhinking spot and I would have stood there.

Highway systems are never built from a hitchhiker's perspective. It's not regarded as an legitmate way of travelling. Why? Because we don't pay anything? Hitchhiking is beneficial for the world. Hitchhikers pollute very little when they travel, compared with all other modes of transportation, save walking and cycling. Hitchhiking use up excess capacity. If society was looked at as a company, then the hundreds of cars going in the same direction with one person in each would look like an outrageous waste of resources. Besides making better use of our resources, hitchhikers also create social capital. Go through your phone book and make a list of your 10 best friends. Are they men or women? What age are they? What level of education do they have? What's their etnicity and social background? What party are they voting for? Probably you'll find that your ten best friends look like you on most of these points. And that means that you are living in a bubble. We all live in bubbles, floating next to each other. We are walking the same streets, but yet on different planets.

Hitchhiking pops these bubbles. When you get into a car, you enter another world. You talk. Or at least you try to talk. You exchange your views. You practice what you know of each other's languages. You show each other that totally stranger are indeed nice people. You teach each other trust. You build and maintain the fabric of society. This is what hitchhiking do.

So why should the highway systems discriminate against hitchhikers? Why should I have to walk along this road for hours? All I'm asking for is a bus stop or the like at the end of the city. Give me that and I won't walk where pedestrians shouldn't.

At 13:22 I had come to the place where the cars from Dresden enter E55. There were little room for the cars to stop and in addition cars entered from another direction as well, which gave the drivers little time to concentrate on me and my wish to join them for a ride and a chat. Nevertheless, I stood there for 18 minutes and 100 cars. Then I started walking along E55 to Praha, hoping that I would find a parking area.

Hitchhiking is not difficult. If you stand in the right place you'll get a ride in a short time. It is finding the right spot that is difficult. It is a matter of intelligence. Therefore I am grateful for sites like hitchbase.com were hitchhikers share their information. I wished that everyone who has gone south from Dresden before would have wrote about their experiences (in English please), so that I wouldn't have to spend hours out here.

At 13:58 I found a really small parking area. It was sunny and nice and after being rejected by the three cars that were there I sat down with some bread and wurst to enjoy life. At 14:09 car number 4 agreed to take me to the Czech border. It was an old German man who played old German music. We struggled with conversating in German for a while, until he asked me: "Do you speak English?". Haha, if I do!

He drove me to the first service area after the border. There were plenty of trucks. For some silly reason, trucks are not allowed on German roads on Sundays, but I thought that perhaps in Czechia it would be different. I asked a few if they went to Pardubice, but I couldn't make up my mind on what language to use, so soon I just went to the exit and raised my thumb. Or perhaps I should use the Polish flat hand now when in Czechia? But maybe the German drivers wouldn't understand? I alternated between the thumb and the flat hand for 31 minutes during which 17 cars didn't stop. Then I went to the gas pumps and asked a young guy where he was going. "Praha" he said.

"Can I go with you?"

"Eeh ... where are you from?"

"Sweden" I said, hoping that it would be the right answer. And it was.

They were two German girls and one Czech guy and were studying in Praha. I don't know if it was to avoid the highway toll, or to create more tourist experiences for me, but for some reason the driver went off the highway and took a road that dwindled along a small river lined with cute villages and one amazing medieval mountain castle.

They let me off in central Praha and I found a hostel that wanted 18 euro, and then a hostel that also wanted 18 euro and finally I found a hostel that wanted 11 euro. It was nice enough and turned out to be situated right next to Müztek subway station in the very center. After a short nap I went out and walked for hours to look for the pub I came to when I was 18. But it was nowhere to be found.

Dresden Sat March 10

100,55$

One golden rule of hitchhiking is to start really early in the morning. I wasn't able to follow that rule today. I made it even worse by sitting all day uploading photos from my camera. I also checked hitchbase.com for how to hitchhike towards Praha. Annoyingly, all entries were in German. But the most popular place seemed to be a "JET" gas station in Schöneweide. One person had had trouble with the gas station staff, but the others ranked it three thumbs up out of three possible. So I went there. The subway system really discriminates against the inhabitans of Schöneweide; it took me almost two hours to get there. Waiting for a train that never comes is much more stressing than waiting for a car that never comes. Once in Schöneweide I walked some 100 meters in the Gronaü direction and found the place at 16:05 and started asking.

After 15 minutes driver number 11 accepted my company to Dresden. He was wearing a "Sweden" sports jacket and before going to pay his gas he asked me "sugar or no sugar?"

"Um... no sugar" I said and he went back into the shop. He was apparently going to buy coffee :) But he didn't ask about milk! What if he puts milk in my coffe? Damn, I knew it was dangerous to hitchhike.

The drive to Dresden was very pleasant. We talked a lot. But I gave him the address to this blog so I can't give you any details ;)

He was a photographer, but only had one picture on his website. I told him to load more, hey Lars, no one will steal them!

As we approached Dresden the sun started to go down and I gave up the idea of getting to Praha this night. But why don't check out Dresden when I have the chance? Lars drove me to Kangaroo Stop hostel where I got a bed with clean sheets for 15 euro. With the cheapest beds in town and 500 meters from the "bars and alternative culture" district according to the tourist information, it was an easy choice. They needed cash payment so I went out to get some. On my way home I got lost (of course) and found many abandoned buildings. Some buildings looked like they hadn't been touched since 1945, still standing with roofs bombed away and walled with fences and "no trespassing" signs.

After finding the hostel I hit the Neustadt night. It was dotted with bars like was it some mediterranean party island in peak tourist season. Kids aged 15-50 roamed the streets in black leather jackets and racks of beer. I walked up and down the streets unable to choose which one of all places should get my few Dresden euros. Finally I sat down next to a young man who sat alone with his beer. He was waiting for doing civil service instead of military service and in the meanwhile he was painting stuff with his friends. I asked if it was them that painted all the walls, but they had only painted some of them. After civil service he would go to Spain to learn Spanish. Now he was sitting waiting for his friends and then they would take the tram to the "slaughter house" where there was a free party tonight. He recommended me to join them, but I wanted to go a place that was closer to the hostel. Then he recommended "Hibedas" which he said had "cheap beer, students and alternative people". That settled it.

The place had red walls and candles on the table. I tried to talk to someone but failed. Instead I went on a kebab hunt. At "Dönerpoint" on Allésstrasse I saw a man getting a roll of something big as an arm. "I want one of those" I said, and for 3,30 I got a "dürüm" kebab; the largest kebab I've had in my life. It was one kilo of concentrated happiness. While eating it I watched 8 green-dressed policemen watching 40 black-dressed kids of all ages watching the night.

On my way home I passed a line of abandoned houses. I peeked through the open windows and wondered why they weren't used for something by someone. Then I heard from one of them a strong bass beat: "du-du-du-du". I found an entrance on the backside and they wanted 3 euro to let me in and 2 for a beer. I said I only had 4 euro and they discussed with each other: "there is guest from Britain here ..." and then they said "ok, come in". One guy added: "Hopefully you have some euros for the flight back to Britan!"

"It's ok" I said. "I hitchhike."

Berlin Fri March 9

99,97$

I didn't want to take any chances so I got up really early to be in time for my meeting at Freie Universität. Until now I had paid tributes to the rustic charm of East Berlin; to how this abundance of worn-out buildings gave ordinary people space to rent cheaply and occupy and find room for their lives and creativity. But when I tried to warm and wash myself in this old DDR-shower I started to understand why they tore down the Berlin wall. I decided to have something bizarre for breakfast. I pointed at the largest sandwhich in the shop and got a big chunk of cold fried pork with ketchup. It wasn't tasty at first, but the more I ate of it the more I came to appreciate it.

Freie Universität is situated in the South-West of Berlin, in an area full of large villas with gardens. It was completely different from East Berlin. The departments of the university were spread out over a large area, so I went off the subway station at the main entrance and walked randomly into the library of the law department to ask for directions. The librarian looked in an old book and gave me an address. It was two subway stops to the East, so I went back to the subway and went there. When I found the building I was surprised to see it surrounded by a wall and with a microphone in which to ask permisson to enter. And there was a sign saying: "Grosse sozialistische Libysch-Arabische Volksjamahiria Volksbüro - Berlin". A man came out of the building and informed me that I was at the Libyan embassy and that he had no idea where the Japanese department was. Why does life has to be so bizarre?

I took the subway back one stop and asked someone who looked like a student. "The only place I know is the Erasmus office; I am going there now". Oh, perfect! They must know how to handle confused foreigners I thought and joined her. After minutes of walking the girl admitted that she was lost. How professional of me to follow an Italian exchange student! I went to a post with signs pointing in different directions, looked stupid for a while and then asked a woman if she knew how to get to the Japanes department.

"Oh, so you are interested in the Japanese department! What about the Japanese department are you interested in?"

"Um ... going there"

"Oh, I see, you want to go there. Just take to the right at the next junction, then right again, then left then right left right right left"

I went into all kinds of buildings that looked university-like but I found nothing and now it was already 12 am, which was the time of our appointment. Damn! Damn! Damn! Eventually I found a computer in the student restaurant house and there I found directions. I guess I should have looked this up the night before ...

The Japanese department was - like most departments seemed to - situated in an old beautiful building. The walls of the staircase were lined with pictures of Japanese youths in Harajuku with extreme make-ups. Professor Königsberg was already locking his office to go out when I came. But as soon as he saw me he unlocked it and invited me in for some excellent green tea. We spent a good half-hour looking at the game and he was very fascinated and promised to buy a copy as soon as it was on the market.

Later I got to meet with Professor Blechinger-Talcott who was equally enthousiastic and urged me to come back and arrange gaming sessions for the students once they were back from spring break.

They were both so positive and friendly that I got a good boost of self-coincidence. The sun was nice and hot as I walked back trough the beatiful surroundings of Freie Universität and I felt that nothing could ruin this day.

Not even that I walked in the wrong direction from Schönhauser Allee and got an extra hour of involuntary walk. It was 4 am when I came back to the flat and I was too short of time to go and do my laundry. That was a pity since Skatar had told me that the laundry at Rosenthaler Platz had a man that dressed up in a white smoking helped you operate the machines and then sold you beer in his bar while you were waiting for your clothes. Instead I washed the clothes in the DDR-shower. It was also for pecuniary reasons: at this time I still thought that my bank charged me a fortune every time I withdrew money abroad (which they don't). To boost my nigth budget even more I emptied Skatar's collection of refundable bottles and got an astonishing 8 euros!

When he came home from work he didn't notice that 8 euros worth of bottles were missing from his apartment. We went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant nearby. After a huge and delicius portion of spagetti carbonara we met up with some friends at a bar where the Swedish waitress gave a special discount for Swedish guests - I paid nothing. Then we went to the "furniture factory", a club that was - as its name indicated - situated in an old furniture factory. It was a great club but I don't know how to describe it really. But one interesting feature was that part of the old factory was still intact and seemingly untouched since the day the factory closed down. The whole place smelled of dust. At 5:30 they woke me up from the chair in front of the big screen tv where I had slept for most of the night. Damn, I didn't know they were open till that late. I guess I won't be at the highway too early tomorrow.

Berlin Theatre Thu March 8

99,97$

At 9 pm I met Skatar at Senefelderplatz subway station. He lives in a small roof apartment one block from there. 220 euro for a very central flat! If he only had spent as much time on his home as on his work then it would have been the most charming hideout in the world. Now it was just cozy. I showed him the prototype the Czech printer had sent me, and he was delighted to see the child that he had helped deliver. He in turn showed me some work of Olauf Eliasson whom he is working for now.

Despite my tired condition I let me be talked into joining him and his girlfriend to a theatre play. What convinced was that it wasn't a regular theatre; the play was to be performed in an abandoned house one block away in which an empty apartment had been turned into an informal bar. A squatter bar! We walked there, entered the building through an anonymous door, paid 2 euro entrance and sat down in the audience. The play was some kind of detective story. I understood nothing, but the actors were so extrovert in their characters that they amused me anyway.

After the theatre we stayed for a while. From Skatar's girlfriend I got to hear two discouraging stories from a hitchhiking perspective. The first was that there is a trailer right now on German televison where a driver stops to pick up a hitchhiker. "I usually don't pick up hitchhikers but I can see on a man's appearance if he is trustworthy or not" the driver says. "Oh, can you?" replies the hitchhiker and kills everyone in the car. It's a trailer for a horror movie about a hitchhiking serial murderer. Thank you German television, thanks for airing this while I try to get through this country.

The second discouraging story was from the first and only time she hitchhiked. They had been on a motorcycle trip through USA when one of the MCs broke down and they had to hitchhike. They were picked up by a guy who could only move one of his arms. He asked for their names and it turned out that she had the same name as his ex-wife. He took them to his house where he showed them his collection of old Nazi stuff. They had already thought he was scary and now it felt really creepy. Nothing happened though, but he asked for their addresses. Later he wrote in total six long letters to Germany. In the last letter he told that his arm was stiff from being shot during a bank robbery where he had himself killed a man and gone to prison. He wrote that "I stopped to pick you up only to take your stuff and do whatever with you. But when it turned out that you had the same name as my ex-wife, I decided to just help you." She never hitchhiked again.

Photos Linköping-Berlin

94,10$

Photos!

Malmö - Berlin 7-8 March

90,16$

I arrived by bus in Trelleborg at 21:30 and walked to the harbor. My idea was to stand where the cars are waiting in a line to get on the ferry and ask every car if could join them onboard (since an extra car passenger doesn't cost anything). That way I would save 170 kronors, or 340 in case they wouldn't accept my student card.

However, there were no line of cars waiting for the ship. They just went straight in. And there was no place to stand and hitchhike that wasn't circumvened by a fence that I was to soft to climb over. So I went to the place where the cars enter the harbour area. It was crowded there, with cars in every direction, and it was dark and raining. I felt the chances of getting aboard this way was close to zero, but I could as well stand here and wave my thumb as sit in the waiting lounge reading a newspaper. I didn't even have a newspaper so I kept trying till 22:30 and then walked hastily back to the passenger terminal. The ticket seller got very stressed when I came to buy a ticket 20 min before departure. He had to talk in his walkie-talkie and enter me in the computer and all this made him forget or ignore that my student card had expired so I got a ticket for 170 kronor.

I went onboard and explored the ship. When I came to the restaurant I saw about 40 middle-aged men with moustaches and beer-bellies. I knew that I ought to walk around and ask every single one whether they went to Berlin. But I just sat down and was shy. I couldn't make myself go and talk to anyone. What now!? Hitchhiking isn't about being shy, it's about being brave, about knowing that everyone is a potential friend and that behind every unknown face there is a person with whom one shares lots of interests. I guess I'm simply too early on my trip to harass a whole ferry load of truck drivers. I haven't turned into the hitchhiking machine yet.

But I was only 5 seconds away from saying hello to the two young guys from Stockholm when they suddenly went to their cabins to sleep.

I took a walk on deck. It was supernatural, so totally dark and so totally quiet. Not even cold.

I got about 2 hours sleep in a very small sofa. Then I shifted to the floor where I after a while got another two hours. I woke up by the loudspeakers announcing our arrival and stepped out on car deck. When I saw everyone jumping into their cars without me I regretted my cowardness.

I was like a stone age hunter who spent the whole night with a herd of mammuts trapped in a small cage and just sat with the spear and arrow doing nothing. And now the mammuts fled into the forest, spreading into all directions and would each require hours of tracking to get caught. A hunter like me hadn't survived.

In the port I found a map of Rostock. There was one highway entrance starting here in the harbor, one 5 kilometers down south which took cars from a fairly large road, and a third one another kilometer South which took cars from Rostock city and seemed to be a good place to stand.

But since my legs had still not forgiven me despite a whole day's rest and hot bath, I decided to stay for at least an hour at the harbour highway entrance. I wondered how many of the truck drivers who now passed me asked themselves "why didn't he talk to me yesterday? I won't stop this truck now". I wanted to go back in time to yesterday night and slap myself in the face.

The entrance was technically very suitable for hitchhiking and the car flow at 2-3 a minute, with a very large proportion of trucks. I started at 7:08 and the sky was grey and depressing. After 45 minutes car number 123 stopped and I asked:

"Faren si richtung Berlin?"

"Lieifdejidcn" the driver replied, shaking his head.

"Kommen si forbie eine grosse rastschtätte?"

"Nein, iojqhdejhbdchwb" the driver shook his head.

"Eeeh ... how many kilometers do you go?"

"only 2"

"Is there a good entrance over there?"

"Nein, I think it's better for you to stay here".

"Ok. Danke schön" I said and he drove away. The next moment I changed my mind. I was ready to walk from this place to the next entrance, so 2 kilometers would spare me some leg pain. I decided to join the next driver no matter how short he'd go.

The next car to stop was number 166 and stopped at 8:01, after 53 minutes of waiting. It was a Czechian trailer that was passing Berlin on his way home. Wonderful!

He didn't speak much English and I regretted that I hadn't taken time to purchase a good Czechian text book in Uppsala. Here I had a private Czech tutor for 232 kilometers and I was to waste it on looking out the window! But it turned out that he had a dictionary and we managed to get a Czech conversation going, albeit extremely slow and tiresome. He was driving to and fro from Ostrovia in Czechia to Göteborg in Sweden. He was single but had a baby daughter whom he showed pictures of.

After an hour and half the language exercise had blown both our brains out, so we fell silent and just enjoyed the scenery. At 11 am he let me off on the East of Berlin, where the highway circle crosses a main road leading straight to the center. It was far to busy and narrow to hitchhike, so I walked along it. On the way I passed a burger chain and I was screamingly hungry since I hadn't had anything to eat but small bites of Haga's undestroyable dark Finnish malaxlimpa that I had chewed while waiting in Rostock. But I resisted the burgers as I wanted to break my fast with something very German once in Berlin. At 11:12 I came to a gas station. Now there was no more Mr. Shy Guy; I asked every person driving up to the gas pumps if I could go with them to Berlin. The angry looks I got from the gas station staff only made it more fun; I was hoping they would come and ask me to leave so I could keep on walking.

But at 11:22, car number 16 accepted my company. It was a middle-aged couple who seemed cautious at first, but became more and more comfortable the more we tried to speak German. When we reached Berlin they gave me a metro ticket and let me off at a metro station.

I took the metro to Alexanderplatz. It is always so exciting to get on the metro in a new city, every person in there seemed like such a character. After getting off the train it took me a long time to choose an exit - I wanted my first encounter with the Berlin surface to be perfect.

And it was perfect, the first thing that met me above ground was a man selling "rostbratwurst" for 1 euro.

I found an internet Café and called Skatar, the architect who has helped me all the way trough the graphic design of my game. He was on his work so we agreed to meet later. In the meanwhile I took a long walk around East Berlin. An amazing place, what an atmosphere!

The only stiff place I could see was a language school where they were advertising language courses, including Japanese. I thought they'd be interested in my game, but they frankly told me that the Japanese teacher had invented her own system.

Otherwise it seemed like the area has been stuck somewhere in the transition from DDR. And it seemed like a lot of people were happy about that. There were plenty of worned out buildings, wall paintings all over, tribes of punkers with dogs asking for cigarettes, "occupied" houses here and there and an "anarchist childrens' play ground" complete with self-built wooden buildings, an open fire, huge pieces of scrap metal art and small children walking around on stilts like the most professional circus artists and one little boy constantly attacking an adult - also on stilts - shouting "assault! assault!".

Linköping - Malmö tis 6 feb

89,8 $

When I fell asleep I was tired. Too tired, so tired that I laid paralysed trying to get out of awake nightmares. I don't know if you've had it, but it happens to some people when they go to sleep being too tired. A guy in my dorm has it about once a week since he was a kid, and that is very painful. I only get it once every two years or so, and it doesn't scare me. But it was very intensive and I was thinking whether it had anything to do with the medicine or not. Anyway, eventually I managed to get out of it and fell into normal sleep. 4 am my alarm went off. It din't manage to wake me up yesterday, but it succeeded this morning. Only that it wasn't supposed to.

7 am I woke up again from Torkel making breakfast listening to the radio. I looked up a good highway entrance on the internet. There are three ways from Linköping to the E4; one Eastern, one Central and one Western. The Eastern one was out of question of course. Regarding the other two, I have a strong memory from many years ago when I and Fredrik stood at some annoyingly fast-paced road on which cars in all directions were on the same road and didn't separate until already on highway speed and thus unable to stop and pick up hitchhikers. I figured that must have been the Central entrance. The Western highway entrance looked perfect; a long strectch of road that seemed to lead to nowhere but the highway, and with several entrances on the way. Where it merged with the highway there was a road coming from the North as well and it looked good. I decided to start with having a look at the roundabout next to the university and then follow the road up to the E4 and try every entrance on the way.

Torkel offered himself to drive me there but I declined since it seemed like a rather short and pleasant walk on the map. At 8 am I started walking. Soon I arrived at the forest that I had seen on the map. The university roundabout was on the other side of the forest, and I could go around it on either it's west or east side. I took the west way, which had seemed shorter. After a while I found a small road leading into the forest. It seemed straight and without snow. A sign said "Oak Land. Natural reserve".

"mmmhh ..." I thought. "Let's take a shortcut and have a unique nature experience at the same time". It seemed lika such a good idea. After one hour of walking the forest was still around me. Bounded by roads in every direction, it should end sooner or later. But it didn't. I figured that I must either be mistaken and lost, or that it must be that this forest path was dwindling into an infinte length in a fractal way. A sign pointed to another path and said: "Cultural heritage". No, I don't want to inherit anything, I want to get out! I figured this might be the Valla forest from the poster Pättär - who is native from this area - has at home saying: "Save the Valla forest, vote NO!". Thank you Pättär and your tree-hugging parents and their hippie friends. I really enjoyed all these oaks. But now I am wet, exhausted and frustrated and I wish you could have let them build a straight and dry road through this place.

After another hour I was walking through a landscape of farms and race horsing stables. Something was definititly wrong. My feet were soaked as the muddy snow filled up my shoes. This is the worst time of the year. It is indeed beautiful; it's so much brighter, birds are singing, smells are coming up from the ground, patches of green are seen here and there and love promises are in the air. So please give me a photo of this so I can look at it when I walk the dry streets of a warm country.

I came to a village called "Slaka". They had a cute, pink church, an old school that lead the thoughts to Astrid Lindgren, with children playing on a snow-covered football field and a melted ice hockey rink.

A busy road started here and I started hitchhiking just to have someone tell me where the hell I was and I ate the candy from yesterday's dick torture to cheer me up. No one stopped but finally I came to some suburb with a busstation with a map on it. I realised that I had taken west on a road that wasn't on the Eniro map from internet. Damn Eniro, I just lost three hours of my life circumvening the whole Östergötland countryside. My wet worn-out feet will sue this stupid website.

Can somebody please find me a better internet map service?

The university roundabout was not suitable for hitchhiking. The road itself wasn't neither; a fence made it impossible for cars to stop. I walked along the Ryd student dorm area that lined the road. I was in Ryd on an after party when there was a convention for students of public administration in Linköping. I am not sure if it was on this after party we played ping pong or if that was the after party in Lund. Those new-built dorms look the same all over Sweden.

The Ryd highway entrance was so beautiful. It was right after a street crossing, which slowed the cars down. It was straight and wide, making it easy to be seen by the cars, and easy for them to stop. I hoped that the abundance of students in the area should make it easier to get a ride somehow.

I stood there between 11:14 and 11:20. The sun was shining. Car number 9 stopped. The man who drove claimed that he had hitchhiked in total 100.000 kilometers in his life; that is equivalent to 2,5 times around the globe. Once when he took a ferry from Israel, he met a Korean lady and 1988 he went to Korea and got married and now they live in Östergötland.

Then our conversation was interrupted by a worrying sound, "rapapapapa". It was his silencer that was falling off, so he stopped the car and went under it to repair. There is no better place to hitchhike than from a wrecked car on the highway, so I stuck my thumb up.

It was 11:40 and sunny. After one minute car number 5 stopped. I took my stuff from the other car, wished him good luck and went with the new driver to Jönköping. We talked about business and having production in other countries and so on. His company is selling tools, www.standardmekano.se .I asked him what the new government had done for his company and he said "nothing".

He let me off in Northen Jönköping. Jönköping is a tricky city with no good highway entrances as far as I know. I always try to get out to Hyltena service area which is the largest in Sweden. Largest in Sweden doesn't imply large enough though, but if there is one service area in Sweden that deserves a chance, then it is Hyltena.

I went to the nearest entrance and although it was far from perfect, the traffic too intensive and the stopping margin to thin, I decided to give it a hundred cars before looking for a better place.

It was 12:31 and it had got windy and generally uncomfortable. After 6 minutes car number 31 stopped. It contained an African man who said he'd only go 3 kilometers. I was glad to get nearer the Southern edge of the city so I got in and we went there. He asked me if the Swedes weren't generous with giving rides, but I said they were. Today 6,8% of them stopped, and that is very sufficient for effective and comfortable hitchhiking.

The next entrance was technically easier than the previous one, with lots of space for friendly souls to stop. But I got a feeling that I wouldn't get lucky here.

I started 12:43 and it was raining a little. I wanted to walk to the next entrance, but my feet hurt from the morning's excessive exercise, and when I looked further South it seemed like the walk could be long. So I decided to give this place a 100 cars.

At 13:07, car number 102 stopped. The driver was going to some obscure village, but I joined him in order to get off at Hyltena service area. However, when we got to the service area they had called it something else on the signs so we figured that Hyltena must be further down the road. But it wasn't, and I decided it was better to follow the guy to Vrigstad and hitchhike the local roads rather than being left on the bare highway.

The E4 between Jönköping and Skåne is a tricky place. Carrying all traffic between Stockhom and Europe, it is far to fast and dense to allow hitchhiking on the road. But with only tiny villages along it, there are no good entrances on which you can get a ride. So in this situation I thought it better to hitchhike the local Småland forest roads. But I didn't look forward to it.

The driver was not older than me, and had an old car but a new suit. He was working as a stock trader in Jönköping. He had tried various business ideas. For some time he imported car parts from China and was making nice profits until his Chinese contacts tried to squeeze his margins till he got tired of it and quit. Then he had been smuggling cigarettes from Montenegro to Norway. He had also worked in within psychiatri, and he thought I was reckless to eat psychotric drugs for money. He told me that he had immigrant friends who had played insane in order to stay in Sweden. Then they had been given drugs so strong that they had ended up insane for real, accepted as Swedish inhabitants but unable to work and live normal lives.

He was himself from Montenegro and was to marry a Montenegrin girl who would move up to Småland after finishing her degree in human resources in Germany. Later it turned out that the driver and I were related; he was my ex-girlfriend's friend's ex-boyfriend's uncle. Quite a funny coincidence.

In Vrigstad I stood on the road at 13:47 in a faint rain. After 8 minutes car number 6 stopped. It was a truck that was going 10 kilometers to load planks from a sawmill.

At 14:00 I stood among piles of logs and planks and hitchhiked in a humid smell of sawdust. After 15 minutes car number 17 stopped. It was a pick-up with 3 men that were going to cross the E4 at Värnamo. The driver told me that he had started up his company with the same entrepreneur's subsidy as I'm on now. After being laid off and unemployed for a few months the employment agency had believed in his idea to invest in peat drilling machines and provided for his living for the first 6 months of business. I asked if he had now paid taxes enough to compensate the support he'd got, and he replied "oh yes, many times over". He was now drilling peat - Sweden's brown gold - for the heating of many houses and had two employees in his car.

Värnamo is the only city between Jönköping and Skåne that has a population large enough to give a reasonable chance of getting out of there. The entrance was familiar to me; from here I and Fredrik got a ride to Malmö once, and that's what I was hoping for.

At 14:35 I started waiting. At 15:31 car number 70 stopped. It was an Irish truck, so the driver sat on the wrong side. The driver was from Poland and told me that his mother had forced him to take private lessons of English during his teenage years. So now he could work for this Irish company. It was his second time to Sweden. The first time the snow had made him take 7 hours to drive 230 kilometers. He had seen a car in the ditch every 10 kilometers on average. His father was a truck driver too, and was only 2 hours late to get on that ferry that recently sank in the English Channel.

He had been to discotheques all over and told me Warzaw was the best city in Europe: "Good drugs, good alcohol and good sex". He also said that Swedish trucks were the best. He liked Volvo since it could fix the speed on 91 km/hour, while most other trucks only allowed 89 or 90. But most of all he liked Scania since those trucks allowed you to turn off the speed control. In Italy he had been caught driving a Scania at 125 km/h and had had to pay the police a 200 € bribe in order to avoid a 1100 € fine.

In Helsingborg, the truck was going to take the ferry to Denmark so I got out in the port. It was rainy and almost dark. I figured I had small chances to get a ride to Malmö, but I still started to find a local road South along the Skåne coast. Trying the highway was not an option, the highway system outside Helsingborg is impossible to hitchhike. If I had been going for Stockholm I'd have taken the ferry to Denmark for 2-3 € and then ask all the cars in the ferry line to Sweden. But for going to Malmö I needed a local road and started walking South on random. My feet were killing me though, and the rain on my glasses and the approaching night made it hard for me to see anything at all. So how should the drivers be able to see me? Eventually I swallowed my pride and walked back to the harbor from where the trains to Malmö go. The ticket was 84 kr.

In Malmö I missed two city buses while looking for cash. When I finally had cash the bus driver didn't want it. Malmö feeling! I went to the Monkey's apartment. I met him first time when I was 14. My friend Fredrik had moved from our Fisksätra suburb to inner-city Södermalm. I didn't meet him much for half a year, but then one day he took me to his scary inner city friends who were sitting drinking Monday tea on Skinnarviksberget mountain. The Monkey didn't say a word, but he slowly turned somersaults down the mountain in a very agile fashion. One guy interrogated me about whether I'd messed with Braxen (which I didn't), and then we sat on that damn mountain drinking tea every Monday until some time in high school when everyone went into different directions.

The Monkey went to study theatre in a folk high school and that theatre course was so intensive that it burned him out and left him on sick leave for one year. Now he is living in an old and cheap apartment in Möllan in Malmö where he is obsessed with making Commedia del Arte-masks. It is a hobby which makes him incredibly happy, but it is sucking up all his resources so to pay for rent, food and mask materials he studies Media to get student allowance. For this course he made a short movie all by himself. It took one month and we watched it together. You can watch it here.

After the movie we took lots of pictures with his masks and dolls. Unfortunately we didn't manage to get the pictures inside the computer since we are both retards, but maybe I can manage it later when I'm in more technical company.

After our photo session we hit the bohemian Möllan night. We met up with China-Per and his workmate. I met China-Per when I during my first night in Communist-China walked around in the dark, completely lost and pathetic and with no place to stay. I saw this foreigner and it turned out to be China-Per and I could move in with him. Now we had a few beers in Sapla, a classic Möllan pub. It was very nice at first, but the last nights bad sleep took out its toll and I was close to pass out after only three beers, so the Monkey thought it best to lead me home while I could still walk on my sore feet.

The morning after I woke up from the Monkey's radio which sounded pxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx every 15 minuter. Very pleasant. I had got no answers from neither Lund or Copenhagen University, and I was very happy about that because was in desperate need of regaining strength somehow. I looked up a ferry to Rostock in Germany, and looked up a bus to take to get there. Malmö is such a big city that it's hard to get out of hit, and the distance to Trelleborg is so short that hitchhiking didn't seemed rational from any perspective.

So we had a calm and peaceful day together, with lots of sleep, e-mailing and playing with Commedia del Arte-masks. The day ended with us going out for two ridiculously cheap falafels (10 kr each). Then the Monkey's friend came to take him to the theatre, and it turned out that her step-brother works in the Japanese department of Berlin's Freie University where I will present my game on Friday.

Now it's only me and the commedia masks and zombie dolls in the apartment. But I'll also leave in couple of minutes. See you in Germany!

Stockholm - Linköping mån 5 mars

I woke up at 6:44. Damn! I had set the alarm at 4 am but didn't wake up. Obviously my body felt it too little with only 2 hours of sleep after 5 beers. I was supposed to be at Linköping University at 11 am but now I had already screwed it.

I walked hastily to Södra Station and came right in time for the commuter train to Södertälje Hamn. The train was crowded and the commuters not overly fond of my luggage. After coming out of the station house I took to the right and walked South. After a few hundred meters I took to the right again and passed under the train bridge and the highway bridge. On the other side of the highway I took to the right a third time and walked up to the place behind the Statoil gas station where a nice stretch of road led cars from E20 from the West to E4 to the South. It's my favourite place for getting South from Stockholm.

I was a little bit worried about the the piles of snow that narrowed the area on which the cars could stop. I took off my beanie and gloves and opened the jacket to look less of a snowman and raised my thumb. It was now 8:10 am. It was the first time in years that I did this. But it didn't feel awkward at all. 5 cars passed. At 8:13 am car number 6 stopped. He was going to Norrköping. Almost jackpot!

It was a single man who owned a water pipe company. He didn't look that old but claimed he had kids in their 40s and 50s. We talked about present Sweden's work morals (he pointed out that hitchhiking wouldn't positively affect my pension check), about our respective military services (mine was rather short), about having small kids and so on. I asked him what the government had done for his company since the election in September. There hadn't been too much yet, but he appreciated the abolishment of the 15% that the company had had to pay of a former employee's sick leave money. I agree. I understand that an increased responsibility on the employer ought to give her more incentives for creating a healthier work enviroment for her employees. But the 15% was to be paid even if the sickness had nothing to do with the work environment, and thus looked more like an extra tax on labour than anything else.

Personally I believe that a better social safety system that doesn't tell the welfare receiptent to "accept the next job offer or die" would strengthen workers in rejecting unsound workplaces, and these would then have to shape up.

The man let me off at an highway entrance outside Norrköping that he believed would be good for me.

It was well situated in regard to the traffic from Norrköping to Linköping, but the highway entrance was curved and not that wide, so perhaps a few cars would be intimated to stop. I started waving my thumb at 9:29. The sun was shining. At 9:36 car number 5 stopped. The man was going to Linköping. Yeh! He let me off in the East end and I walked fast through the whole city and arrived in the University and found the right lecture room exactly 11:00. The teacher was so kind and let me present the game for the class. They were really amused by my presentation, and they were very curious abourt the details of the game.

I asked if anyone wanted to play after the lecture, but they all had laborations the whole afternoon. This is no regular Japanese class, but an engineering program geared towards Japan. One guy had no laboration so he signed up for a game.

While waiting for their lecture to end I took my stuff and walked around Linköping campus. I came to the Student Union building and looked jealously at the big hamburgers that were being eaten. I hadn't received my medical experiment salary yet so everything I had was 40 SEK in my pocket and that wasnät enough, and in any case I had better save them for something else. But I found some people advertising something and I though that I could perhaps satisfy myself somewhat with their candy and pastry. They told me that they represented a company making do-it-yourself veneral disease tests. If I put a stick inside my penis and rotated it in there and then gave it back to them, then they would give me a free lunch ticket.

I've always had a thing for supporting science, so I went to the toilet and did it. AOOOOOOOOO it hurt.

But the hamburger was nice. You were to make it yourself from a line of ingredients, so I made it BIG with lots of sauces and vegetables.

The guy from the lecture came to play my game. Waiting for me to finish eating first, we talked about this and that. Their education is kind of hard. I coould see from their lecture that their Japanese learning pace is the same as we had Waseda University. But on top of that, these guys are also studying to be engineers, which would be hard even without the extra Japanese.

Then they have compulsory exchange year. I like that idea! He'll go to Saitama, he thought.

Then we went to "Colosseum" and played for 2 hours. He was quite amused by the game. Some friends of his came by and looked, but was too busy to stay for a game. He told me that a shop in Linköping,"Seriebörsen", had games and manga and I decided to check it out to see if they wanted my game.

After the game I was extremely sleepy. I went to find a toilet to drink some water and I found what looked like a toilet door. But on the inside was a bed. I locked the door and fell asleep.

I woke up at 5 pm The road description was not that good though, so after 2 hours of fruitless walking through all of Linköping I ended up in Torkel's new apartment.

Linköping was quite beatiful. Torkel's new apartment was really nice. And he made a very edible pasta with chicken and bacon. Yum yum. Then we had tea for an hour, then I surfed for more Japanese lectures to crash.

Now it's 11 pm and I am so tired it hurts. It's time for my first night of sufficient sleep for half a week. Goodnight!

Hi Alan!

I started writing you before and thought I saved a draft but it's nowhere ...

Anyway, regarding your lines about Ireland - yes, it's crazy. I stumbled upon a website called "Eurowork" or something like that, thinking that I could perhaps find something suitable for me in Czechia or Holland. But I didn't, 90% of the jobs were in Ireland! I'm not exaggerating, in fact I think it was more than 90%. That's insane.

Google is setting up its European HQ there. I think this means that Ireland might have achieved cluster effects enough to pass that treshold from which they can start normalize taxes again without fear of losing the foreign companies. But perhaps I should wait with the conclusions till I read your book :)

But it's important that those job positions get filled up with labour from all over, or wages and prices will cause serious inflation, since there is no national currency that can balance it. Given Ireland's small population, it is destined to become very multicultural, I think. Like a small little USA next to England. And since most of Irish decent are immigrants in some way (like you) already, Ireland and the Irish will become a symbol of globalization. I'd love to read that book, and if I come across something similar on Sweden I'll send it immediately.

I'm leaving Uppsala soon but you can send it to my mom's house and it'll reach me sooner or later.

I'll move towards Czechia in two weeks. I'll set up a "base" there and then hitchhike all across Europe to market the game.

In August I'll move to the Netherlands, Yuqin got her job there!

So I'll see you next time in Holland!

Love to you and Shiho and good luck with your moving to Australia.

goodbye

I have realized I don't have time to update the blog.

If you are curious about the progress of the different projects, then you just have to send an e-mail :)

Going to Stockholm

I'm going to Stockholm now to charge the batteries.

See you next week!

Unemployed, student or entrepreneur?

The desicion came yesterday; I get no unemployment insurance.

The reason is that I took a few university credits in Economics this semester.

If you take credits, then you're not supposed to be labour supply, and then you shouldn't have unemployment benefits.

It is very annoying since they have demanded all kinds of stupid papers from me for three months now.

And they have made me unregister my company.

So now I have to register it again. And fill out all the forms.

That's annoying.

Yesterday me and my thesis-pal submitted a case to a case-competition. We want to win a long-weekend to Shanghai, that's why.

It would be so sweeet! The results of the competition will be announced in one week.

Today they called from the employment bureau. They wanted me to come in with proofs of all the merits that I've stated. Proof that I've taught Swedish in Japan, English in Taiwan, Maths in Skåne, Theatre in Uppsala, worked for the post museum in Lund etc etc. They wanted me to round up dozens of papers from people that I in some cases haven't had contact with in years.

I gave them the long finger through telephone.

I've been granted entrepreneur's subsidy for half a year.

It will start to be paid out as soon as the company which that other welfare system forced me to unregister is registered again.

Do you follow me? No? Okay, I'll explain it more plainly: there are several ways of buying yourself time with the taxpayer's money. You just have to dance around like a monkey.

And I'm born in the year of the monkey. So I'll manage this.

The printing company in Czech Republic e-mailed today and said that they would send me a prototype. Excellent. I'm growing very impatient so the arrival of that prototype will be like christmas for me. But I hope it arrives much earlier than Christmas lest I will go mad and go to the nearest unemployment office and put their forms on fire.

International Party-pooping

Ok, here comes a report from last Saturday.

It was a nice party, with about 40 students of political science, half of them Swedish, half of them foreign.

On my left side I had a nice French girl and a nice American guy who could speak Swedish. On my right side I had a nice German guy who could speak Swedish and a nice Swedish girl who could speak Swedish.

There was a huge smörgåsbord full of traditional Swedish dishes such as meatballs, tiny sausages, pickled herring, fried potato and some dish with potato mixed with fish. And hard bread. Unfortunately the traditional food was a bit salty while the beer was expensive, so I couldn't eat as much as I wanted to. But I still had about twice as much as would have been good for me.

There was a Swedish-German-French interpretation of the old Uppsalian tradition of "spex", meaning rhyming witty theatre. It wasn't rhyming though, but it was theatre and it was fun.

And there were Swedish-French-Lithuanian interpretations of Cure, Radiohead and Abba songs. They were fantastic. The lead singer was an extremely extrovert French guy who shook his ass and jumped like a madman while singing "twist and shout". That was the highlight of the evening.

It was great too see such interaction among Swedish and international poli-sci students. Usually, student life here, like elsewhere, tend to be quite segregated. The International Committee arranges activities and parties exclusively for exchange students, which bake them into a big pie of foreigners, while Swedish students are welcomed and grouped together through their student organizations.

But change is under way; today I submitted a proposal to the annual meeting of the association of Uppsala Students of Politics. The proposal demands that all international students be invited as members on excactly the same premises as Swedish students, and that they are welcomed by and invited to excactly the same activities as Swedish students. Finally i demanded that all information regarding the association's activitities should be immediately translated into English and that a certain person should be elected for this task.

This might sound obvious. But it isn't obvious. But it will become obvious.

The results will come in about a month! If the proposal is accepted, then this will definitly be the place to go for your exchange year!

I think a better integration would strengthen Sweden's relations with the world. And I think the foreign political scientists could teach us something.

And we could teach them how to party.

At 11 o'clock all international students had gone home.

What's that? Why were they sent to Uppsala? Their international coordinators forgot to ask "are you a party pooper?". Don't they understand that they put their exchange agreement at hazard? I have to raise this issue with our international coordinator.

We can never get to learn each other if they don't stay until the "get-to-know-each-other-hour" that is around 3-4 am for Swedish students. That's when you say "we sshud rily geth in kåntakt agin" to each other and exchange telephone numbers and plan movie nights.

Anyway, the rest of us did our best to fill the dance floor, which was nice for the legs after a week in front of the computer. Then I went to Uplands. And the rest is history.

No more Mr Healthy

Two weeks ago I woke up after a hard weekend with a very sour stomach.

I was afraid that I was catching this stomach disease (that I don't know the English name of) which comes from stress and booze and which is very popular in Uppsala these days.

So I skimmed a few web pages about it, and then shifted to a life without nicotine, alcohol and coffeine; replacing tea with hot chocoolate and roiboss for the long working hours. A poor substitue, and an expensive one, but I guess it pays out in the long run.

But tonight! my friends and enemies, tonight! will be a different story.

Tonight! there will be a large party for all international Poli-Sci students in Uppsala, and going there to be sober would be such a waste of money and party opportunity, so tonight! I'll pollute myself in every (legal) way possible.

It's only one hour left till this hell breaks out, so now I'll clean up my room. I live right next to the club we'll be at, so there is a significant risk that I might end up dragging a bunch of political scientists from all over for a decadent after-party.

When I wake up tomorrow with my sour stomach, I'll give you a report.

Cheers!

Female Kurdish dick

At 3:30 am I went to the kitchen to make another cup of tea.

There is a Kurdish girl from Northern Iraq in our dorm, and tonight she is drinking with some friends in her room. One of her friends went out to smoke on the balcony while I was preparing my cup of tea and some night snack.

When she comes in from the balcony she asks: "Have you ever seen a woman with two sexes?"

"No" I said and thought to myself: "but it's finally happening".

I looked down on her and there it was, hanging out of her zipper.

A dick.

A female Kurdish dick.

I didn't know how to respond. It was quite a thin one, with a long foreskin.

"I was a bit scared" I said.

"It looks real, huh?" she said, pulled it out of her pants and said "admit that you were scared" and went back to their room.

"Yes, I admit" I said and went back to my room with my tea.

I love living in a dorm.

I've got a routine that I work till 4, blog till 5 and sleep till 12.

A good routine, but not in oace with society.

Yesterday, we had a meeting with our thesis supervisor. Just the fact that I had to go up early made it impossible to sleep.

So I had a bout one hour of sleep when we meet the professor. I must have made a ... rather slow impression, but the meeting was good. Me and my thesis-pal had dediced to adopt a "miminum-workoload-strategy" and presented only a small part of what we had been thinking. But the professor thought it was perfect for a BA thesis.

After the meeting i decided to quickly write a memo about our idea. But first I answered a blog comment from Ola. And then I had consumed what little awakeness I had accumulated during the night.

So instead I worked on my game all day. Then it doesn't matter how tired I am, it's always fun.

Are you studying Poli-Sci?

Today we had a seminar in negotiation techniques with the union for privately employed white-collars and the organisation of Human Resources students. It was like a little foreplay to the great negotiation championships when all Sweden's students of Human Resources will battle in bloody union negotiations to see who are the kings and queens of the Swedish negotiation table.

A brilliant competition! I wonder why the foreign ministry don't recruit more from the unions. They negotiate so much that we would take over UN (again). North Korea's nuclear weapons and the global warming would be negotiated away in two seconds, and the Spratly Islands would be solidarically divided by 7.

Just like the Human Resources students have their negotiation competition, the business and economics students have their "Swedish championships in Economics" as well as a number of case contests. And the law students have some kind of competition, I think.

But what would a national competition in Political Science look like?

Give me suggestions! The best wins a t-shirt and eternal glory andfame.

Fuck the trade unions?

We have to find something for the labor union to do to prevent them from hindering the development of society through pure survival instinct.

It IS time to scrap the Swedish Model as we know it. 1938-2006 has been a good period. But 2010-2088 will be even better.

You know Terminator 1 and Terminator 2? The New Swedish Model must create an economy which is like the evil robot in the second movie, whom melts down and adopt new forms all the time.

As the world is changing the Swedish economy must mutate faster than a banana fly to always come out on top from every wrestling game.

For this, we need an extreme flexibility.

But not a flexibilty in the Coservative sense. Not an American type of labor market, where you have to take any shitwork there is under the threat of eviction and starvation.

It's not flexibility to - instead of educating oneself or otherwise by free will search for a new and more interesting tasks - be locked up in soulbreaking shitwork.

Flexibility is to in peace and quiet surveil the landscape and create your
own path to a meningful life and good incomes.

But not just the individual but also the company must be allowed to surveil the landscape and create its own path to fat profits.

But our system is built on forced employment. Firstly, society forces the unemployed to jump on the first job that appears; the Conservative society by the threat of poverty; the Social Democratic society by threat of cancelled unemployment insurance or whatever they threat you with in the employment office.

And when a person has been forced into an employment, society forces the company to keep the employee even if it turns out to be a real slacker.

If you resign from a job without going directly to another one, the government cancels your unemployment insurance. And if a company wants to dismiss an employee, it either has to dismiss everyone hired later than the employee, or pay them heavy fines.

Where is the effective allocation of human resources? Where is the work pleasure? Where is the entrepreneur pleasure? Where is the flexibility, the free choice?

The system is built on a failure of thought and that is that the company should provide your safety. But it is not the company's moral responsibility to assure the citizen's economic safety. That is the government's responsibility.

"Work security" is a word from the 20th century. But it is not the work we need that badly. It is the income we need. It is income security we want.

The company is not your mama. The government is you mama.

Do you remember when USA raised the tariffs on steel? Trade minister Leif Pagrotsky was raging in the evening news, labeling the US "an underdeveloped society". He meant that USA's steel tariffs were a desperate attempt to prevent social misery in the so-called "rust belt". The American steel industry was in need of rationalization, a so called "steel bath". But the states in question were already burdened with unemployment and could not afford a steel bath. But the protectionist solution will make it all worse in the long run, of course. What the American steel workers would need is a soft welfare system in which they can land, reload, and then fly up in a new industry. (Perhaps an own industry?)

We have no idea what will be the strengths of Tanzania, Pakistan or Vietnam in 10 years. We have to count with the possibility that any industry can be wiped out in any time. We can't stand and protest outside the closed steel factory and long for the 1970s when anyone could just walk into the factory and then fly on vacation to the Canary Islands.

Unemployment has to be something as natural as rain or sunshine. A period between jobs when you analyze your skills and decide whether to look for a new work, educate yourself, or start a company (or everything at the same time!)

But then you need money. And the systems that exists are all conditioned and designed to get you into any full-time employment as soon as possible.

If you work a few hours here and there to get experience, merits and contacts, then you have to pay back all the unemployment insurance you have received. If you are unemployed then you should be unemployed and nothing else.

And if you want welfare support, then you have to sell your apartment and car and eat up your saved capital. And your partner too.

And if you are on sick leave, then you shouldn't do anything at all. If you take one university credit or a (legal) work hour, then the insurance office calls you and says: "Hey, you are not sick! Now you pay fines!" Like if the best for someone on sick leave for depression or burn-out would be to lie at home and watch TV from 9 to 5.

No, since there is in any case a broad political agreement on that a civilized society does not let its citizens freeze or starve, then we can just give everyone their potato money at once, without locking them up in systems that prevents them from fulfilling their potentials.

To decide the exact size of such a potato - a "citizen salary" - is of course a delicate task. We need to find a level which assures people a decent living standard while at the same time providing the market with a labor supply enough to pay for the party.

6000 SEK maybe?

And the potato must be completely independent of your other incomes, you should never lose any money from starting working or increase your working hours or salary. That implies that even Bill Gates should have his potato.

But it is still difficult to go from 20000 to 6000 SEK from one month to the other. Therefore the potato has to be complemented with a "carrot subsidy". The carrot should be directly proportionate to your average monthly income; wage income and entrepreneurial income alike.

Just like the potato, the carrot has to be paid out regardless if you are currently working or not. This means that the nominal tax rate has to be raised to seemingly bizarr levels. However, since most of it comes back directly in the form of your carrot, the effective tax rate need not be higher than today.

The difference is that the government spreads your income more even across the years.

"But hello, don't I have the right to decide myself how to distribute my income over my lifetime?" Yes of course you have. You can borrow money with your future carrot payments as collateral. The difference is that the "default" in the system is that you save.

With a high nominal tax rate, the difference between salary and carrot will not be so dramatic. If you get sick, pregnant or unemployed you might go down some 20% in income. But the the carrot sinks slowly as there are more empty months added to the denominator.

But slowly and gradually. Not like "hepp, now your 18 months are up, now you have to go to another office with other forms to fill!"

Above the potato and the carrot, there should be no such thing as minimum wages. No collective contracts. No employent security legislation.

So what's the labor union's role in this world? At first sight, it looks like the labor union role would become obsolete, and that they therefore would fiercely oppose any step in this direction.

So, should we try to weaken the labor union's power? By making it more expensive to join? To lower the organization rate from today's 80%?

Would a labor union organizing only 70% be more docile?

No.

Small labor unions that are limited to one company often has a positive effect on the company. If the company would go bankrupt in the competion with other companies, then it would hit all employees hard. Therefore, the fate of the company and the workers are interwoven and the labor union will act in the interests of the company as well as in the interests of the workers.

Large labour unions - encompassing a whole industry - have another perspective. They can negotiate wages for the whole industry and which therefore won't affect the competition between companies. If the industry is export-dependent or import-challenged, then the whole industry will be hit as the higher salaries affect its competitiveness. However, only a few companies will be hurt, so for most laborers the wage rise will be beneficial, and the labor union will go in the direction most workers want it to go.
In those industries that are not chellenged by competition from other countries, the labor union will have nothing to lose on wage raises. The losers are the consumers. Directly by higher price of the goods and services from that industry, and indirectly through higher inflation. The result is that the real wages of workers in other industries decrease, and thus they have to compensate by putting more pressure on their own wages through their own labour unions. When everyone raises her salary, then it just like if no one did it, but at the price of tearing labor conflicts and a high inflation which depreciates ordinary people's savings and decrease the whole country's competitiveness. It is a prisoner's dilemma.

The solution to this problem is when labour unions are so large that they encompass the whole labor market and have merged into central organizations. Then the interests of the labor union is interwoven with the interests of the whole country. And that is where Sweden is today.

But what happens if the organization rate drops to, say, 50%? Then it is no longer in the interest of the union to care for the economy of the whole country, but only for the economy of its members. In the same way as a restaurant only serves its own customers.

Responsible wage increases and labor peace would become a memory of the past.

If the impact of the labor unions on the market is to be squelled, then the organization rate has to drop to levels we haven't seen in a hundred years. And that won't happen in a country like Sweden.

And do we want it to happen?

No.

The role of the union is not obsolete just because we scrap minimum wages and collective bargaining. In indivudal wage settings, the employee is still dependent on being backed by an organization with as much intelligence and statistics as the employer has. A free market is not fair unless the parts have the same information.

The role of the unions is not obsolete just because we scrap labor security. There will always be workplace disputes. There will always be discrimination. There will always be accidents. There will always be different interpretations of signed contracts. A free and fair labor market requires that the worker has support from an organization with as many lawyers as the company has.

We have to see the union for what it is: a pragmatic organization defending the interests of its members. The problem is not that the union has too many members, the problem is that it has too few members. All the unemployed ought to also become members. If the union would encompass the whole population, then it would also act in the interest of the whole population. And the Swedish population needs an extremely flexible economy.

So the main role of the unions will be to help their members survive and thrive in this flexible economy. By supporting the matching process, and by raising its members' human capital.

The union should pimp you.

Personally I work 10% for Tria, a student service provided by a group of white-collar unions. Tria is supporting the student by increasing her contacts with the labor market, by helping with the application process, and - when job offers are coming - assisting her through wage negotiations and answering any questions concerning legal issues.

And we have competitors doing the same as we do. If they are better than us (which they aren't) then they'll steal our members.

And that's what the labor unions should like.

It is of course possible that the union will still slow us down on our way to the New Swedish Model. But then there will be a reason for that. Such as us going about it too dogmatically, implementing the reforms in the wrong order, or by forgetting a certain group whose situation would deteriorate radically. Then we have to negotiate with the Union. And when we have reached an agreement, they will stick to it.

The Union will help us find better B, C and D:s on our way to our utopian extreme-flexible Z.

It might give us a lower growth. But it will give as a longer growth.

Domestic

Today I got a letter from the student aid agency. As I wrote in "Unemployment Office", I had applied for a paper stating that I'm not on student aid.

It's so fun when you get a letter from the bureaucracy and the bureaucrat Swedish is suddenly interrupted by a human tone, so that you are suddenly hit by the insight that there is in fact a poor human, and not a machine, writing those letters:

"But you have been approved student aid for autumn term 200