The Bohemian Capitalist

Cyprus

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:46:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:14:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 23:13:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:32:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:53:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 03:19:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 02:05:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:09:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:42:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 07:03:00 +0000

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 Miya zaki, Mie, Miy agi)
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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:18:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:11:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 07:21:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 14:28:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 09:08:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:35:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 07:25:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 07:17:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 05:49:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 09:16:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 21:05:00 +0000

"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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 03:01:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:11:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:17:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bh) — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:16:00 +0000

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.