AXEL MAASS

 

 

• People - Meeting great, colorful people and become friends with them

 

• People - Leaving wonderful people just after you had the pleasure to meet them

 

• Sleep – You never know there you will sleep, a bed is a comfort. Most of the time you sleep less than necessary and you will admire every minute of essential peace. Go in a park and take a power nap! It is a great manifoldly changing. One day you sleep like a prince in a neighborhood of rich people, the other you see the sunrise above the Brooklyn Bridge because you slept outside on a bench. You will sleep on the ground with dozen of people or with the view on a marvelous skyline. Your bed will be in a car or a hostel. People snore, fuck and talk next to you. They wake you up and sleep in your bed. A tent becomes your last resue before you freeze to death after you swum in a pond in the middle of nowhere. You drink, you dance, you laugh and forget about the time. You will crash the couch of a stranger, sleep on the floor of the neighbour and welcome the sunrise in a park. You sweet, you freeze. The moon is your companion as good as the sun.

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• Restrooms – You have to control your body. The conditions can induce fear.  Never grab more than once a day. I miss my own toilet and prefer the nature over lots of other barthrooms.

 

• Laundry – Watch out for opportunities! Wash your clothes everywhere you can. Even if it is just a river, you can dry them in the sun.

 

• Food – Eat it all! Stay regional. Streetfood, picnic, cooking. Avoid to get obese!

 

• Drinking – Always have a bottle of water with you to refill. 70% of the money you spend is for alcohol if you do it wiserly.

 

• Love – Never fell in love with a local, never fell in love with a traveler; Always fell in love with a local, always fell in love with a traveler.

 

• Germans – The only people you don’t like to see are citizen of your own country, even worse are townspeople. (Of course there is always an exception.)

• Languages – Learn them, it makes fun. Borders can be bridged by mimic and gestures but there is nothing better than being integrated thoughout understanding. Another positive addition will be the use of your new abilities if you do not want them to understand you while you talk about them.

• Equipment – Less is better! You will hate your luggage, especially in cities. The best way is to find a place to hide your backpack. Stay organized. The organization in your backpack is the most important issue. You will loose things, spend hours in searching, you will get nervous, frustrated. Kick out stuff you think you will never use and buy things you see others using a lot. An inflatable pillow is my new treasure since I saw a guy sleeping in a bus while my head was leaning against the cold window with irritating vibrations.

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• Tidiness – I don’t talk about this.

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• Cuts/ Blister/ Strange Wounds – After a while your skin looks like a battlefield. In particular your legs/ feet will have some scarfs/ red points and you cannot figure out about the source or when it happened.

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• Cloths – After a few months in the same cloths, you will hate them.

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• Homeless people – It’s a good idea to put unworthy coins in your pockets. Never give children money, the parents will figure out they don’t have to work and use their children to get money on the streets. It is okay to say no sometimes. You cannot help everybody but try you can try to make a change.

 

• Mosquitoes, Mice, Rats, Squirrels, Spiders etc. – Yesterday a grasshopper jumped into my face. Pain! And please, please tell me why mosquitoes excist!

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• Drugs – The world is full of it. Who should care if everyone is involved?

 

• Bucket-List – sometimes your expectation is destroyed by the media. You stand in front of a well known building/ object and you feel less emotionalized than you thought it will be. Why? Because Google and other sources brought already the world to you on the screen

 

• Questions – To answer what you do exactly in your life can feel like being an actor in “Groundhog Day”. I stole the idea of a fellow traveler friend who occationally tells different stories about his life. I am a firefighter and a pilot, in one person. If the person in front of you is interesting as a brick, you know that’s the only sentence you will talk to them.

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• Women – There is a glance in the eyes of a woman if you tell her your story.

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• Multiculturalism – Input. Input. Input. I love it. My brain is like Wikipedia, strangers write information on my memory card.