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If you want to read CHapter one, its inGETTING LOST. Just below.
What follows is a document report on the Aimless wandering of mine which began when I attempted to Get to Mexico on the Day Syd Barrett died...
___I___I___ -timeframe commencing April 2007
The cheap beer was running out in the abandoned clothes factory in Thessalonika, occupied with a BMX range, for various Anarchist groups we had been working on an organic farm project, and (I had been staying in an abandoned old house elsewhere in the city, cross dressing in some stuff I cobbled together.
Six of us were to travel across the Balkan states of Eastern Europe, A fire spinning Yogi who had been in turkey(German) A Greek couple from Athens Mikales& Athina, a juggler street performer from the Czech Rep.(Theresa, The Vans owner Bernie, it had been recently sprayed professionally, an Orange truck cab, and myself, a hopeless busker/squatter/writer from U.K.The dust flew as the van acelleerated out of the vast space of the squat yard.
Macedonia... A vastly natural country with few towns, mountains surrounding the slim road. Eight hours driving we were at the Serbian border. The van was held up for two hours while they searched us for drugs. Border police rifling through our personal possessions, I was about to be revealed as a transvestite when I used the excuse that I had a circus costume in my bag. So on our way through Serbia we mished. Serbian roads are evil and have highway birders which charge Extortionate money every fifty kilometers or so. So we hit the rough roads. No seatbelts in the cab, the truck bouncing along the potholes. Overnight we were chsased out of a feild by a serbian farmer waving a pitchfork, and the next day reached Beograd(Belgrade).
Bullet holes and bombshell impacts were still visible in the facades of city buildings from the 1993 war as we headed down to the centre to busk up some change. We got there only to be hopelessly outclassed by a circus troop in the main shop street? unicyclists, jugglers, clowns, Theresa began talking to them, and they invited us for a beer in the park. We ended up staying at their place for three days. Colorful liars was the name of the troop, they were acrobats, iknife jugglers, circus girls and boys who travelled around every summer to the four states their passports would allow them to, to perform festivals withDJs & bands. They were groovy, and after a cool time learning to juggle, and performing in the late night street with them, it was time to hit the highway.
Through Hungary, plain speed drivin, camping the Slovakian border overnight (as I had over new year 2002, alone; less snow this time), we came to our eventual destination- Prague. where we split up, people had to see their familys, I was out of petrol fare ( I only had five bucks the whoole way) and there was a legalise marijuanna protest about to go down. Late night industrial bar in Prague(coolest fuckin bar I have ever seen in my life, free entry everybody on drugs, sculptures made of about two hundred butchered motorvehicle engines, MACHINA TURNS). I was staying at a squat Theresa ( who didnt like me in the end ) had given me the address of. Dark place. Black magick scrawls on the walls, and the power had been out a while so bands couldnt gig the bar no more.
Then after we said our goodbyes, and discovered busking had been made illegal in Prague, after, even, I failed to gatecrash a festival, passing it by thinking it was too municipal; it turned out Transglobal underground and Clawfinger(who rock, I bought their record for 90p, and it ruled) were both giggeing. So I missed that shit, and couldnt find the legalise it march, but got to the post Demo gig, where huge bush plants were placed in front of Drum and bass& band stages, with about ten thousand people all smoking pot on this hillside park in Prague.
One heavily stoned day later and whilst I was sitting in the late nite cinema tent watching "a scanner darkly"(which is shot like an ACID PEAK, I still havent seen the end) an alarm klaxon went off and someone shouted "COPS!" and all the gear was hussled away along with the people.
After some downtown busking, it was tiime to hock a train to Berlin, I still had some contacts there who I met in 2002, hadnt seen them for five years...
Pending CHAPTER THREE...........................To Be COntinued timeframe June 2007
What follows is a document report on the Aimless wandering of mine which began when I attempted to Get to Mexico on the Day Syd Barrett died...
___I___I___ -timeframe commencing April 2007
The cheap beer was running out in the abandoned clothes factory in Thessalonika, occupied with a BMX range, for various Anarchist groups we had been working on an organic farm project, and (I had been staying in an abandoned old house elsewhere in the city, cross dressing in some stuff I cobbled together.
Six of us were to travel across the Balkan states of Eastern Europe, A fire spinning Yogi who had been in turkey(German) A Greek couple from Athens Mikales& Athina, a juggler street performer from the Czech Rep.(Theresa, The Vans owner Bernie, it had been recently sprayed professionally, an Orange truck cab, and myself, a hopeless busker/squatter/writer from U.K.The dust flew as the van acelleerated out of the vast space of the squat yard.
Macedonia... A vastly natural country with few towns, mountains surrounding the slim road. Eight hours driving we were at the Serbian border. The van was held up for two hours while they searched us for drugs. Border police rifling through our personal possessions, I was about to be revealed as a transvestite when I used the excuse that I had a circus costume in my bag. So on our way through Serbia we mished. Serbian roads are evil and have highway birders which charge Extortionate money every fifty kilometers or so. So we hit the rough roads. No seatbelts in the cab, the truck bouncing along the potholes. Overnight we were chsased out of a feild by a serbian farmer waving a pitchfork, and the next day reached Beograd(Belgrade).
Bullet holes and bombshell impacts were still visible in the facades of city buildings from the 1993 war as we headed down to the centre to busk up some change. We got there only to be hopelessly outclassed by a circus troop in the main shop street? unicyclists, jugglers, clowns, Theresa began talking to them, and they invited us for a beer in the park. We ended up staying at their place for three days. Colorful liars was the name of the troop, they were acrobats, iknife jugglers, circus girls and boys who travelled around every summer to the four states their passports would allow them to, to perform festivals withDJs & bands. They were groovy, and after a cool time learning to juggle, and performing in the late night street with them, it was time to hit the highway.
Through Hungary, plain speed drivin, camping the Slovakian border overnight (as I had over new year 2002, alone; less snow this time), we came to our eventual destination- Prague. where we split up, people had to see their familys, I was out of petrol fare ( I only had five bucks the whoole way) and there was a legalise marijuanna protest about to go down. Late night industrial bar in Prague(coolest fuckin bar I have ever seen in my life, free entry everybody on drugs, sculptures made of about two hundred butchered motorvehicle engines, MACHINA TURNS). I was staying at a squat Theresa ( who didnt like me in the end ) had given me the address of. Dark place. Black magick scrawls on the walls, and the power had been out a while so bands couldnt gig the bar no more.
Then after we said our goodbyes, and discovered busking had been made illegal in Prague, after, even, I failed to gatecrash a festival, passing it by thinking it was too municipal; it turned out Transglobal underground and Clawfinger(who rock, I bought their record for 90p, and it ruled) were both giggeing. So I missed that shit, and couldnt find the legalise it march, but got to the post Demo gig, where huge bush plants were placed in front of Drum and bass& band stages, with about ten thousand people all smoking pot on this hillside park in Prague.
One heavily stoned day later and whilst I was sitting in the late nite cinema tent watching "a scanner darkly"(which is shot like an ACID PEAK, I still havent seen the end) an alarm klaxon went off and someone shouted "COPS!" and all the gear was hussled away along with the people.
After some downtown busking, it was tiime to hock a train to Berlin, I still had some contacts there who I met in 2002, hadnt seen them for five years...
Pending CHAPTER THREE...........................To Be COntinued timeframe June 2007
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Re: CHAPTER TWO
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 12:49 AMMy experience of europe was pretty wild, pretty intense, the street/travel scene reminded me of Road Warrior for some reason. ... maybe just because I was unfamiliar with it all. -
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Re: CHAPTER TWO
Fri, December 19, 2008 - 1:37 PMOur tale continues.
I was introduced to the Berlin squatter scene in 2002, they had ocupied a hundred or more buildings since the wall came down in 1989, and turned them into underground clubs, bars, squats, with a subversive movement echoeing through the backalleys. There was a street called Reiger strasse where every other building was occupied by the underground. 84 was where the drifters could stay. I had not been there for five years and hung out there for a week, with various other foriegn people. The van I had travelled through the balkans with had gone, and I was to make my way to the Baltic where a school had been donated to the anti-G8 protests. I lived there in rostock in the build up to the protests for a month. more and more people arrived, soon we were holding meetings translated into russian (40 or so russians showed) and all night gigs in a bar we set up with bands (Dave Rolics- protest singer & others) where I became honorary bar person, made myself a "KI*LL YOUR GENDER" T-shirt and went for blakc bloc training in a skirt at one of the camps (three massive traveller camps were set up around rostock) some naked bathing in the Baltic later, and the tear gas and water cannons arrived with the various presidents and Prime ministers in their helicopters. Blockading the conference, getting water cannoned off a rooftop,and watching cars blow up, gettin drunk, and listening to loud live music the wek went by, and the governments of the world had been challenged!
Return to a peaceful germany, I began getting work on organic farms, staying with some cool germans I met, who put me onto the W.W.O.O.F. scheme ( willing workers on organic farms) a change of pace from my anarchic busking mishon, I headed to France, to garden for a wise old lady, hocking trains and hitching roads. I had been invited to go surfing in portugal, and had to make my way from the baltic. Come the mid August heat, the Spanish desert mountains were killing me along with the over astute spanish rail inspectors. That was hard going, I eventually made it to a W.W,.O.O.F. farm in portugal ( I had worked three in germany, and the gardening in France) a horse ranch. I was fired in a day, ( a horse approached me with a hard on, nasty sight) and got to the festival where I was supposed to meet the surfer. He wasn't there. It was two weeks long, some people I had just met on the Baltic, portugese protesters were there, and it was O.K. a big free valley festival in Portugal.
So we cut down a GMO field, which got accused of being a terrorist act!
And, outside a portugese hospital, where we had all been hooked up to drip feeds, to get rid of a virus in the food or the heat, a brazillian guy mentioned a beach where Jimi Hendrix used to visit in Morrocco called Essouaria. My surfing connection had fallen through, I had nothin better to do- I slung my guitar on my back, figured I never been in this part of the world before, and set my compass two countries hence- To Essouaria.
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