Around the world
It was time to go I planned to start in New York, followed by Jamaica, and then from LA to Hawaii, American Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, China, India, Africa, Italy, and back to Hamburg. At that time, I had only one bank account and a credit limit that was three times my income. Additionally, I had another $20,000 in cash in California, which was more than enough for both of us. However, we didn’t have a credit card, and I remembered the man from the airplane to Cuba who had offered me a gold card. I contacted him, and he remembered me. I told him what I was doing, that I was earning good money, and that the card would serve me well on my travels around the world. Without many complications and with a minimum of paperwork, he got me the first unlimited gold American Express card.
Chapter 6 around the world it was time to go I planned to start in New York followed by Jamaica and then from LA to Hawaii American Soma Tonga New Zealand Australia Indonesia Malaysia Thailand the Philippines China India Africa Italy and back to Hamburg at that time I had only one bank
Account and a credit limit that was three times my income additionally I had another $2,000 in cash in California which was more than enough for both of us however we didn’t have a credit crit card and I remembered the man from the airplane to Cuba who had offered me a
Gold card I contacted him and he remembered me I told him what I was doing that I was earning good money and that the card would serve me well on my travels around the world without many complications and with a minimum of paperwork he got me the first unlimited
Gold American Express card it proved to be very useful because at that time there were no electronic payment methods and I had to pay everything in cash the card allowed me to withdraw money and pay for hotel rooms or airline tickets anywhere in the world without having to
Carry cash all the time I also had travel insurance that covered all sorts of emergencies from sickness to accidents not to mention the image that came with the card as no one had a credit card at that time for people like me it was the perfect and long overdue
Tool for traveling and American Express changed the way people travel what is now normal was then a small Revolution and certainly contributed to making travel to other parts of the world more popular and more accessible then I found out that I didn’t have to pay taxes if I wasn’t registered in
Germany for more than 6 months with all this knowledge and unlimited cash in my pocket I deregistered from Germany and went on the road again for an indefinite period Peter finished his doctoral exams but had no money so I invited him to join me on my world trip the journey
Began in November 1978 flying from Gatwick to New York Gatwick was a new airport in the south of London and Laker Airways Sky Train started the first lowcost flights to New York JFK from there in 1977 you paid 59 at the door with the stewardess and could board there were no
Reserved seats and no service but smoking all sorts of substances was allowed making for a very short flight almost all the passengers were young and hip and it felt like riding a college bus to a music festival when the no smoking sign went out the pilot spoke over the loudspeaker
With the words let’s fly high to the Big Apple many people lit up joints and you became High whether you wanted to or not the smoke in the cabin was so intense that the clothes smelled like grass for weeks and I’m sure the pilots were high
Too before we took off we waited in the airport lounge and sat on the floor when a Franco Canadian guy asked me if I knew anything about the customs in New York nobody knew better about this area than he did and he had more experience with
Smuggling than I did I don’t know why he asked me but he didn’t look like a snitch and I told him what he wanted to know it turned out that he had had a whole seabag full of counterfeit French 500 notes that he wanted to smuggle to
Canada but he had to fly to the States first and go through customs there he was a nice guy who just wanted to make some extra money but was afraid of getting caught and offered me a deal where I would get 5% if I smuggled the money through customs for
Him no problem I checked the baggage in rikic where we had a layover while we were chatting Paula from Hamburg showed up and asked if she could travel with us for a while she had just gotten divorced and had no plan of where to go it was
Okay to help her and reduce the costs so we agreed that she could travel with us for a time rikic is a small town with around 10,000 inhabitants and many hot springs were beautiful girls with milky white skin and red hair bathed naked it was a paradise for peeping Toms and
Young guys like us after a day of fun we flew on to New York City but the landing in New York was one of the most chaotic I can remember the pilot landed the plane on the end of the runway and came to a full stop when we were on the grass
No one knew what had happened but we all breathed a sigh of relief when the plane came to a stop we got out and saw that we were in JFK we had managed to fly at a fraction of the normal airfare but it could have been our last flight
Too the journey had already reached its climax at the start but that was just the beginning and because of the incident there was no control at Customs after arriving we went to a hotel on 42nd Street and after we had distributed the money we went to eat we
Were all very hungry and wanted to eat quickly so we went to the nearest diner on the corner when the bill came and we wanted to pay I thought maybe he will take the 500 Frank note and I will see what happens I gave the waiter the large very
Nice note and asked if we could pay with it he had never seen such a large and valuable looking note before and had no idea what it was worth you couldn’t google like today so he had to take my word for it we were all very hungry and
Wanted to eat quickly so so we went to the next Diner on the corner when the bill came and we wanted to pay I thought maybe he’ll take the 500 Frank note and I’ll see what happens I gave the waiter the large very beautiful Bill and asked him if we could
Pay with it he had never seen such a large and valuable looking Bill and had no idea what it was worth you couldn’t Google things like today so we had to take my word for it when I told him it was worth about $1100 the bill was a little over $120
And I told him he could keep the if he accepted it since we had no other money and it was too late to go to a bank back then there were no ATMs he couldn’t resist the temptation to say no the Canadian had only paid 10% of the value
So it was a good deal for him too we used the trick over and over again finding many opportunities to get rid of fake bills we could eat in expensive restaurants party in exclusive clubs and stay in the best hotels all without spending a scent but eventually it
Became too risky and we decided to hide the bills and use them later similar to the time in nberg when I had all those dollars New York was a bankrupt City at that time and one could buy a penthouse apartment on West Broadway for $50,000 a price that nowadays wouldn’t
Even buy you a closet in that location the city was characterized by high crime and Corruption and mayor KO seemed unable to get a handle on the city’s problems despite this New York was also very Dynamic and attractive to artists young people and those with little money as rents and living costs
Were bearable in the 80s New York was only half as expensive as London Hong Kong or Paris the next day John took the bus to Canada while I flew to Jamaica and then took a taxi to Negril where I stayed in the same treehouse with Bongo and his wife 2
Years ago however there was no room for Paula in the treehouse and she had to stay next door we thought this wouldn’t be a problem for her especially since she had the money to stay in a hotel but that wasn’t her plan she wanted something from me that I didn’t want to
Give her and the next two weeks on the beach were marked by stress with her when we decided to continue traveling we found out that Christa had hidden our passports to try and blackmail us she wanted me to continue traveling with her alone without Peter and I told her that the passports were
Not a real bargaining chip since I could have her kidnapped if she continued to annoy me we reached a compromise where we would take her to California and then she would travel alone I had planned to lose Christa along the way but she seemed to smell the plan and never left
Us alone she was like a leech that you couldn’t get rid of and became a big unexpected problem for me we flew from Miami to New Orleans where I visited my friend Mark and stayed at a friend’s house in the French Quarter everything would have been fine but Christa was
Stressing so much that we decided to travel to enenas earlier I got a car from AAA that we had to take to San Diego Paula who was about 10 years older turned out to be a real witch as we drove from San Diego to Richard’s house
On the coast where we stayed in the same house as a few months ago but even the laid-back Southern Californian got so annoyed with Christa that he asked me to get rid of her and I decided to go North to buy old Harley-Davidson motorcycles to sell back in Germany but it was
Impossible because Christa Drew attention to herself by telling unbelievable lying stories about me to prevent the business I couldn’t understand her behavior at all and kept asking her what she wanted from me she explained that what I was doing was not good for me I should rather look for a
Real job and earn my money with it in other words she wanted to make me what she liked and I realized that she was sick and needed a good psychologist I think Sigman Freud would have written a book about her if he had been in my
Situation only how I could get rid of her was not clear to me and as the terror with her got worse and worse I thought that the only solution was to push her off a cliff to free myself from her I knew the right place to do this
Having watched the sea many times and it was to the right of the Golden Gate Bridge from up there it went hundreds of meters down a cliff into the sea and someone who slips there will not be found again so quickly it was the ideal
Place to put my plan into action I just needed to push them a little and The Spook would be over as I was about to do it she turned around and said she had come to the decision that she couldn’t help me and that I should take her to
The airport so she could fly back to Hamburg just like the police officer in Colombia the right or wrong decision for me had to be made in a millisecond I could only hope it wasn’t another one of her tricks but to be sure she wouldn’t come back I diluted a drink
With so much sleeping pill that she probably wouldn’t wake up until she was in Hamburg I took the next plane to San Diego and quickly packed my things and Peter and I flew on the first flight fittingly the PanAm Clipper number one to Hawaii Hawaii was as beautiful as
Always ways and we watched the big waves and their Surfers on the North Shore before flying from there to Samoa Samoa is divided into two parts the American part which is not very interesting and the western part which is not bad if you have no experience with the south sea
Islands after a few days there we flew to Nuku alofa the capital of Tonga this archipelago consists of 136 Islands spread over an area the size of Germany and is divided into three Island groups the southernmost is located near New Zealand and the eastern most is 400 m or
544 km south of us Samoa we we found a beautiful beach on the island of Maine in Tonga and met EP kowaka a local teacher on a very beautiful beach I was able to talk to him at length about Island life as he spoke good English one
Day I asked him how much it would cost to rent a beach like that for a year he didn’t know but he told me that there is a much nicer Beach where he comes from that he could could rent to me for1 250 a year I didn’t know the beach but I
Trusted epil and the offer was too good to refuse we signed a contract in a small Hut on the beach and I told him that I would come there within the next 24 months then we talked about the cost of building houses there and living on
His Beach a year later I went to vavo and stayed on his Island for over a year it’s the most beautiful place in the world that you can imagine but more on that later from Tonga we flew to New Zealand and I must say that I understand
Why people travel there and want to stay it’s a really beautiful island especially the North Island we traveled all the way south from Auckland and I even skied on Mount Cook then we went to Sydney Australia we had always been told earlier that Australia is the island of
Men who had colonized it and therefore the ratio of women to men is still 3 to1 in favor of men I was very happy to see that this was just a myth and that there were enough girls girls there like anywhere else when we arrived there a cricket championship was taking place
And so there were few men on the beach as most of them got drunk in bars and were interested in this strange sport from Sydney we took the bus to Adelaide in Western Australia and the journey there took forever you drive through a sea of bushes and the landscape doesn’t
Change for days sometimes a few kangaroos jump across the road but that’s about it it is the most boring area you can imagine and when the bus stopped after hours in the middle of nowhere the scene was like in that commercial Australian remote control where a guy throws a beer can across the
Bar hitting a man who then changes the TV channel the only sport there is getting drunk and driving their trucks around to shoot anything that moves in front of them whether animals or people after spending another 4 days in the middle of nowhere a strange American
Approached me and gave me a script of his book he told me it contained secret information and that he was in great danger because the CIA didn’t want this highly classified information to be revealed his name was Stan Deo and the name of the script was the cosmic
Conspiracy allegedly one of the first whistleblowers anyway I took the book with me to Bangkok where I found a copy machine and was able to send some copies as I had promised him at the time it became a conspiracy theory for many about the domination of the World by a
Few influential people it was a perfect day to be at the beach when we arrived in Adelaide the Sun was shining and the sea was calm we decided to get off and swim and walk a bit on the beach near the beach was a lifeguard house with a
Huge surfboard in front of it I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to try it out but when I was about 100 m from the beach the wav suddenly got Higher and Higher One of Them caught the board and HIIT it so hard against my
Face that I bit off a part of my tongue and started bleeding the blood was Dripping into the water and I knew that sharks can smell blood from kilometers away Panic Rose in me as I rode back to the shore with my mouth closed and half
Of my tongue I ran to Peter who was as usual basking in the Sun and showed him my injured tongue fortunately it wasn’t as bad as it felt but we still decided to go to the hospital it was difficult to find a car that would take us there
But eventually one stopped and took us directly to the hospital the driver was waiting for us and we stayed with him for a few days where he showed us around the area of Adelaide we had time to take magic mushrooms and get to know the country and its people before we drove
To Perth it was a city of 1 million but it didn’t bring us much so we immediately flew to Bali Indonesia Bali was not very developed at the time and there were only a few accommodations especially on the beach and in the mountains of ubu we decided to live on
The beach and rented a small hotel consisting of 12 houses in a horseshoe shape we took took the last house in the row but then something strange happened every day someone had an accident in the same order as the houses were arranged when the day came that our
House was due I decided to ride my rented motorbike to go shopping suddenly the front fork of my motorcycle turned on the road to den Pasar the provincial City about 20 km from our place I flew about 15 meters through the air and knew it was going to
Be painful when I hit the ground I passed out and when I regained Consciousness I saw the worried faces of people looking down on me they took me to an empty room with only a chair and an empty desk then a doctor came and told me that I probably had severe
Bruises but he couldn’t say for sure as he didn’t have an x-ray machine or any medication to calm me down or ease my pain but the worst part was that my skin was torn and scratched so much that my arms and legs needed to be cleaned to
Avoid getting an infection which can be deadly in the tropics but all they had was a sponge and alcohol to Clean My Wounds the pain was so intense and I could only watch as he cleaned the wounds in slow motion then he told me to disinfect them with aloe
Vera and go to sleep what kind of therapy and great help was that I thought but what could I do they brought me back to my bed in excruciating pain and there I lay on my back for weeks thinking I would die if I had the
Hiccups a large scab had formed on my wounds and my neighbors threw a little party for me to celebrate my life then just as I spoke the word magic two large coconuts fell through the roof and being unable to move they landed directly next to my body that was it I
Asked Peter to lift me and no matter how much pain it caused me I wanted to leave that magical place immediately I was so fed up with Bali that I never went back which may have been a mistake but my soul was not welcome there we packed our
Few belongings and immediately set off first in a bimbo a taxi likee vehicle and then in a bus that was supposed to take us to a ferry I was sitting in the last row on the left side of the bus when it crashed into a rice field fortunately I was with the other
Passengers and was not crushed by them after great pain we climbed out of the bus and had to wait until a replacement vehicle was found when we finally arrived at the Port the last fery to Java was just leaving and we barely managed to grab
The last cabin on the ship we took the FY to Banu wangi on the Banu wangi region of the East End of Java Indonesia just west of Bali across the Bali straight here there is diverse nature with protected jungle and marine life in the volcanic crater there is a turquoise
Lake with a diameter of about 1 km and the naturally occurring sulfur in the crater creates distinctive blue flames that can be seen from afar at night afterward we took the train to Yogyakarta a city known for its traditional art and cultural Heritage the Magnificent 18th century Katon Royal
Complex houses the still inhabited Sultan’s Palace the Katon also houses numerous outdoor pavilions where classical Javanese dance performances and gamalon concerts are held featuring gongs Bell ensembles and plucked instruments about 100,000 birds are housed in small cages to sell their songs and attract buyers the bird market
Stimulates the mind more than a normal Zoo although I don’t usually like zoos and animals in cages I often think of buying all the birds and releasing them into freedom but when you see how people live in this area you understand that they cannot have compassion for Animals
From Yogyakarta we continued on to Jakarta the capital of Indonesia we stayed at the Hilton hotel which looked like it was built from garbage the next morning we took a train to Sumatra unfortunately I have forgotten the name of the city where we made the first stop
However the train was very slow low and had to reverse several times to make way for other trains the heat and humidity were unbearable and I was wearing only a red sarong from B with my black body long hair and scabs on my arms I felt
Like a warrior from another time on the ship in Java some people even kneeled down and treated me like a samurai when I came out of my cabin to go to the bathroom the train was mainly filled with workers heading to the Jungle mines and a few natives suddenly a fight broke
Out and the guy next to me pulled out a weapon I felt like a giant in hell everyone went into hiding except for me because I couldn’t move I just looked at the guy and he looked at me and gave me his weapon at night the train stopped in
A city that could have been from a movie and was only built out of scrap and tin in the middle of the Jungle and of course there was only one hotel whose rooms were so wet that water was running down the Walls we put the bed in the
Middle but it was impossible to sleep so we played cards and hoped that the train would come in the morning after many endless hours on the train we arrived in Pang a small City on the west coast on an island off the coast an old American
Lady ran a hostel for travelers it was a very peaceful place where we could rest before taking a bus to medon on the way there other Travelers told us that in the village we passed by a young couple had been stoned to death for having sex in the neighborhood Sumatra is not only
100% Muslim but also sometimes backwards in development and we didn’t feel like we belong there with our Western way of life from midan we took a ferry across the straight of malaka to panang in Malaysia panang used to be a very famous pirate port for the Dutch and British
Who passed through the straight on their way to India and Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries on the island is the state capital Georgetown with the colonial Fort corn Wallace and in the middle of this Splendid Place stands a steel cage where a very large and old orangutan is
Kept For Tourists it’s a very sad place but as I sat there for a while I understood the game of the animal that must have been on display there for many years it played a game with the strangers who gave it peanuts and returned them with its huge hands as if
Shooting from a gun I felt it was speaking to me just by looking at me it’s a shame that such an animal is put on display in an open cage like so many things people do to animals to humiliate them they treat them disrespectfully in the same way they are treated
Themselves after that I never went to a zoo again and never will but I understand that for many it is the only place they can see rare animals before we have wiped them out after our adventure in the park Peter and I wanted to have a little more excitement and
Rented Rick Shaws to race each other in Madan however in Madan the passengers sit in front of the Rick Shaws and it’s almost impossible to avoid accidents when racing through the narrow alleys though I was mostly healed I didn’t want to end up in the hospital again despite
All our pleas the competing drivers were all vying for the prize money and we ended up on a bike ride that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone after that we traveled by bus from Malaysian to Bangkok I’m practically the whole way Peter and I turned people into playing a
Card game which is called Momo which is actually pretty entertaining if you play for money from there we travel from Vietnam to Hong Kong which in my opinion is a combination of London and New York only much busier and dirtier we visited all the markets and Islands there and
Some of them were very interesting but all were crowded with people running around like ants as I passed by the Chinese Consulate the People’s Republic of China was offering visitors the opportunity to take a limited time train ride from Hong Kong to Guang Joo a provincial City about 100 km Inland it
Was one of the first official trips to the Chinese Mainland after Mao had died a few weeks earlier when we arrived on the mainland the pace of the people was much slower they moved in millions on bicycles like a stream of people flowing in a certain direction compared to that
Hong Kong was Extremely Loud and hectic there were almost no cars on the mainland only old trucks and trains that were at least 50 years old the hotel where we stayed was for Communist party members and looked like it it was strange to see pictures of Mao in the
Trash can and to know that everything would change I still remembered the communes in Berlin holding their little red Mao books and thinking that Mao was a great leader in reality however it turned out that he was a criminal and mass murderer responsible for the Unspeakable suffering of at least 80
Million people of his own people when we arrived in the city every tourist was given a tour guide most of whom still wore uniforms of the red guards I managed to convince my guide who was supposed to monitor my movements to give me a note in Chinese that read please
Arrange a taxi to take me back to this hotel at some point I became very worried that I might lose this note and the city would swallow me up it started with me sitting in a nice place waiting for food only I wasn’t in a restaurant
But at a fortune teller I was waiting for the menu or something similar When A Very Old Man looked at me for a while then took my hand and left just as I was about to leave a little girl gave me a beautiful letter which I couldn’t read
But I kept it because I liked it so much with all the great characters I think I gave her 10 cents for it and 2 years later I was sitting on a park bench in San Francisco and found the letter again it wasn’t hard to find someone in
Chinatown to translate the text for me and most of what was in it had already happened the rest of the writing was about my near future and the paragraph read as follows I would not have children with my blonde wife but she would be replaced by a girl with darker
Hair and I would have a boy and a girl girl with her and spend my life with her whether you believe it or not it happened exactly that way and she was my destiny it felt like a journey back in the time of at least 100 years to a
Place that was very foreign to me during my walk I came across a porcelain Factory in a very small six-story building which also served as the cafeteria for the workers but there was also food for me not with the workers on the ground floor but I ate above them on
A floor reserved for men managers it made me think that perhaps it’s a human thing for the privileged to sit Above the Rest after lunch I was led into the Factory and then to the company’s school where pictures of Marx angles and lenon adorned the walls I felt like we were in
A classroom from the 19th century in the middle of the factory there was a playground and a pingpong table and I had to play against a little boy who could only touch the table with his upper lip despite this disadvantage I had no chance chance of winning against
Him the boy was so good and quick that he destroyed me much to the amusement of the other children there must have been 500 children on the playground and it seemed to me that they had never had so much fun in the factory I bought a few
Pallets of porcelain and sent them back to hurg the porcelain was so cheap that I couldn’t resist buying a lot of it when it arrived in Hamburg I was able to finance a large part of my journey through its sale that was the beginning of China’s transformation into the
Social capitalism that we know today after a few weeks I was happy to leave southeast Asia and to this day 50 years later I have never felt the need to return not even for the 2022 Winter Olympics to which I had the chance to travel for me there is nothing in China
Except for some Landscapes that particularly appeals to me the people music and even the food annoyed me and unlike South America where everything is full of life China was very depressing and suffing ating perhaps I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time there
Was a cheap flight to Manila and when I arrived there the difference couldn’t have been greater in Manila we rented a car and drove to the 1,000 islands in the north of the country on the way there we passed through an area with the most incredible Rice Terraces and the
People there were very small and colorful but also very poor 1,000 island is now a major tourist destination but back then it was just untouched and beautiful on the way back we stopped at a huge US Naval Base where hundreds of Warships were anchored and when we went
Into a bar there the situation was immediately tense the soldiers were all drunk and the girls were all prostitutes who immediately fell in love with Peter and his long blonde hair after a few beers we were glad to be able to leave the bar unscathed and from there we
Drove to seu which is located in the south of the Philippines in seu I found a beautiful place where we rented a bamboo raft the bamboo raft had an area of about 10 square m with a small sleeping place and a small table for eating we swam with it about 500 met
From the shore and every morning A boy came and brought us juices food coffee and sometimes even an old newspaper we enjoyed the Silence of the Sea and the seclusion when one day a man swam up to us he told stories about this place in India where so many women had nothing
Else on their minds but meditation in sex at that time I hadn’t had a girlfriend for a year and my sex life was at zero at the age of 25 it can be a problem with the testosterone level if you think about it too much and so we
Decided to travel to India and see what this ashram was all about and we decided to go to India when we arrived in Kolkata I was shocked by how poor the people were and how many of them lived on the streets even at the train station thousands of
Them slept on the tracks and had to quickly clear the tracks when the train came we quickly left this hell and the fastest way was to take a train to New Deli a train journey in India can be a real challenge as the trains are often overcrowded and there are no toilets the
Temperatures can also be very high and there is often only dirty water and sometimes no food however warm Coca-Cola is available at every station the journey is also long and exhausting which is why some prefer to take a plane after such a trip in addition there are also dangers to consider such as
Diseases poisoned food or robberies I don’t know how long the train ride from us to Bombay took but it felt like an eternity when we finally arrived we were completely exhausted and had probably lost a few kilos our next destination was the workingclass city of puni where
The ashram was located in Puna it was very hot probably even hotter than 45 de C and it didn’t cool down at night either there were rarely any public toilets and one had to go to a hotel or Cafe where there was never any toilet paper and they were frequently used for
Other purposes or as kitchens this could be a plausible reason why some Muslims went to Pakistan I remember getting coffee instead of tea and watching women wash their hair in the drainage ditch with such Grace that one could think they were models for a hair company as I
Was lost in thought a giant elephant passed by the restaurant and just a few meters away from me he made a statement that was UN mistakable about 50 kg of poop splashed onto the street and everyone within a 15 M radius got some on them one would think that people
Would freak out but not in India no one said a thing because compared to what constantly happens around you a little elephant dung is nothing special after that we looked for accommodation but of course there were no free hotels because the rajn followers had occupied all the accommodations but after a while we
Found an old British house that was once a private Villa and had been converted into an I would like to be a hotel when I arrived in the lobby there was nothing but a small table with a small Bell on top I kept ringing the bell but nothing
Happened then I saw a man at the back of the house his head buried in a hole he had dug for himself and breathing through his rear end I just wanted to ask if there was a place to stay but I didn’t want to disturb him in his very
Special meditation so we just sat on the Terrace and watched the sunset later I asked him if there was a room available and we were lucky to get a cardboard box that was the size of a sleeping bag and in which sleeping was impossible not only because of its size
And the heat in the room but also because so many sasin had to do their sex training after work we used it as a storage space for our things and slept outside on the Terrace but even there it was as loud as an Italian brothel the
Moaning and other noises at night put us in a strange State and all we could do do to calm ourselves down was to smoke some hashish and accept the rituals the next morning I wanted to find somewhere to eat and I found the only other guys who weren’t dressed in
Orange we ended up at a small restaurant in a park-like area with trees and servers I sat across from an Indian man who looked like a wise man Guru and next to him Sat a Canadian musician the Canadian asked the Indian what it was about these people here that made orange
So special the Indian replied that he was also here to find out when the Canadian complained that he couldn’t find ice for a cold drink the Indian handed him his glass of ice water how did you do that he asked and the Indian just smiled and said I could do that
With an ocean if it wanted to we were probably so stoned that we could only see what we wanted to see but after a while in India nothing surprised us anymore anyway I had a reason to be here and I was ready to enter the ashram but
I I was not allowed in because Ban’s right-hand woman a woman named Sheila kept coming up with new reasons to reject me my hair wasn’t washed with the ashram shampoo which was the only shampoo good enough for the Master’s sensitive nose or she wanted information about my financial status that I didn’t
Want to give her she reminded me of an Indian version of Christa and I couldn’t help but think that she was the gatekeeper to a mystical world that I was desperate to enter I found myself in the midst of orange-clad followers with radiant faces full of joy happiness and
Contentment and everywhere I looked there were images of the guru with his phony smile it was all so overwhelming and I couldn’t help but feel like I didn’t belong there I wandered around for a while observing the daily routine of the ashram meditation group therapy Dynamic meditation and of course lots of
Sex I couldn’t believe how easy it was for bwan to manipulate people into giving him so much power and money I was disgusted by it all and decided it was time to leave as I walked out of the ashram I felt a sense of relief wash
Over me I knew that this was not the kind of spirituality I was looking for I wanted something real something authentic and I knew I wouldn’t find it in a place like this the whole thing felt like a perfect scam optimally commercialized to attract lost souls in
Need of a guide to top it all off there were speakers hanging from the trees constantly broadcasting the guru’s teachings in his unpleasant voice it felt like a snake whispering in my ear give me your dollars and you can say you have a friend for your soul next to a restaurant there was
Another large meeting room and I felt a bit like I was in a Jehovah’s Witnesses Center when I got tired of all the [Â __Â ] I lay down in the empty space and fell asleep when I woke up the super Guru arrived in one of his 99 rolls-royces
And stopped right in front of me then he took a seat in one of those American TV armchairs and looked around at his followers after a few gestures to his followers the master spoke I feel aggressive energy here and I looked at the guy only a meter away from me and
Said to himou damn right man then I turned around in disgust to leave and saw hundreds of his followers with ecstatic eyes looking at me all horrified and ready to devour me like in Rio I had to quickly disappear to avoid being massacred at the height of the
Movement a circle of leading members of the pure rajnish commune in Oregon was arrested including an attempted assassination of US Attorney Charles H Turner as part of the first biot terrorism attack in the United States which was orchestrated to influence the communal election Salmonella bacteria were used to infect salad products in
Local restaurants and stores which poisoned several hundred people Sheila betrayed him to the US authorities after which he was was deported from the United States in 1985 and 21 countries subsequently refused him entry we decided to go to Goa which was a two-day train journey from Puna Goa is a Portuguese Enclave in
India and a beautiful place with friendly people who enjoy a better quality of life than in India as they were colonized by the Portuguese rather than the English the beaches are only surpassed by those in Brazil and were a popular destination for hippies in the 1960s additionally Israeli soldiers who
Were paid by the government to forget their War trauma were given a holiday either in New York or Goa I found a nice room on the beach that was rented To Us by a Catholic priest the windows were closed with bars and we felt safe and
Went for a long swim after so much time in the dust with all the smells dirt noise and dangers it was incredible to swim in the water and experience nature and peace even Peter ran to the beach and disappeared appeared for a while to enjoy the sea that we had missed for so
Long it was like seeing snow for the first time and I believe there are few things more spiritual than the sea and one felt like a newborn afterward as we got out of the water and headed back to our room we were so happy but that feeling quickly changed reality
Hit us like a hammer when we saw that we had been robbed all of our belongings were gone and we had nothing left except for our bathing suits being broke in India is a difficult situation that shocked Peter causing him to stop talking and fear that the end was near
And he would starve to death I was ready to fight if necessary but for sure I was not going to die in India having I went to the police first but that was of course useless like asking a monkey for a banana there I met an American writer
Who had rented the house next door and had also been robbed the thieves had stolen his typewriter with his screenplay which meant years of work together we tried to figure out who had robbed us and we were told that it was likely the boys from Birmingham we decided to talk to the
Birmingham boys as they were considered the local gangsters and dealt in almost everything from passports to drugs in Goa were only a few tourist hotels and a small Beach Community called anjuna at the time the way from where we were robbed LED over black rocks Sandy Coes and a
Beautiful beach to anjuna which almost brought back a sense of normaly even though I only had one pair of bathing trunks left so dressed only in my bathing suit like a sirly tongen I went to the Biker’s camp and asked the leader to give us our stuff and passports back
We thought they must have them and I threatened them that there would be real trouble if they didn’t it turned out to be a ridiculous joke the guy pointed to a large wooden box where they had all the passports they had stolen the Scott explained to us that
Stolen passports were not worth much money here since no one needs them and I understood that he meant to say that it was was not them who had robbed us after none of our passports were in the box the leader of the Birmingham boys asked me where the robbery had taken place
When I explained he informed me that this area belonged to the Catholic priest father Paris who had rented us the room and was the local fence he said that if we wanted our stuff back we would have to get it from him Tom the American writer and I set
About devising a plan first Tom went to the priest and told him that I was the son of one of the most powerful German newspaper magnates and that I was already in contact with him and believed that something would happen soon then I went naked into his church grabbed
Father Paris by the neck and pressed him against his crucifix I told him that if we didn’t get our stuff back within hours there would be another Holocaust but this time in Goa we had to wait and see what would happen shortly after a little boy came and led us to a bush
Where most of our things were lying no clothes but all of our papers my beloved gold credit card my notebooks and Tom’s script we stayed in the hotel for another two weeks for free and I became friends with the Birmingham boys who turned out to be Dock Workers who
Couldn’t stand the bad weather and had migrated to Goa later I gave Jim the boss of the gang $200 to give the Padres some special treatment with best regards from Germany of course then we took the ferry to Bombay and it was so hot that
The only way to s sleep was to go to a cinema as there were air conditioners there the problem of course was the quality of the films the sound the smell and literally the way of life so we took what little money we had left and got a
Shady hotel in the city and then went to a nice restaurant I accidentally passed by the kitchen and saw the cook using motor oil to cook later that evening I became very sick and felt like I was dying I don’t know what I ate or drank
But I thought I wouldn’t make it out of India I was dehydrated so quickly that I looked like a sack of Bones being sick in India especially in a city with all its dirt and noise is Hell on Earth I told Peter that we had to get out of
There somehow and quickly or I would die there Peter finally became useful and helped me to the airport where the woman at the lufton’s enounter saved my life she said to me listen I know you’re very sick but what the hell i’ll Reserve you a place in business class and you can
Sit on the toilet until you get to Egypt okay I was able to pay with my AMX card and since I needed a medical companion Peter even got upgraded to business class and I only had to pay for two regular tickets I remember the time we landed in
Cairo and I couldn’t take it anymore sitting on the toilet we left the plane and took a train up the Nile to Luxor on the East Bank of the river in southern Egypt right next to ancient thieves it was the capital of the Pharaohs at the
Height of their power in the 16th to 11th century BC C the city surrounds two enormous preserved ancient monuments the graceful Luxor Temple and the Carnac Temple which is a mile further north the tombs of the kings in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens are
Located on the West Bank of the river I got a room in the best hotel The Winter Palace overlooking the Nile and I slept for many hours I will never forget the incredibly soft cotton sheets and the mild air that enveloped me like a veil from another world
Peter was also doing well lounging by the swimming pool mingling with American tourists and enjoying the fact that he had survived he was back in Civilization and could tell stories of the travels he had endured I think he was pretty happy that this trip was coming to an end as
He surely did not expect it to be so adventurous today he is a doctor of Chinese medicine selling natural herbs from the Himalayas and I am sure he has never taken such a trip again opting instead to to stay in golf hotels like The Winter Palace one early morning I woke up not
Knowing where I was it was a full moon night and everything was quiet I looked out from my balcony at the Nile shimmering in the Moonlight and saw some people smoking and talking on a roof about 100 met away from the hotel as there was nothing else going on I went
Up to the roof and sat down with them I found myself in the midst of a group of BNS all wearing incredible clothing and smoking hookas with their rifles by their side I sat down with them and remembered that I still had a piece of the best nepes
Hashish in my pocket so I put it on the hookah and we all smoked without saying a word suddenly this strange looking guy appeared out of nowhere sat down with them said nothing and put a strange black piece on the hookah no one said a word but they all smoked the holy Nepal
Temple [Â __Â ] which is the strongest of all hashish and only hardcore gurus who have been smoking for decades can smoke one hit and not be able to walk normally the hashish makes you high like an extraterrestrial From A Distant Galaxy that brings something very special after a while their thoughts flew into a
Distance they had probably never seen before I felt so stoned that we laughed together and spoke the same language but after a while I went back to the hotel and slept like a baby in the most unbelievably beautiful Egyptian linen at some point someone knocked like crazy on
My door and there was this young man from the hotel just ing very excitedly and telling me that I had to come down immediately I got dressed and went down to the hotel lobby where many people were already waiting for me when I stepped out of the hotel the whole
Square was full of camels and the bedin from a few hours ago were waiting for me everyone is afraid or at least has a lot of respect for them their colorful garments in black shades and their weapons give them something Majestic they are the kings of the desert and
Ride their desert ships camels wherever they want in in front of these Fearless terrifying Warriors every normal Egyptian soil their pants they withstood many sandstorms and showed no fear like in the movie Lawrence of Arabia an old man translated what the leader of these
BNS said to them that the BNS had made a promise to me yesterday and that they would take me to Israel I couldn’t believe it I didn’t want to go to Israel especially not over land and through the Sinai desert but that’s what was written
And so it would be the old man told told me making a very funny sound that sounded like oh dear you poor thing but since no one contradicts the BNS including me I went back to my room and prepared for the journey through the desert I packed my things and told Peter
To go home we would meet in Hamburg as the Caravan of over 100 camels set off it was a spectacle that even the locals probably hadn’t seen before camels have a special way of standing up and they make special sounds when you sit sit on
Them you are about 2 m off the ground and they have a strange gate which is why they are called the ships of the desert and it’s a small ship we went through the Egyptian temples but after no more than half a kilometer we entered
The desert it got very hot so hot that I felt like I was in a bakery the camel rocks like a ship and moves in a way that breaks your back after a short time now the air blowing in your face is as hot as a hair dryer held to your mouth
I said stop please wait and the Caravan came to a halt however it took a while for everyone to stand up again similar to an ocean liner which also takes a long time to come to a stop I told them I don’t know how but they understood
That I had changed my mind I think they didn’t mind not taking me to the promised land either they had given me their word and I was the one who changed it for the BNS it was important not to break a promise to a friend they gave me
A man to bring me back and when I arrived there the hotel staff was happy to see me alive it took me a while to return to my airconditioned hotel room as now I was the hero and everyone wanted to talk to me except for Peter who was still sleeping for context
In 1968 there was a Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states and since then there was no way to travel to Israel through sin or the Suez Canal I mean as an Egyptian or an Israeli but the BNS didn’t care about any agreements between distant countries it meant
Nothing to them and it was clear that there was a promise they had to keep inshah I must say the Bose and also many Arabs have what my father’s and grandfather’s Generations also had dignity respect and honor their word means something and the highest for them
Is friendship and Trust I love the idea that one can trust someone for trust is a powerful and important tool that is only surpassed by love from Luxor we traveled back to Cairo and visited the Great museums and climb the pyramids it is easy to climb up if one is in good
Condition but not easy to descend as the stone blocks are less than a meter apart but a meter high so one can only jump down which gives the feeling of jumping into the abyss I made the mistake of climbing without shoes and my feet were bloody from the pharaoh’s stones on The Descent
We flew to Rome and coming from Egypt to Rome is something special like Cleopatra we were welcomed on the day of Labor Day as this day is something special in Italy just like being in Rome every time I visit the city I want to live there
But when I stay longer one is also glad to leave it it is like being in a love story where one is in love but doesn’t want to get married besides I had little cash left and at that time there was no internet banking so I had to take care
Of my finances in person after many restaurant visits with delicious food I took the bus to Munich and from there the train to hurg Viva la almania after 8 months it was nice to be home again upon arriving in Hamburg I was somewhat relieved that I had made it
Back there were parts of the journey that turned out to be dangerous to ensure that I was okay I went to the tropical Hospital in Hamburg to have my health checked they told me that I had a severe kidney and intestinal infection and since I only had one kidney it would
Be dangerous to travel again without a hospital stay the doctors I had at the time were not bad but I didn’t trust them at all when they assured me that the best place for me was in the Intensive Care Unit I decided to travel to Tonga I made my
Preparations to immigrate there and if I were to die there then so be it I’d rather die there than in a German hospital that’s for sure it’s not that I really feared dying but they told me that if I didn’t take medication and rest there was a good chance that there
Could be a problem my last speculation I went to my office to sell all my open trading positions that I had had bought 8 months ago I still had open Futures contracts on gold that I had bought at $1250 each and they had skyrocketed since then as gold was now at $1750 per
Ounce the contract was worth much more than I expected and my cash balance was now $220,000 plus everything else I owned just as I was about to leave the office everyone started screaming and a great commotion broke out the Hunt Brothers were billionaires from Texas who had achieved great success in the oil
Business and believed they could manipulate the silver market launching the biggest hype in the history of the commodity Market William Herbert and Lamar tried to dominate The World Market for silver by buying up all the silver contracts and the price Rose to unprecedented Heights then the government intervened and prevented them
From further manipulating the price when I returned to the office the price of a silver contract was many times over the limit Rena PLO and trading was suspended until Traders agreed on a price to buy and sell I thought this was crazy and when the market reopened I went short
Because I believed the silver price would soon collapse and speculated on falling prices but it kept going up and my position skyrocketed in a short time causing me to lose my nerves and sell my contract at a loss of $100,000 just as I got out the market
Collapsed and I had to go to the bathroom to throw up I could have tripled my money in an hour and instead I haved it just because I didn’t believe in my conviction and lost my nerve The Hunt Brothers lost almost a billion dollars of their wealth on the same day
This did not really comfort me but rather saw it as another sign not to speculate except with Insider information a friend of mine had a brokerage firm in a villa located in the most prestigious address in Hamburg overlooking the ster see the movie The American am friend with Dennis Hopper he
Asked me to do him a favor by helping him raise new money from some of his complicated clients I assisted him and then set off on my fourth world trip heading Eastward this time to Tonga my first stop was Berlin and from there I went to Bangkok
And then Hong Kong to buy the equipment that a modern Robinson living on an island would need but the most important thing was electricity because without it there would be no music and no other connection to the outside world world at that time there were no photovoltaic
Cells on the market nor were there any radios or videos I had to buy them later at an Institute for renewable Technologies in Hawaii in Hong Kong I bought the latest VHS devices but the city was so crazy and the people were buying as if there was no tomorrow I
Tried to buy cameras for $500,000 for a customer in Hamburg but that was not a big incentive for the traders in Kon to be friendlier unlike in Istanbul where Traders always have a joke on their lips and tea in stock the Chinese in Hong Kong are made of a different kind of
Wood they don’t need to bargain sins they sell to normal tourists every minute I quickly lost interest in doing business there which has not changed until today I had a very unexpected and great experience with a super beautiful Chinese woman who got me out of a precarious situation I was so disgusted
With everything that I went to the best hotel to swim naked in the hotel pool I climbed onto the 3 m diving board and did a strip tease in front of the board onlookers who immediately called the police to restore order then two uniformed officers arrived but they didn’t know how to get
Me off the board without falling into the pool themselves it was a very funny situation but it was also getting tighter for me and suddenly I saw a pretty Chinese woman on the other side of the pool who gave me a sign to follow
Her naked as I was I followed her to her hotel hotel room where she pampered me for 2 days in a way I had never experienced before at first I thought she was doing it for money she was so professional but none of that instead she paid for everything I don’t know if
She couldn’t speak English or if she just wanted one thing that didn’t require words when I checked out of the hotel I realized that I had no clothes because I had left all my stuff at the pool but she had arranged everything and they were cleaned and ironed with my
Golden credit card in the pocket and brought up to the room when I checked out she had also paid for the room and it had spread what had happened and many gave these special Chinese grins I flew to Hawaii and searched for the best solar panels the price was
Extremely high but because I told them I needed PV for a scientific project in Tonga I got a small discount there was no alternative anywhere and I got used PV panels with 5×20 Watts from the in stitute for $3,000 today the same amount costs $140
Yet I was glad that I got them as it meant music on the island Hawaii is always worth a trip and this time I had more time to drive to the North Coast where the really big waves arrive at this time of year Watching surfing on
These big waves is a real spectacle when I arrived it was already evening and I took a room in a motel on a cliff the next morning when I opened the window of my room I was startled as a huge wave was coming straight at me I thought that
Was it it would crush me but miraculously it broke 20 m in front of the hotel and rolled onto the beach with a loud roar hard to believe that some people can surf something like that and yet some people manage it I have Carlos Burl in my family today who is a true
Legend of big wave surfing and has been involved in some of the most legendary moments of this sport Carlos is now retired and lives with his family in Hawaii he is still one of the greatest Brazilian big wave Surfers of all time he rode the biggest wave ever surfed the
Mavericks bomb in Portugal which measured 20.7 m in length after storing the PV panels at the airport I flew to LA to meet with deer and Richard and we celebrated my 27th birthday after a few days I flew back to Europe with Laker air making sure that Freda was well
Taken care of until my return I deposited cash into my AMX card and then flew back to LA this time non-stop with Lanza to live in Tonga in intis I went to a naturopath and told him about what had happened to my kidney and the possibility of a serious bowel disease
In India he recommended that I drink lots of watermelon juice and eat only fruits which was easy to do in Tonga at the time I didn’t think much about my illness which I believe was for the best because fear doesn’t make one healthier I remember being somewhat worried
Because on an island in the middle of of thousands of kilom of water there isn’t any real medical care but my belief that my body was strong enough to handle everything was stronger and I was in top shape and couldn’t imagine getting sick and today 40 years later I am still
Healthy and happy this is not to say that one should not see a doctor but one should believe in what they think is right not necessarily what others tell them my grandfather always said to learn to listen to your body and that you need a doctor he lived to be 899 and remained
True to his knowledge and belief Elaine whom I had met at a health food store in Neptune and a few other friends were also interested in living on an island two of them followed me there shortly afterward Shawn a guy from Chicago who was my roommate with Richard in the
House on the cliff and whom I played Frisbee with every day helped me get the last few things we ordered everything from a mail order catalog the whole earth catalog which was the Bible for everything we needed at the time I think it was the first really big mail
Order company for the alternative scene just like Amazon is today we could order everything and it was promptly delivered but the best part was that we could already pay with a credit card back then we stocked up on everything we got a wind Surfer which was still new on the
Market at that time spirina blue green algae and lots of books then we shipped the 500 lb 250 kg to Tonga where they arrived a month later the freight cost more than the plane ticket and at the end of 1979 we set off for Tonga with 50
Kg of luggage we headed to Paradise