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Reports

During my travels, my compensation for free accommodation for one night, was for me to write a daily travel diary. Of how I got to my next location, the people who would host me, the food I was offered and everything else. Below you find the archives of the highly extensive reports. Know that English is not my native language and most reports were written at high speed around midnight. Enjoy.


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Sunday, 6 May 2001
--> Breda (NL)

About the hitch to my host Frank in Breda and Breda itself, the terrace and the biggest gift ever...
I woke up around 10 o´clock this morning and had a nice shower. When I got out of the shower - all fresh and shining again - Patricia and Alexandra were already getting everything together for breakfast.

After breakfast I told Patricia who was going to be my new host for today, Frank in Breda. I´ve already met him before this year at a webmeeting in Utrecht, where everybody found out that he´s pretty fond of drinking some alcohol , haha.

That gave Patricia the idea the give him a bottle of Dutch Dropshot, a very alcoholic liquer with a strong licorice taste.

After packing my back with this gift, I had to go on my way to Breda, some 20 miles south of Rotterdam. With the public transportation strip card sponsored by Charis and one from Patricia I could take the metro/tram car to the closest off ramp of the highway going to Breda.

There I stood into the warming sun for almost 30 minutes before getting a hitch from a guy who brough me halfway and at that gas station I got my hitch to the center of Breda pretty fast.

Those two guys bringing me to Breda had heard about my project on television and they were very excited about having me in their car. It was very funny! Almost in Breda they asked me why the heck I´d visit Breda because they said Breda is pretty boring. I´d find out myself.

Eventually they really enjoyed it that I took a picture of them after they dropped me of in Breda!

There I called Frank, my host for tonight, and he quickly picked me up from the street on his bike (nice view to see him with me on the back and a 20 kilo backpack behind me).

Arriving at his appartment I met his girlfriend Helie who was still vacuming the house, because it appearantly had to look very decent for my visit. They said it had never been this clean for ages! Haha.

In their livingroom I handed over the Gift from Patricia and Frank remembered a day last week when he had drunk a bottle of Dropshot with a friend and got pretty drunk. Now he has another one and he can do the same thing next week again... Haha.

About his gift, he didn´t had to think very long. He used to play on it a long time ago, but lost the lyrics and doesn´t really use it anymore: his accoustic guitar would be the next gift to my next host tomorrow!

I already saw myself wandering along the roads with my backpack and a guitar. Oh, my god. Didn´t I mention before that the gifts shouldn´t be that big?! Wow...

In the center of Breda Frank decided to relax on the terrace of the Hart van Breda for some beers in the sun.

Frank also is a Dutch weblogger and logs together with some friends on his weblog at Punkey.com . One of these friends who calls himself Janneman, also joined us on the terrace.

We spoke about the uniqueness of my travel-through-the-internet-project and about me getting fined on the highway and had some laughings. The cigarette-package I got at Charis´ place was finally empty so Janneman donated his tabacco to me. That was nice.

I am not addicted, but pretty occasionally I´d like to smoke a cigarette. I know it´s bad, but its partly because of the pressure and stuff that I continue.

When the sun started to fade away behind some clouds, Frank and Helie gave me a quick tour through the center of Breda. They agreed that this city wasn´t as exciting as a city like Rotterdam, but there are some nice fancy cafes where you could hang out and that keeps the city more alive.

Once back in Frank and Helies apartment Frank made some delicious mexican meal: Fujitas con pollo del Franco, which tasted very good!

Together with a friend of his he also runs the website Frshdjs.com , a nationwide database and news-site on Dutch deejays who can be reviewed and booked at that location. This friend of him, Hugo -alias DJ Da Huge- also came over with his girlfriend.

Frank reminded me of deejay Patrick Kicken, who was my radio-host for my first night. He kind of looked like him, and easily could be a radio-deejay because he talks very honest, is pretty humorous and reflects being everybodys friend. Nice guy, this Frank!

This whole group went back to that terrace again and joined another group of deejays including the in The Netherlands pretty popular DJ Cor Fijneman.

One of those guys in the group, Jeroen, laughed in a very funny way and insisted to be photographed by me... He likes to talk about dirty things (belonging in the bathroom) and I had to laugh very about this girl there who couldn´t stand any talks about feet! She almost had to trhow up when somebody showed his bare feet and talked about feet-smelling-cheeses. Crazy!

Around 1 o´clock at night the place was closing up and we went back to the apartment where I did some writing on his computer untill I got down on the bed much later...

The next morning the house was empty...?!




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