And so time told that I ended up feeling a bit secluded from mainstream society in the confines of my van and i drifted south to Madrid with some nice squats projects for 2 weeks and then to Portugal for six months touring the rainbow and some cool festivals before living in the south west of portugal between the towns of Vila do Bispo, Lagos and Sagres, but also heading a bit more north towards Ajezur too.

I was in the area alone until joined by a friend for 2 months, Luz from Zaragoza, who provided some company in some of the most picturesque beaches where I surfed my life away with Marc and the expats, some more permanent in the area than others.
As December drifted in with the cold rain, I came to see my parents in Gibraltar before going to Morocco with Mark and a portuguese girl where I spent the winter travelling with the rainbow family and hardcore technopunks!

Then I cam back to Spain with some craziness after losing my passport in my van and once it was renewed stayed in the Granada area with around 2 months in Beneficio where I made some good acquaintances before going over to the Boom festival and then travelling around some after parties until deciding not to go to France to pick grapes and went to Guarda dentist where I got my teeth fixed for 35euros before coming to Covilha where i am now in a library with too much energy!

Austria to Turkey to Austria to Spain - my adventures continue

AND so it was that I found myself in Austria, the city of Graz my home for the a few weeks. Waiting for a friend to contact me about hitching down to Spain I chatted with a traveller friend in Turkey on Erasmus. She communicated to me that she was going to have some free time and wanted to hitch around Turkey. She offered me to come with her but being some 2000km away it seemed far. Unperturbed by a wave of freezing cold temperatures and pouring rain which stopped me thinking of hitching I took the bus to Sofia for 60 euros. I thought that I would try it and at least it would be an experience to see some more of eastern europe. Sofia was interesting, couchsurfing with some guy over there who at first seemed a bit dodgy when he told me I would be sleeping beside him. But I still ventured out at night first to a cool spot called The Apartment, an imaginatively-decorated venue with colourful lighting and some interesting open-minded travellers, students and artists, hanging about as usual, shamelessly chatting to people about their daily lives, trying to peer in and explore their approach to existence in this new world of capitalism where they now found themselves entangled. This place probably first epitomised the transfer of influence with its imperialist high ceilings and yet its mundane communist white-tiled toilets, and its swirling new-age drawings and teas. It was chilled and intensive and yet open and warm.
Onto a typical hostel atmosphere and cool hangout for the young people in a cellar where foreigners mixed with trendy locals and outside on the streets under Marxist monuments surrounded by those mundane hollow cuboids with endless windows and blackened walls, the bleak dwelling place of most people in these former USSR states. I think that Bulgaria had quite a large degree of autonomy but I am not sure. People helped me a lot and on the second night, when I searched for a place to stay some friendly locals I met in a bar saw my plight and offered me some peoples' home.
The next day I tried to hitch again but found no luck. It was raining and even the lift I got took me only to the motorway near Plovdiv, forcing me to walk through the driving rain to the nearest petrol station, which was small and had no passing traffic. Standing under a sun umbrella it suddenly dawned on me that I had to be in Izmir to pick up Eli the very next day and I was not even in Turkey. Getting a lift from some workers to Bulgaria's second city nearby, I took a coach from there to the frontier town, but not before I met a really cool alternative-looking Russian girl who lightened my life with some conversation and a wonderful smile. I needed it. Getting to the border I was dropped off at a hotel just passed the border and being tired and the rain having stopped I decided to park my tent under a bush some 100m from the hotel, where I would be out of view and also close to the road. Of course, I didn't count on the rain starting again halfway through the night. Piercing my thin summer tent I was soon swimming in a small pond with my sleeping bag drenched and with first light I managed to pack everything and quite exhausted took the first bus to the nearest town. There I took another bus to another town where I managed to contact Eli and tell her I was coming her way. People in Turkey were very approachable and friendly as I started to venture into the culture, various could speak some English and because their economy is stronger than Morocco they have less financial need. Their infrastructure is more developed than many Eastern European countries, with an extensive network of motorways and a great number of people in employment with decent wages of around 3-500 euros a month. I know people who get that in Spain... Okay, being an Islamic country (and I hope this won't offend anyone, but it has been my experience) people are not too concerned about lying through their teeth, even to a good end, which reminds me of once a bit further down the line, when we were told we were going to be taken to our next destination the next day by some guy when all they wanted was for us to spend the night in some guy's home.
Okay, so there I was, lost in Turkey spending a whole afternoon in a bus station where I managed to dry my tent and sleeping bag in back entrance, endearing me to some of the workers and travellers there who then invited me to coffee and cigarettes. Though our communication was limited it was good to get down and dirty with some local people. I was soon on my way to Izmir, where I met Eli who I woke up. That was a great moment, especially as I met her in south Spain one crazy surf weekend and taught her to surf and then stayed in her community house when she had a room free in Barcelona. We set off the next day after a good sleep, our chilled out timing and lack of planning forcing us to wander along some roads not knowing even in which direction we were going or even where. Obviously I didn't know this until we got on the road but that's Eli and I love her intuition, self-confidence and improvisation. Soon we caught a bus to the next town as the sun set we asked the driver to leave us off at exit of the motorway and thought we would stand there with our finger out. Good choice. After about ten minutes we got picked up by a truck-driver who would take us 400km into the heart of Turkey in the direction of Cappadochia. This guy was a real gentleman, something Eli noted faster than me. Everytime we would stop at a restaurant to eat he would buy us food despite our protests. We were going slow, with some hills being taken at 40km/h, but at least we were moving. The only bad experience on this stretch was after our first meal in a restaurant. A military man came in with two soldiers and started to literally interrogate us for no apparent reason. He seemed quite content to destroy our self-confidence with his military swagger and strong, commanding voice, asking questions we only just managed to answer on my two-day knowledge of the country. Some more wikipedia research would have definitely helped. After some truly uncomfortable moments which seemed to last forever and thought we would end up Midnight Express style, (he even told me to confess Mohamed over Christianity!) his pride seemed to have swelled to its most and we were allowed to leave.
We could see the two extremes of Turkish culture here and our chauffeur agreed he was “not cool”. I decided to make sure I wrote about him though as this story should be told. I later learned the power the military has in Turkey ever since Ataturk set up the foundations to the modern Turkey we know today after the loss of the Ottoman Empire after the Great War. The military even have a national security council which can overturn any decision made by the government, especially if it's a decision which makes the country more religious. For example, the ruling party tried to pass a law allowing (yes allowing...) women to wear head scarves in a predominantly Muslim country. The council vetoed that and consequently banned the party, making it near impossible to win the next election. I suppose this system may have its cons but I suppose it stops the country falling in to extremist chaos and keeps it on the secular path with more foreign investment. On the other hand I am sure there is a lot of corruption at this level, like that which we experienced, and I don't know how this limited democracy can be allowed into the EU. Some people say that stability has to come before democracy but I suppose at the end of the day they mean that the proletariat need to have the possibility of a faith in materialism to replace or at least counter-balance their Islamic zeal. Consumerism is definitely quite established in the west while the east is a different kettle of fish, where I am told more traditional beliefs and hierarchical systems continue to exist.
Our friend eventually took us to his small home for dinner and we eventually managed to get on the road, yeah you guessed it, at sunset... So there we were, Eli and me on the side of the road, chatting on the side of an empty dual carriageway under a yellow streetlight near a patch of wasteland, thinking of camping there. It was a strange feeling but we laughed and talked trying to flag down a car. We eventually got picked up by a smart-looking car. The man inside spoke decent English and we soon learnt he had lived in Holland for 15 years and had his own luxury clothes chain. He took us to his shop and after a coffee he insisted we stay in his hotel he would pay for. Eli tried to resist but he seemed to be able to pay for it taking out a wad of 100lira notes, and after saying he would feel very bad if we didn't take up the offer we accepted. It was a good sleep on a cold night and something we appreciated the next day when we walked out of town and tried to take a couple of trips to Cappadochia itself. We succeeded and that night we slept in what looked like a quite hidden place in between the rock formations in an abandoned field. Of course, the inevitable happened. Hit by an electric storm in the middle of the night after a feeble attempt to ignite a fire rainbow style (I didn't get past the paper-lighting stage) we sheltered in a mini cave until it stopped a bit when we had to clamber out and into a man-made cave where we froze to death in our shitty summer sleeping bags. We didn't die though and in the morning woke up and after some sight-seeing, which really didn't feel that great after the adventures we had had to get there, hitched to Aksaray (or was it Kayseri?) Anyway this is where those three guys who seemed quite ok, picked us up from the side of the road and took us walking to their little flat. Apart from a little paranoid trip when he started burning loads of women's and kid's clothes in between telling me his wife had died recently, eventually well-fed and conversed, we went to bed.
The next day was a little more crazy as it was the big feast-day of Turkey, the end of Ramadam and their version of Christmas, Bayram. Of course, this was like their Christmas and everyone was like stoned, drunk or both. So maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised when two guys, Eli didn't like the look of (I should have trusted her intuition...) suddenly asked Eli: “Afakju?” No Eli didn't want to fuck him, not even just once. He let us off pretty quick and I needed to give her a hug after that, she was so shaken. Next we were picked up by some guys who soon told us they were the Satanist mafia and when they started feeling Eli up we decided to leave them too. But Eli still persevered with hitching, even when they offered us a bus for 5euros for both of us. Two drunks picked us up with the passenger sprawling all over Eli to her terror. We eventually got a bus into town from the outskirts after the car broke down.
We then met some nice couple and they directed us to the bus station where we got a coach supposedly to this seaside town called Karasu. After reaching the Black Sea we got in for a dip and then sat watching the sunset on our final destination of the odyssey. After that we sat near some youths playing traditional guitar tunes and after Eli taught them to juggle they led us to some friends' home where we stayed that night and bought some beers before going to sleep there.
The next day Eli was off back to Izmir where she remained until January until she returned to Barcelona to do her six months of work experience as a pharmacist. I continued the trail, staying one night with the guys in Karasu before hitching to Istanbul courtesy of some friendly rides in the now warmer sun. Getting there I hopped on a tram that took me to the neighbourhood of a guy whose flatmate would put me up. He turned out to be a friendly enough person being a German activist kind of guy who gave me and some French couple a roundup of what there was to know around the city. Walking for hours to some party we never found we were informed of the dodgy political situation I talked about earlier and we even went clubbing among the throngs and multistorey nightclubs in Taxsim. Everywhere police ran around hurriedly among the throng, sporting trendy submachine guns with their index fingers lovingly gripped around triggers, while partygoers blissfully brushed by them with surprisingly care-free attitudes. Such is a military state, I assume, the price of the hollow 'capitalistic democracy' Turkey follows.
Soon I was hitching out of it all. I tried to take shortcuts but didn't find a way out and in the end I hatched a cunning plan to get on this bus which would take me to the entrance of the motorway. Sure enough, just as the light began to fade, I got picked up and taken to the entrance to the motorway from where I got a lift to a services station and then some teachers dropped me at the motorway exit at a police check. The rigorously religious men even handed me 20lira as they parted despite my protests.
Standing there in the middle of the night no-one seemed to want to stop with the cops right behind me, but as it turned out my scourge was also my blessing. The cops, having pulled over a bus going to Bulgaria, 'pursuaded' the driver to let me get a lift with them, and soon I was back where I had started by the big hotel near the frontier. I got some food and then after trying aimlessly for some rides, knew what I had to do. I instinctly headed for my previous camping spot under the bushes, hoping for a better time than the last occasion. This it proved to be and after a good rest on a beautifully calm and starry night, I packed up and headed to the hotel for a lift. As I stretched and asked around for a lift to the frontier, a camper van pulled up driven by an elegant and yet youthful looking middle-aged woman from Holland. She agreed to take me to the frontier and upon talking with her a bit she seemed agreeable enough, having travelled for six months around Turkey on her own. I then asked her where she was going and how quick. She retorted, “Bulgaria, Serbia and Graz...” I cut her short. “That's where I am going!” I exclaimed. She said she would take me as far as it worked out and that was that. At the other side of the border-crossing she picked me up and we chatted all the way to Graz, bar a rather frosty night in slightly dodgy Serbia. Maybe it would have been nice to check out some places on the way but you can't turn down a trip straight to your doorstep. As it turned out it was cool enough and after a couple more weeks with my cool Czech unicycler friend Martin and some nice times with the Spektral people I hitched to Wien for a few days to visit the cool Carola and a guy from Morocco, two people I met in Tarifa and Imsouanne respectively. From there I hitched to Linz where I stayed with a couchsurfer guy with shining blue eyes and some really open friends who led me around the town and introduced me to their beautifully-endowed home for a night. From there I then flew to Barcelona, a place where I felt at home the first time and always felt part of the furniture. One week of mad parties meeting old and new friends and hanging around Can Masdeu later I was on the road again, this time on a car with www.viajamosjuntos.com to Gijon with an Argentinean guy. It wasn't hitching but the next best thing and to be able to get there for a 30e sacrifice when the bus would have cost me double was a massive relief, especially as we had some edifying chats on the way.
I then picked up my van from my friend's yard and tried the settling down thing for a few months. I found a chilled place right by the centre on the beachfront where I could park and remained there most of the time, occasionally venturing into the mountains to some communities therein and to some other beaches where I had some friends, like one guy I had a great connection with, Edu, who I incidentally met on my last trip to Morocco and who had travelled for many years too and was also a reluctant surfer who didn't fall into the surfer stereotype. With him and a few other personalities I met with in and around Gijon I started to forge some sort of companionship and foster than sense of community I had strived for on the road. However, I can't really say that I was totally socially incorporated. I sorely missed the activism of Berlin, the multiculturalism of London (I twice visited London in 3 months for my brothers' graduation and sister's wedding) or the arty-alternative expression of Barcelona. Still I was elated to get back into surfing. I found myself a local spot right called La Roca (aptly named The Rock for me) which broke right in front of my usual parking. This right-hand pointbreak had throwbacks to my fave Moroccan wave at Cap Sim, Les Grottes, while still being surfable most of the time there were any waves at all in the San Lorenzo beach. It was a wonder to get some sessions with few people on it and see myself gliding effortlessly along those walls with either my shortboard or bic longboard. Soon I was almost a local there and I could even say that I was being recognised by people I didn't know personally. Maybe all I lacked were some friends I could share real stuff with and as Edu left so did my main ideas expression. I had some companions though but life seems to be drifting towards a social responsibility I don't feel I would like to fall into with many people I have less and less in common with.
Maybe in the end I will go travelling again and see if the road offers me more than a community which often seems to have its head more in the sand of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll rather than the maturity of social edification. Maybe it's time to head south again or maybe i will stay and stick it out. Time will tell...

Travel to Austria and then back with Lea and Spektral

I managed to escape the clutches of the evil Munich and was soon enroute to the Austrian countryside.But not before I got searched by the reputedly over-fussy southern German cops. A big smile on my face i commented it would be nice of them to chase some real criminals to which they replied that they doubted they could. Soon their brand-new unmarked VW whisked them away surely on the way to catch out someone else who looked different and acted differently to the norm.
I eventually got to the frontier near Salzburg and there i stood trying different spots for a good four hours, my patience wearing thin as the hours progressed and the day grew darker and colder. I eventually engaged a couple of farmers who i encouraged to take me to near Graz where they said they were staying. This turned out to be 200km from Graz and the petrol station they were to leave me at was a deserted isle of light in the midst of dark trees lining the Alpine foothills. I found some food to eat and then searched out what felt like a quiet place sandwiched between a railway and a river. Of course it was all extremely quiet as i set up and it wasnt until i settled and had just pulled up my sleeping bag when suddenly i hear a hooting and feel electricity running through my feet just before a heavy cargo train speeds noisily by. I struggled the rest of the night through the continuous sporadic bouts of speeding trains, like a prisoner of war awaiting his periodical moment of torture with grudgingly exhausting acceptance.
The next day i awake, walk around, take soame pics and then walk over to the supermarket just when some guy calls me over and offers to take me to graz after seeing the sign i was grasping. If only things were always this easy!!! I arrive in graz after an interesting chat with my croatian host. Soon i am back in spektral and then meeting lea and life is good. The sun shone for the next three days as life seemed good. Walking and talking with lea was a glee as always though she looked more distant than other times and Flo was different. New friendships and cool times followed and i cant complain that here in Graz life was good with the Spektral alternative centre being the key to a new community.

The Germans rocked me, despite the fact that i didnt know german!

It was strange to come back to mundane rainy England after all the near tropical fanfare of Florida, USA. I was soon off to Berlin where I wanted to see some friends from last year and this was something special. I enjoy the openness of the Germans where people strive to speak English to you even when they are not so fluent and where women are as independent as men in the pursuance of their life goals. I missed the anti-fa and alternative scene here, where students see it as their responsibility to protest for their rights and march in favour of the environment and stand up against the terrible spectre of a rising Neo-nazi faction especially in the eastern regions. I hearkened back to our fun times with Robert and Henry and we had more adventures with these guys. After a few days chilling with my straight-talking friend Kati in Friedrichshain, including a stay in a feminist lesbian woman-only squat known as the XB Liebig where I met some fabulously open people and others who were incredibly insular, I was able to venture north, hitching to Hamburg where there were holding the clima camp. .... I wrote this report for a newspaper so I think you may have already seen it and it best describes the feelings I felt there.

I was a time of learning and of interesting conversations and also set me up to meet other people in the south of Berlin, especially in a small community a few kms south of the capital where I stayed in a chilled community house in a small village where I could feel at home picking up potatoes from the backgarden plot of land or wild herbs to sweeten our salad by the river with this acquantance and her young child. It was strange to feel the calm of the countryside with its leisurely pace and its sound of silence, loveable dogs coming to greet you and old buildings covered in ivy. Sitting there pondering I could see this kind of life becoming my future as a more thriving community model would be an interesting way in which to gratify some hopes and desires.

The next step was a hitch to Leipzig, which went really smoothly and I was able to stay with some friends in the city for a while I also met in the clima camp. Hanging with this couple in their house was fun, despite a few mishaps like a stolen bicycle and the fact they were moving away. Meeting up with some other people from the hamburg camp I was able to find this party in the forest, by a lake under a road-bridge after cycling through dark tracks alone with very little sense of where I was going. The party was well-worked as I can expect from the Germans showing they do not only talk a lot, they also act a lot and put a lot of effort into their activity. It all ended prematurely when the police arrived to shut it down but I was so impressed that everyone seemed so eager to help clear up at the end, despite their alcohol and drug-induced stupor, everyone running around with plastic bags to collect the rubbish, probably leaving the invisible under part of the bridge cleaner than when we first arrived. Within an hour we were off, cycling and walking around town as we got followed by drunken hormone-driven men as we tried to head to the park for the after-party. It was a long road but we finally made it and after some minimal techno we were able to watch the sun rise even staying once the police had arrived to see one of the sunniest days of my German sojourn, while I hung out with a cool possible future travel partner draped in the hot afternoon sun while the grass crept around our feet.

More days of indulgence followed in another park with a jungle party and with some new found friends in different places. I finally concluded that Leipzig was one of the coolest places in Germany, with open people and interesting vibes, perhaps more inclined towards students and leisure than the creativity and activism of Berlin but still a comfortable place to live and grow more in touch with those around you on a more regular basis. It was cool to see these people though many times I yearned to get closer to them by being able to speak their mother tongue, so much so that I vowed to return one day and learn to speak so I could participate in their logical conversation and contribute to their ideological exchange.

Now I find myself in Munich after one unsuccessful day of hitching in the rain from Leipzig. I returned to my couchsurfer in Leipzig with my tail between my legs almost ready to use some other form of paying transport for the 400km trip south to the much-maligned Munchen, but I persevered through more rain the next day and after 2 hours of frustration decided to get the next lift onto the A9 even it was towards Berlin. A cool guy hesitatingly picked me up, before going out of his way to drop me at the petrol station heading south. From there it was plain sailing. A VW T3 campervan with some young guys picked me up and drove me 250km south to Nuremberg taking me a bit further than they were going to leave me at the next petrol station and after that the coolest, warmest and most open guy I met for a while who actually worked for the IBM multinational as he tried to escape the mainstream social system drove me all the way to my destination. I stayed with a girl I met by coincidence in south spain in a lovely wooden house near the centre of Munich and partied last night beside a sculpture of a naked guy. The party was innovative because everyone had to bring their own stereo with the DJ plugging his disks into an ipod radio transmitter which was then augmented by using an aerial and sent to other nearby stereos on a hijacked frequency. It was such a cool idea and though people were more snobbish and closed-minded than the other 3 cities I'd visited it was still fun, with some interesting meetings and then a crazy cycle to a wagenplatz (improvised caravan park) to go to sleep at the invitation of some more clima camp companions I found spontaneously onsite.

I need to go now as I will stay there the night again and meet up with some cool guys I met at the clima camp and have arranged to meet with.


This time was enjoyable and I felt right at home among all the caravaners. Their little camp at the end of this parking was colourfully and intricately decorated, no doubt with remnants of parties and passers-by. It was quaint with Mercedes campers as well as larger trailers with a nice sense of community full of travellers and more permanent people. We hung out and played a game for a while and soon went to sleep in a van they offered me for the night. The next day, a slow breakfast helped me get on my way after which I eventually managed to leave for Austria. I knew it was late tho and I would probably not make it...

What do Portugal, north spain and florida have in common?

Three weeks ensued when I fixed up my van and passed it through the MOT before I started the long road north on my LT28 to north Spain with an Israeli girl called Hadar who wanted to share the trip with me. It proved good to get some surf in Algarve and meet up with Marc who I had also met in Morocco while in the east we found some interesting eco-farm communities caught up among traditional villages which celebrated their patron saints with style, inviting us to a party with local produce for everyone called Santiago (and us, who weren't). We then continued the road to Leon, the mountainous province where we would be at the rainbow gathering for Spain. Having been there getting to know travellers from around the world was a real privilege though the esoteric nature admittedly put me off a bit as usual. Too much energies and Mayan calendars for my liking...

After two weeks oscillating between the camp and the town to do my work on the internet, these good times came to an end as we danced around fires naked or performed dramas, ran to rainbows hand-in-hand and saw some beautiful sunrises, swam naked in a nearby lagoon, or hung around farting and squirting liquid shit from our vegan-only arses.

Moving west with a motley crew of an Israeli couple and two Slovenians for company we connected with some couchsurfers in La Coruna through the msn and that same night hung out with one of the coolest guys I met. Oscar took all of us into his home for five memorable days never without a dull moment as his music-making and reggae-DJing took us into another dimension. With Patrik from Hamburg who was also Csing with us and his cool neighbour Ana we spent some great days and nights enjoying the Galician warmth of personality. After that we went to the Ortigueira festival, a folk festival which has very little to do with that if you do like most people and head for the forested area on the beach and party all night among tripping young people and various food and ornament stalls. The beach area was particularly spectacular, a small islet floating in the middle of this serene bay with a perfect mouse-sized A-frame breaking in the middle of it – a perfect spot to watch the sun rise or set.

In the end time caught up with me and I had to drive to Gijon, Asturias to leave my van with a surfboard maker (shaper) friend and then catch a bus back to Santiago to catch a ryanair flight to Liverpool at zero euros (plus 40e of taxes of course). Getting there at midnight and hanging with some cool Poles in the airport until morning I arrived bang on time that same morning at my brother Mark's graduation. It was cool to see him graduate with his classmates and along with the rest of the family enjoyed the ceremony while chilling in a beautiful countryside cottage in the countryside. Of course, it was impossible to get there but after some miracles managed to arrive there where we stayed for a whole day and left the next morning with a hire car to drive the family down to a slightly impromptu holiday in Florida, our first time to cross the pond to our much maligned superpower 'ally'.

Getting there we found the Americans to be much more agreeable than I expected, incredibly open, warm and friendly. They were particularly charmed by English accents and it was a pleasure to meet different echelons of society from varying backgrounds. From the rural dwelling Bible-belt Bush-fanatical family we stayed with to the arty single mum of 2 in the city, I found people who had a generally healthy outlook on life.

There were many immigrants from Latin America, many of whom were not even able to speak English and each with their own story to tell – one rowed for 11 days in a self-made dinghy across the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba to get to the US by crossing through its only southern land border. Maybe the USA gets judged too harshly and looking at it from their standpoint its easy to see how they can get imperialistic, arrogant and naïve to other interests. Their military power is such and their infrastructure is so advanced on every level, from communications network to financial freedom to quality of life it must be easy to forget the rest of the world exists and that they have to care about anything apart from their own feelings like the rest of the Western world. Even issues like global warming and the global distribution of wealth must be so inconsequential to them they are unable to grapple with the concepts involved. I suppose it is a common evil for us in Europe, the Middle East and other countries to demonize them to excuse our own behaviour even on a private level. But the truth is we are just as bad as them and its also possible that some of their interventionism is also based on an idea of getting their hands bloody so that other countries can have a system that is more like theirs. I however cannot just stand by their super-consumerist culture which I found so awkward and unfamiliar, even among the alternative crowd, while the social tensions found in the ghettos are clearly the crunching point of social degradation which makes America a much more racist country than other systems in Europe, even though the nation is inherently an immigrant-populated country which is now closing the door to this stream of open hands.

But on the whole it was good to see some people confronting some of the issues and being open in heart and mind to listen what we had to say. Perhaps ignorance is bliss after all but how can you change a blissfully ignorant nation anyway, if bliss is what everyone wants?

Climate campers hit Hamburg

I got bored of writing in the past and thought i would post my latest report i am using on the net from the clima camp in Hamburg. Just to give you a background, I went to Berlin after USA family holiday and then heading around Europe!

Everything had frozen. I stood there with my heart in my mouth waiting to see what would happen next.

The police had given us the three customary warnings to leave after a legal demonstration and we had obeyed under threat of arrest. We moved out in a group, knowing the customary tactics of dividing the group that the German riot police liked to conduct. But suddenly they had charged. Around 30 riot police had rushed headlong into us with batons drawn and eyes bearing on us with provocative intent.

We were nearing the end of the German Clima Camp based from a field in north Hamburg.

The idea of the Clima Camp had been birthed in England and after a few years seasoned campaigners like Tadzio Mueller had imported the idea to Germany, traditionally the home of a sizeable active radical left community.

The idea, like its successful counterpart in Southeast England, was to highlight the problems that increased energy consumption was having on global climate change as well as the problems migrants faced when trying to settling in our beloved EU. Tired of ineffectual lobbying against these multi-national corporations with much more financial muscle and therefore influence, the growing consensus was towards direct action. This included, like in the Kent camp, a protest against a coal power station, namely Hamburg's facility in Moorburg, which is currently under construction and one against the airport and its

At first the police presence was scant as they took a backseat in our primary welcoming demonstration, and then were in small numbers at the second big demo outside a low-cost Aldi supermarket in the city centre, the latter in favour of fair trade products. We would then retreat to our camp, where a huge itinerary of informative workshops and debates were running throughout the ten days we camped there.

Then came the turning point. In order to make our presence felt we decided to take our march to a residential site near Moorburg which would be directly affected by the presence of the coal power station. But instead of remaining there, a decision was made to march on the power station itself. This meant that there would be a clear route towards the station itself and there would be no police to overcome. Hurrying along the streets waving flags and chanting songs, our 300-strong body surged towards the building site, only to be intercepted by riot police coming from behind us to thwart our advance.

However, they were powerless to stop two teams getting into the site and hoisting a banner on a crane and staying in place for a full five hours before being arrested. Others blockaded the entrance to the site, a van providinig the music as we danced in the ring formed by our amour-clad, growling 'spectators'. In the end they stopped our spontaneous action for another ridiculous reason: “This is no longer a demo, it is a party; and you need a separate permit for a party. If you don't go home, we will arrest you!” They then proceeded to remove people forcibly as they sat stubbornly at the entrance to the complex, while others decried their democratic rights in uproarious disapproval.

On the Friday was the demonstration at the airport and we were equally mistreated. One group of around 60 was arrested in entirety, solely for blocking one of the many arteries leading to the airport. The police, now smiling smugly, surrounded the protesters before rounding up the whole group and bussing them off to the cell for a few hours before releasing them unceremoniously after the humiliation. Another group of 300 carried out an 'action' in Terminal 1, where, by means of theatre and music they complemented the main march outside which was again heavily cordoned off by the police. We had evaded capture while marching with the first group and later it was at this main march where the police had charged us.

The silence in those moments seemed to last forever as we questioned the integrity of a democratic system we vehemently criticised as being undemocratic. But for that small matter of minutes we were hoping the strands of freedom of expression that remained would sustain our right to leave the site of the action. And so it was to be. With the press cameras cataloguing the police action deemed inappropriate by our mobile PA system they finally capitulated and fell back allowing us to march to the metro station still clasped arm in arm in solidarity.

The next day the police reacted with more fury, using water cannon to disperse a second march on Moorburg, the rain driving not only vertically but also horizontally in what is one of the wettest regions in Germany.

Many people learned that to exercise the freedom to protest it was necessary to test that freedom and that to push for change was never an easy struggle. But more than anything we made a stand, and as we had come to know, the fight is only lost when we stop fighting.

Now there are plans in motion to start a climate camp in Spain next summer as a prelude to a big meeting of climate campaigners in Copenhagen in September 2009 to coincide with the most important UN Climate Conference to be held since Kyoto. Interested individuals wishing to be part of this movement should contact climatecampspain@gmail.com.

Moroccan desert adventure continues...

Two days later we had them returned except this time with the car having signed out two days before we were going to leave. Most people at this stage fly out so as to have a different exit point but my stubborn refusal to do so because of the 350e ticket to france meant that I would have to leave from the same exit, this time by way of a lift from a German guy with a Mercedes Unimog army 4x4 monster vehicle converted for travelling. Theo and his adopted doggie he had found in the desert in a little hole where he had buried his own pup who was killed in 10 minutes by poison (a marvellous story) said he was going north to Agadir and I could go with him. We managed to cross the first hurdle at the frontier with relative ease, our police contacts having phoned in advance of our imminent arrival. We had even surpassed our 3-day visa by 2 days but it seemed to be no problem as the customs officers stamped us out in their wooden shed with barely a question being raised. Sitting there breathing the air of freedom as we drove easily across the sand-traps of no-man's land in our monster vehicle with metre high wheels and about half a metre of clearance from the ground, we arrived back in Morocco with the sense of coming home.

We then carried on north after a night in Dahkla at our steady 70km/h speed along the only road with signs on its side warning about mines from the 10-year war Morocco waged with the democratically elected Saharaui pro-independence forces of the Polisario, a war only halted by UN peacekeepers and now a ceasefire again in the balance.

After miles of emptiness as far as the eye could see on all sides we arrived in Laayoune and from there tried to take a more interesting route inland through the desert. Stopping in Smara for a night we ate fish and burgers before changing a wheel in the heat of the day and watching troops land in the airport as the military build-up on the frontier continued. We then elected to take our journey into the unknown to near the perilous eastern frontier with Algeria and Tindouf where 200,000 Saharaui refugees now live.

According to the map there was a dirttrack there and at first all was good as we marched onwards along what seemed like a newly-paved road, inevitably to transport munitions for another possible war with sworn-enemy Algeria and the Polisario they backed. But soon we found the road ran out and even the tracks wore thin and divided into all sorts of directions. Postulating in our pot-induced slowness we sought what seemed the most logical route trying to head east all the time. Humming through white sandy plains and up craggy mountain ranges, we felt the loneliness of adventure, our chess games in the Sahara forcing us into brain activity which was sometimes hard to muster.

In the end we came across our road and sure enough we found the military base we were looking for. The only thing was that here we were the only tourists and suddenly, in their state of alert they questioned our veracity. After being escorted by a police truck north to a small village now out of bounds to anyone without military credentials we were questioned thoroughly by the chief of police somewhere on these lines:

“Are you part of an organisation or other association? Are you spies?”

“Err... no,” was our answer as we wrestled with a hunger garnered from not eating all day as we sped to our destination before nightfall. Having realised we were quite innocent they let us catch a bite before becoming the first tourists to sleep in that town for three years. I even managed a great conversation with an interesting educated policeman with a perfect English accent at his lonely post at the entry to this town. We spent the night by the post and then carried on north through some more villages and the undertaking further off-roading through a wondrous valley as the sun set on us lighting the peaks around us in a heart-warming red glow. We fought confusion again and finally arrived at the road we were looking for proceeding through the mountains to the tourist town of Tafrout and then northwest along the ridges of the anti-Atlas toward Agadir. There, we spent some good times with Soufi and his skater friends, as well as my brother who was in the area before heading north alone with my backpack and surfboard tucked under my arm to Imsouanne, a beautiful fishing enclave with some of the most perfect longboard waves there is. Having arrived at this paradisical still under-exploited spot I was walking around in the carpark and was greeted by an Austrian guy with a full-size motor-caravan. After smoking together and getting annihilated at chess he invited me to sleep there where I hung out for a week in the end, passing away the hours catching perfect long rides on borrowed longboards and eating donated sardines from our pro-rainbow Mohamed in his tiny beachside restaurant. All too soon it was time to leave and Europe beckoned with an opportunity to get some writing work with my cousin on a website. I got a trip to Casablanca with some cool French couple and then headed to Rabat where I stayed with an American guy who had managed to go, even out with a Moroccan princess before deciding their weakness for coke wasn't really his thing. We went to a wild diplomatic pool party with other foreigners and prostitutes hanging around innocuously and then spent a day chilling before catching a coach to Tangiers from where I took the ferry straight home to Gibraltar.