If you were gorilla-ing last summer, you might have read about how, once I got my new old wagon home I discovered that one corner was being eaten alive by nasty, foamy, yellow mold. I immediately cut out all the moldy bits and burned them, and the remaining wood got sprayed with evil chemical killer shit, just to be sure my house didn’t rot out from beneath my feet before I’d even moved in.

I started removing siding and insulating the walls, and the hole remained. I replaced a window and tested out interior paint colors, and the hole remained. Winter came, I gave up on building work for the season, and the hole remained.

I had come to dread the hole (and the consequent beam replacement that would need to precede it). I came to dread working on the wagon. As winter arrived, I felt like burning the wagon to the ground would have been better than lifting another finger in its name.

Then spring came, and one morning I woke up and discovered that my dread was gone. And I fixed the hole. Snowflake and I had replaced the necessary beam months before, on a warm winter’s day.

Before, from inside:

After, from inside:

(Now filled with handworkerly patience, I am considering re-doing the bit where I used the orange boards because it is pretty sloppy at the moment. The right side I filled in with original boards cut out of the area where we put in a large window.)

After, from outside:

Victory is mine:

Rumor had it, there were seven empty wagons just sitting around at a wagenplatz in the next town over, just waiting to be bought up and hauled off.

We bicycled over, and, of course, it wasn’t true. There were a few empty wagons, but claims had already been made, by other wägler in some cases and by the rot that was slowly eating the walls in another.

Instead of taking home a wagon (or any hope of finding one—these were the days when I was still searching for my future home-ship), we spent the afternoon drinking coffee with friends, and I took a few snapshots to share with you.

Below you will find a short peek into what life looks like at another wagenplatz. At that point in time I had not yet figured out how to turn off the time/date stamp on my camera. Whoops.

click click click

The community wagon/pub there is made of eight wagons all soldered and hammered together into one enormous room. Eight! Fucking amazing, is what it is. This picture doesn’t even begin to capture the magnitude/insanity/glory of it:

The outdoor stage for summer festivals and concerts:

Someone’s pretty wagon-home. I am such a sucker for pretty stacks of wood:

After having stored my clothes in a shelved cabinet for two years, I find myself longing for drawers. And last week I found the perfect little chest of ‘em sitting all lonely and scared in the trash corral across the street. Now filled with socks and papers, they sit happy and warm across from my desk.

As for the other bits in this picture: the camel was a gift, the basket container thing came from the trash about six months ago (and it is entirely filled with towels and sheets that were also collected from the trash), and the washboard leaning against the chest of drawers is from a flea market (3 euros, and I intend never to wash a thing with it, but to give it to Sue for music making).

This morning’s trash brought with it five more blankets, and four pillows. When it comes to kitchen stuff, clothes, just about anything really, I have no problem leaving behind what I don’t need. But when it comes to blankets, entire sets of blankets and pillows and little throws all wrapped up together in a fitted sheet and deposited directly in the trash still smelling of detergent, then there is no blanket left behind.

In part my nesting/hoarding instincts are to blame. But in part it is just fucking stupid to throw away big downy blankets. Take them to the fucking homeless shelter! Give them to your friends! Make them into dog beds! Anything, anywhere but the trash, I’m begging you people! Else shatter shall my heart into a thousand downy pieces that will not be salvageable from your local dumpster.

If you read this blog regularly, then you probably imagine that I spend most of my time either in a trash can or hammering away on my work-in-progress wagon. This is mostly true. But what I’ve never mentioned is that I also spend a lot of time making music. And now, seeing as we’ve finally recorded a demo, I thought I would tip off any of you interested in gorilla country blues.

Black Diamond Express Train to Hell (Don’t be shy. Add us as a friend if you’re on murdochspace.)

There are only three tracks up for now, and they are not mastered. Apparently, the guy who has been helping us with the mastering disappeared late Saturday night and has not been seen since. Go figure. When he reappears and I’ve finished sewing together all of the covers and Sue has finished burning all the discs and the Reverend has finished fiddling with the artwork, there will be happy little CDs for sale with eight songs—five of our very own and three old traditionals.

In the meantime, enjoy the rough cuts. Spread the good word. Raise a glass.

PS I am not responsible for this poster labeling the rest of my band mates as idiots, fyi, though I do wish I had two heads as it would probably make for sweet live harmonies.

Upcoming shows:
16. April, Vorstadtprinzessin, Köln (start 6 pm sharp)
17. April, AZ-Müllhaus, Mühlheim
4. May, AK44, Gießen with Lycka Till from Sweden
5. May, Haus Mainusch, Mainz, also with Lycka Till

Yihaw, peng peng, etc.

The last insistent fingers of winter have taken their revenge: one last head cold, the original April Fool’s jest. You thought it was spring? You thought it was warm enough to stop heating? HA! Bam! Punch in the face! Swollen glands and scratchy throat and runny nose.

I spent the morning sitting in the sun and drinking tea. Laying down seemed like a good idea, so I dragged an old wicker couch into the sun and lay on it, watching three pigeons fly from branch to branch in the tree above me.

Usually I spend sick days laying in bed watching movies, but today it feels like the only thing the computer is capable of is making me sicker. The sun feels so hopefully alive on my skin. I am sure it is helping to drive out the cold with every minute I sit in its light, eyes closed, head turned up.

Tonight I will go to the sauna and sweat the last of this bug out of my pores, the last and most decadent of my winter rituals. In the 85-degree sauna (about 185 degrees Fahrenheit) there is a different infusion every half hour.

Upwards of 40 people sit on tiered wooden benches in a dimly lit room, and when the half hour strikes, an employee arrives with a bucket full of water and oil: things like lemon grass, pine, eucalyptus, and once, Kaminfeuer (that translates to “open fire”, and it didn’t smell anything like an open fire, tell you what).

The employee introduces him- or herself, then pours the oil and water mixture over the hot stones on top of two large stoves at the front of the room. The room fills with steam, gets hotter. The employee waves a towel in circles in the air to bring the hottest air down from the ceiling to the level of the benches. Then they do it again and again, usually four times, until sweat is streaming down your entire body and every pore is open and tingling. There is always a hardcore group sitting on the top tier who lift their arms for the last round (oh sensitive armpits!) and grunt as if they were amid an intense workout.

The last infusion of the night is held in the 95-degree sauna (203 degrees Fahrenheit). The employee who comes for the infusion is always a chubby brown-haired man who takes the time to his to fan hot air into the faces of each individual there. It is one of the most intense physical experiences I have ever had.

There are actually eight different saunas available, with various temperatures and effects—the “fever” sauna (set at a temperature meant to mimic the human body when fevered) and the Finnish sauna (the only thing I remember about it was that there was horrific flute music playing inside). But I usually skip those and attend all of the evening’s infusions.

The steam bath is in a white-tiled room with spacey blue and green lighting. It is smaller, but the air is so thick with mist that you can’t see across the four-meter wide room. Here the tiered seats are tiled, and there are hoses to wash off your spot before sitting. Several times a night an employee comes in with either a salt or honey peeling, which he or she hands out to everyone in the room with a big wooden spoon. You rub yourself down, and head to the showers.

The main room is filled with chairs for relaxing between rounds, a small restaurant, an ice-cold pool, and an outdoor swimming pool for relaxing between rounds. Normally this kind of decadence costs about 20 euros for two hours, but our local sauna offers a special: every night from 8-11 you can come in for a 10 euro flat fee. This gives you access to the saunas, the water slides, and the heated pool (also with a fountain-filled bit outside). You leave feeling reborn, all the old skin gone, all the month’s poison’s sweated off.

I am (more or less) finished building two woodsheds, and the next step is preparing my wagon for the 30 meter tractor ride to its new spot. But first I have to finish patching up the hole in the wall (left from cutting out a moldy bit) and replace the corner beam I started ripping out last fall (deteriorating from water damage) so that when she moves the walls don’t shift out of place too.

Project number one: finish closing up the hole in the floor. The reason the floor was still open was that I hadn’t yet finished my secret under-the-floor “cellar” box, for holding things like treasure, and wood. And as I’ve insulated it, it’ll probably also make a good refrigerator in the summer.

I built a box onto the bottom of the wagon, secured the remaining floor boards, built a little trap door, screwed on a handle, insulated it with styrofoam, covered the styrofoam up with an old Winne-the-Pooh carpet I found in the trash across the street, and wa-la! Below you can see the results.

From inside, open (and blurry, whoops):

Taken from outside and closed, as seen through the hole still in the wall:

For those of you who like details, the box is about 70 cm (length) by 40 cm (width) by 39 cm (height). Next project: close up the wall and replace the corner beam.

Several days ago I was at the post office sending my mom a long-overdue Christmas package. The woman behind the counter told me she didn’t think there were post ships anymore. Just airplanes.

A small part of my heart shriveled up and turned black. There go all those dreams of riding cheap with the post in a boat to America someday, sitting among mountains of letters and reading other people’s mail.

When you live really far away from most of the people that you like most in the world, every day that you get a package is the best day of your life.

Thanks, everyone who’s ever sent me a package. And thanks especially to Blood Hut for this one. Ba-da-bing!

Are you a blogger? Do you blog in English? Are you blogging from Germany but are originally from somewhere else? Then you’re probably an “ex-pat,” a term that refers to a person who has expatriated or left his or her country of birth. If you are an ex-pat, and you answered yes to all of the questions above, then you’re eligible to attend this year’s WEBUM (Whiney Expat Bloggers Unmissable Meetup).

If you’re an expat blogger, you can read more here. (Here being another website that I write for. Yipeekiyiyeah.)