STORIES

It feels wonderfully weird to finally share this: Almost exactly one year after starting this songwriting and recording project, after countless hours of improvised recording sessions and an intense exchange of ideas in our band chat, we have managed to bring its six tracks to a level that we feel is good enough to publish them as Thank You George's second official release. You can find them on the project's SoundCloud profile, together with an Intro and an Outro, and we are finally inviting all of you to listen, like and share 'The World Is Mine'.

Welcome to Japan, welcome to Asia's Germany! It was almost spooky how much the two countries seemed alike. The people were quiet and polite, they kept their distance and they didn't seem to go out of their shells too much. And they were obsessed with working out even the smallest details to perfection. Because of this everything was nice and clean and organized and things simply worked out. After almost seven months of being surrounded by the chaotic mess, the noise and the struggle and the dust that is most of South East Asia, coming to Japan felt like coming home.

I remember that when we started talking about a rough travel plan, Lea and I agreed that after spending a great chunk of our budgeted time in Asia, we would try to visit Latin America, too. But then, after six months on the road, we decided to rather spend more time at each place than to push for the maximum number of destinations. And so we changed our plan and crossed Latin America off of our list. But then we came to the Philippines and the place reminded us so much of Costa Rica and Ecuador that we couldn't help but feel that we had made it to Latin America after all.

I spent two-and-half-months traveling in a state of involuntary silence. I just couldn't write anymore. No music, no lyrics, no blog posts. Nothing. After working on 'The World Is Mine' for seven months the project had finally taken its toll on me. So instead of constantly thinking about a new song or the next post I focused on arranging the songs with the guys in Hamburg. And on making the best out of being reduced to the contents of my wallet in Vietnam, on being sucked into the Cambodian expat community, on riding through the soothing countryside in Laos.

We only crossed the border to Myanmar after spending one month mentally preparing for the experience. And it is a good thing that we did. The last country on our route that had felt as remote and challenging was Mongolia. There we had escaped most of these challenges by being driven through the country on a guided tour. In Myanmar we were on our own with the crumbling infrastructure, the smells of the cities and the odor of the countryside, the monks in their dresses and the men in their skirts and the constant waving back at little children.

'Why would you mash these three countries together in one post?' you might ask. 'Didn't each of these places provide you with a different experience and unique anecdotes?' And you are right, they probably did. Only we couldn't really tell the difference anymore. Because after six months of hardly spending more than three nights in one place our memories had run full. We were in desperate need for some rest and some routine. For some well-known terrain and some friendly and familiar faces.

Compared to traveling in countries like Iran, Russia and Mongolia the four weeks we spent in Indonesia were quite uneventful. The country and the people were nothing but pleasant, the food was cheap, diverse and tasty and the overall infrastructure for handling large amounts of tourists made getting around, visiting the most relevant sights and spending a few weeks on different beaches almost too easy. Therefore, unlike the novel-like post I published on our travels in Mongolia, this post will be kept rather short.

Traveling Mongolia was, in every sense of the word, a tremendously intense experience. Even the most profane activities like walking the streets of the cities and villages, consuming the local food, sleeping in nomadic gers, going to the, well, let's call them toilets, keeping ourselves and our stuff at least some kind of clean and discovering the emptiness and breathtaking beauty of Mongolia's countryside turned into either the roughest or the most amazing adventures.

Russia wasn't at all what we expected. The portions served in the restaurants were rather tiny. Alcohol and especially beer was quite expensive. Moscow seemed to have more hipster bars and artsy places than Berlin. St. Petersburg looked like a bigger version of Milan and was overrun with tourists. There was free and fast wifi everywhere. Riding the trains of the Trans-Siberian Railway was more comfy than riding on a German train. And during the first two weeks we didn't have a single drop of Vodka.

The predominant color of our travels through Azerbaijan and Georgia was green. It had been a while since we had spent so much time out in the open, hiking along rivers and through opulent chains of mountains, discovering far off villages and some surprinsingly exciting cities. After spending most of our time in Iran with the people we met along the way, this part of the trip was mostly reserverd for the two of us. Except for the last part of course when we met our peers from Hamburg who flew in for one of my oldest and best friend's wedding in Istanbul.

Backpacking through Iran was one of the most intense and rewarding travel experiences we have ever had. Never before have we visited a country where so many people were this geniously happy to meet us. We got invited to share the locals' homes and food, We spent nights in the cold mountains and days in the scoulding desert, we witnessed freedom and opression, we soaked in the atmosphere of the muezzin calling for morning prayer in the courtyard of Isfahan's Jāmeh Mosque.