Rainbow Submarine

interview with Geigi

Ris Orangis, 06./.07.11.1989

H: I'm primarily interested in how you've seen the whole story? How you did see the relationship and the events of the first year in its time and how do you see it now? I guess we just start with the workshop of August. 

G: On which I had not attended. While you did the workshop I was in Steinau and constructed the roof rack for the bus. 

H: What was that for you? On one hand you were working with the bus and on the other hand there was this workshop with everybody else? Was that intended or was it a necessity? 

G: Somewhere it was a required because we had only one more week. The workshop was arranged in the weeks after Munich. We had to see Circus Roncalli in Munich after Udo told us that we had to see Roncalli. We came back to Fulda, both because of Bine had to make her driving license and because of the workshop. 

H: I remember that it felt a bit annoying, turning back just because of Bine's driver license, we were pretty far already. 

G: Okay, maybe the workshop was before Munich. In any case, I have not participated in the workshop because I had to work on the bus and because I had to make the roof rack. We needed that to bring our bikes. 

H: You were not keen on the workshop? 

G: Nope. Not much. 

H: You knew August from before? 

G: I met August first of everybody. I told him in Berlin that I was selling my car because we wanted to make that trip. Then he told me that he is working with theatre. 

H: How did he respond to our plans at that time? 

G: Somehow it made him a bit surprised, I think. People just buy a bus and drive off to make street-theatre. I guess he didn’t believe me. I can imagine. 

H: How did it happen that he made the workshop?

G: He did the workshop, because I sold him a scrap-car. A Mercedes 190. The engine broke. The engine has been good for nothing. Though he complained. And since I found him quite sympathetic I made sure to buy a new engine and to install it together with him. We did that at the Grubenhof, after we had finished the bus. And August also agreed at that time to make a workshop with us. He did that only after he was for the first time in Fulda and saw what happened there. 

H: So he learned about the bus and then...? 

G: ... he met the bus-people. Just those who were involved in it. 

H: Has there been a reason why especially he made the workshop? 

G: I do not know if I asked him, or whether he was asked by somebody else. He knew stuff about theatre-work and he had given workshops before. For us, I think, that was very interesting because there was someone who actually came from the theatre. Because, previously that didn’t happen in Fulda. The only thing we had to do with theatre was, indirectly, the Landmann Theater, which was going on at the FH. Nobody of us had done such a workshop before. And none of us had really played theatre before. Maybe Manfred. Who actually wasn’t with us at that time. Or? I don’t know exactly when Manfred had entered. I think that was pretty much at the end. I can’t remember. 

H: It was very late. In any case, that was decided in Bine’s home in the living-room. 

G: Yes, I remember that very well. 

H: What happened regarding Manfred?

G: Yes, first he was for the bus. I don’t really remember everything. 

H: We were living together as a collective in Malkes. 

G: I don’t remember exactly how it was. I only know ... I think you two talked about it, you considered to buy the bus. Manfred was very much for buying the bus. And I was far from it. I did not want to join the project in the beginning. I thought, well, you take off with the bus and I'm going to Berlin. That was my idea. And then there was another story I still have a very bad memory about. A tape conversation by the way! 

H: Right, I remember that too. 

G: A Conversation between Manfred and you. Which put a strong moral pressure on me. Really first-class moral pressure. 

H: Why? What had been said there? 

G: You cornered me. Where you said that would be a mess ... Manfred, which I remember very well ... that was pretty much the first negative story I had with Manfred, which is stuck to me. A negative experience with Manfred, that was, yes, to abandon friends. This went on in this style. Just leave friends in the lurch. You have to be with, otherwise the project doesn’t work and many such stories. 

H: After that you joined? 

G: Nope. I didn’t join. I actually joined the bus-deal at Achim’s place. I actually joined because of the bus itself (laughs). Definitely because of the bus. Not because of the vehicle, but because I saw, this was a project that had hand and foot. Or something like this. When the bus actually was there. That was something concrete. It wasn’t that far away anymore. Then I joined the project. About the idea going to Berlin, I thought I still could make that anytime. I also felt I could miss something. A feeling I had. After everybody had persuaded me. I mean, of course this was related, quite clear. Though I just said yes. There were a lot of things going inside me.

H: What were you thinking about that the bus will be ready and we will go abroad? Supposedly living of street-music and -theatre? 

G: I thought it would work out. For me it was in the first place like everything else in Fulda, a story of the making. What we do together. That was incredibly important for me. Which was important with the festivals. Which was important at the Lanneshof. Although I always tried to pull myself out of groups and group braids. Always have. Whenever I was in a group, I have withdrawn from group braids. On the other hand, I also know that I was a driving force in many things. But I always had my retreat. At times, it was the Holzberghof, and so on. Many such stories. I always had my retreat and my distance from the group. But in that case it wasn’t possible anymore. 

H: Then you were a part of it. How did you feel about that? Was this a decision for you? 

G: For me this was clearly a decision. 

H: Also, to live like that? 

G: Yes. Living like this. Living together. Giving myself entirely for the group. Something I actually did.

H: Have you had any picture of what will happen? 

G: No, not at all. I never looked into the future, if you will. I liked to make music. And I thought, if I want to make music, I'm actually in the right spot. Because in this group I always can make music. But I had no future-idea about the group in my head. For me, the background was to make music and to develop our folk-music that we made at that time. And the thought we all had to play at festivals at some point. Going to festivals. 

H: Yes, this was discussed; it was kind of a goal. 

G: I do not know if we talked about that in the very beginning, but fairly quickly actually. I mean, we also worked from the beginning on that, when we left. When we stopped somewhere, then someone started ... not yet begun to juggle, but started ... oh yes, Ali was not with us in the beginning. I totally forgot. Ali joined us in Bordeaux. 

H: Do you still remember the day when we discussed if Ali should join us or not in the beginning? 

G: No. 

H: In Malkes? 

G: No. Why? Do you remember? 

H: I remember that we talked about that, and that we decided he should not come with us. And that there were people who were in favour and there were people who were against it. And the typical arguments of the people who were against it, were that the group is already established and it would hinder, if someone would join in addition. Because there was a time when people came and asked whether they can join the bus. 

G: Right. 

H: What did you feel about leaving Fulda?

G: That was easy for me. That did not bother me. Not at all. I found it actually a logical conclusion of the work we did in Fulda. We'll leave sometime. When I went away, I felt that as a logical consequence. Looking back, also from what we have done. We really tried to do something in Fulda. You can say that. We actually lined up a lot of things. Always in the sense that the action counts and not the things you have in your head. Actually always the action. Which also made up most of what we have done. The people who did a lot who were very active, they were also more respectable than the people who did less. There were also certain positions in the whole group stories we had in Fulda.

B: Were there such positions from the beginning in the bus history? Or how did you ever see the individual people at the time? The eight people who had started in the beginning.

G: I had my concerns about Manfred. I already pointed at  that in the Siggi’s living before we started.

H: What kind of concerns?

G: Because I did not have the feeling that Manfred really did go with the project, but because of Katharina. That's why I had reservations towards Manfred. What I then actually relatively fast at the beginning of the trip, in Perpignan, got confirmed. There I had an argument with Manfred. A violent one. Maybe not an argument, but Manfred knew pretty much how to exert psychological pressure. On Katharina. Or on people at all on the bus.

H: How did that look like? Are there key stories for this?

G: I only remember the reaction I had. I cannot remember the story. How he started to cry, because Katharina wasn’t like Manfred envisioned her. I had the feeling at the moment. So he started to sob at one point. I sensed the sobbing as false. This was in Perpignan. And I yelled at him. And I think that Manfred understood what I meant. I said, he has to stop it. I think that Manfred knew very well what I meant. It corded up my throat. I had to step out of the bus and just run a while. Far away. 

H: Why cord up your throat? 

G: It made me a very constricting feeling. Not that I yelled at him, but what he did. This way how he got anyone to do anything through his suffering. But that has for me also to do with my own family history. Evoking feelings of guilt. Like, "you'll bring me to the grave", as my mother liked to say. "You are my coffin nails". Such stories. And therefore it made me frightening. I didn't want anything to do with that. It might be no pressure on me, but I've felt this way. Especially since I have a rather unique relationship with Katharina. What I didn’t have with almost anybody else actually. We have a basic understanding. She can do what she wants, it will always stay the same, the feel. I suspect she’s feeling the same. 

H: Was your relationship with Katharina like this already before the departure? 

G: Yes. It was actually always like that. I often wondered why it is actually with Katharina like this. We have relatively the same home, with many stories. There're many parallel things. Certain reactions of her, I just understood, because I already knew. Because if someone comes from another family home, which is completely different, then you don't understand this so quickly. Then you've to understand first, why. Why would someone react like this. Though I always had a consent with Katharina. A base. Even today. If we see each other, after two minutes everything is clear. Not even two minutes, immediately. Although we do not write and have no contact. That is quite unique. This attack by Manfred on Katharina, that was almost an attack against me. So in this way. That's how I feel about that. 

H: But Manfred wasn't a rival for you? 

G: Nope. Not at all. 

H: And what about the others? 

G: Yes, with Bine everything was all right anyway. Between Bine and me everything is almost always all right. Sometimes she pushes my nerves. But she knows that. I'm certainly pushing her nerves too. This is exactly the same. There're no real stories or something. Yes, I know how Bine is. And she probably knows who I am. And that was even before, because I knew her actually from two years before. I met her when she was fifteen or sixteen.

And Jutta, always the same actually. What I always was concerning about Jutta, was her story with the alcohol. Already from before.

H: Was it already in the beginning like this? 

G: Less. 

H: Did you know? 

G: I guessed so.

H: How? 

G: From reactions in Fulda, which I had already experienced. From her depression stories I had already experienced in Fulda. Which were quite strong. I've always tried to listen, and respond to all people. So I knew that even with Jutta. Although I am not so sure about the alcohol. And it was important that we already had made many of these concerts. We actually already had done quite a lot of concerts. 

H: That's right, we had had many performances. 

G: And we had done many things. There was a kind of a core group. 

H: I'm also interested in the individual relationships that you had to the people.

G: I often had a little trouble with Seppel because I easily was jealous across many things. Because he is so good in making music. Because he is a very relaxed person in general. 

H: What do you mean with relaxed? 

G: No matter whether we made physical exercise, when you took Seppel's shoulder it always was relaxed. Everything was soft. Right here in the back of the shoulders. When he started with something, then he managed this fast and extremely easy. He always approached things with a relaxed feeling. I didn't really accept it because Seppel was still some years younger than me. I first had to learn to accept that. He was just eighteen and I was twenty-two. Something I couldn't accept just like that.  He was younger than me and much better. That was really hard for me in the beginning. But I've actually got it fairly quickly, if I do not begin to learn and use what he can, I would have been just simply stupid. Already in Bordeaux that was clear to me.
Bordeaux was important for me. Also because Ali joined us in Bordeaux. Then it became quite clear to me that Ali travels with us. What previously, I believe, was not so clear. I do not remember exactly what position I had. I found it incredibly important that Ali came with us. Especially since Ali attached a lot too. Juggling! Ali gave us a particular direction.
About you, I can still remember that I said that I have no confidence. In my room. Where you threw your diary on me and you almost ashamed me. 

H: Why? 

G: Yes, that I couldn't trust you. On such a journey. I do not know why I said that or with what kind of feeling. Something bothered me. Something felt scary, I could not estimate you. 

H: What couldn't you estimate on me? 

G: I don't know. I can't tell you. For once you have been actually a fairly radical man, I do not know, but probably you still are. I've always seen you as radical. Which means, if you do something, then you do it, radically. Just as you have ceased your studies, as you finalized things. How you liked the Lanneshof and what happened there. As you approached our music. These were all things that were incredibly radical. And then you also pushed a lot.
But I can't take pressure. Although I now know that pressure is important. People like you, who push such a cause, who say, this are we doing now, and if it does not work fast enough, then you're impatient. And such things. These are things why I said, no, in the first place! 

H: That was too much for you? 

G: That was often too much for me.

H: How would you have liked it best?

G: That's hard to say now. Because I know now that it was right. Just as I understand Marc here in the office, I know how important it was for the group that time. This pressure behind it. 

H: Do you remember some things that have happened, when you felt this pressure? 

G: Nope. I can't tell you any key stories. I had an allergy against pressure. Meanwhile, I have perhaps less. Meanwhile, I can analyse whether this pressure does something good to me.

H: Yes, and Gogo? 

G: Gogo? This is difficult, very difficult. I always have seen him as difficult. I knew Gogo actually quite good. I do not know why but I always felt that I knew him quite good. Gogo has always been the worker at the whole project. As the continuous workers. I actually could expect that quite good of him. And so I had absolutely no fears for Gogo. 

H: You felt good about that and liked to have him with us?

G: As far as I know, I think so. I can't remember otherwise. 

H: And you yourself? How did you see yourself?

G: I saw myself as important for the group. I always attached pretty much importance to myself. Although I may not have had it. 

H: Why? 

G: Sometimes I wondered that people gave me such significance. That's what happened to me sometimes.

H: What kind of significance did people give you? 

G: Oh, yes, in the whole festival organizations and such. For example, we both organized a festival in Johannesberg and a festival at the Holzberghof. During the week I drove up to the Holzberghof. The Johannesberg Festival had just ended and we brought all the materials up to the Holzberghof. That was madness, hard work. And I scraped my car in that week. My VW Cabriolet. Everybody was waiting for me at the Holzberghof. And I thought, why, what do they expect. I just had to set up some cables to get power on the stage. That’s all. I absolutely didn’t see any importance in if I’m part of it or not. But everybody thought that was incredibly important. That made me wonder sometimes. 

H: Have you been wondering about that on the bus too? Or was it more natural that you were  part of that?

G: Yes, after I agreed to join, it felt natural. Because I felt I belonged to the group. For me this would have felt as a separation of the group if you'd have been taken off without me. That would have been quite clear. But there was also something else in my head from the beginning on. At one point I would leave the group. I still have this dream and I’m still thinking it, that I will live somewhere alone. Not having anybody around me. But at the moment when I’m alone for one day I quickly look for somebody to keep me company. Until today I rarely managed to be alone.

H: Maybe that was also a motive to be part of the bus? 

G: Yes, I think so. Somewhere, too. I’m always thinking that at some point I want to be alone, even today. And I know that I have to live alone at some point. I have to be alone for. I think that this very important for me. But I have never been there yet.
Example: After the bus I came to Berlin. There I first lived with you, in the Sanderstrasse. That was almost too alone. And then this story with the Etage (Hermannshof), which was again as a very typical story. Many people. Or actually now where I'm sitting here at the CAES in France, which is somewhere not a coincidence. Even the time I spent with Cecile in the apartment in Paris, we became quickly three people. Because I've always felt this was pretty important. And I always felt it important that there was a group. Because in the group, which I learned on to the trip, is always someone who is in a good mood. 

H: And that motivates you? 

G: Yes, in the group, there’s always somebody who is building up energy. There is a constant flow of energy, an Exchange. 

H: For that you’ll need a general agreement with each other? 

G: Why? 

H: Don’t you think? In other words, you trust everybody in the group. Because you always trust that there’s somebody who will pushing energy.

G: Yeah! This is the law of activity. At the moment the group isn’t doing well, to show negative activity, that doesn’t happen often. Either you retreat, or you look for the others. There are only two ways in a group, I think. Either to pull back and close yourself to the others, as I have sometimes did when I've slept for two days, for example. Such things happened to me quite often on the bus. I retired two or three days and I was only in bed and rear. Okay, not so often but it happened a few times to me during the trip. I just do not know whether it happened in the first or in the second year. 

H: How was the beginning, when we left. We set off in Fulda and drove down to the river Rhine. We performed in Koblenz and Cologne. And then we went over to Holland and there we met difficulties at the border. 

G: But that I found very good. The incident at the border. For me this was a very important experience. 

H: Why? 

G: For the first time it was a crucial border crossing because it was the first border. Then there was the story that I've returned my draft card. I put in an envelope and I sent it back. Which meant for me: now I am going abroad, now won’t come back for a while. A big thing for me, I imagined that time I would get into a hell of trouble because of that when I would return to Germany.

H: With what? 

G: With the draft card, which I returned. Including the sentence: I am going abroad and won’t need it anymore. So, I sent it back with such a remark. And that's already a protest against the army. Therefore, the first border was just incredibly important for me. But it was not only because of the draft card. In general, it was the first border to a foreign country for us. We didn’t know where it would led us. It was a good choice to choose the Netherlands. It was not that a radical change. Because Holland is many cases very common to the Federal Republic. 

H: Yes, the first people we visited where friends from before.

G: Yes, well. We've been cradled to safety for a while now. That means we went to Luz and Milenje in Nijmegen. We actually picked up some of the energy we needed for the trip. That's how I felt afterwards.

H: Then how was performing on the street?

G: That was all just relatively fresh, what we did on the street. There was a lot of steam missing and it was all a bit lame. Like, one piece at a time. The verdict from Luz was... I think she was more excited that we drove away together and did a story like that. That that actually triggered the enthusiasm in her and also triggered it in Milenje and in the people we saw there. More than what we did on the street. I have also always set our quality, which we have brought on the road, very low. Already from the musical quality and then also from the theatre. I've always been very critical about what we've done in terms of performance. But for me the performance that we brought together as a group on the road was not very important, it was not so important for me at that time. Since Bordeaux it became more important. Because August came. When we started singing together.

H: Singing together had already been done before.

G: But not like that. When we started comin' up on this fun version of “Lady Madonna” and Ali started juggling.

H: I think you can make a quick jump until then. This whole trip through France, I have only dark memories of it. We went to Rouen, Alancon, LeMans, Nantes. In Pornic sur Mer we reached the sea for the first time. Then we drove down to LaRochell and from there to Bordeaux.

G: Ah, La Rochelle. 

H: Do you have any memories of any of these places?

G: Yes, for me La Rochelle. Manfred, who sang with his guitar on the square in the evening. Who sang songs of Moustaki. And Brel was singing. And who really enchanted the people on the square. With his way and manner. I still have a vivid memory of LaRochell. I really thought that was a great story. LeMans was scary to me. In LeMans we performed in such an Archelehme, in such a residential quarter, in such a settlement quarter. Somebody shot at us with a slingshot. I think that was in LeMans. Yes, with a stone projectile. I was scared. I remember that very well. But I'm not sure... but that was in LeMans. 

H: There we got to know a woman who took us all overnight into her house. 

G: Exactly. Yes, she gave us this performance. 

H: What performance? 

G: That was a gig! We had made an appearance in front of children. I think that was in LeMans. That was in a residential area, maybe not in front of children. That was a very bad performance. In a very strange mood. That was such a housing estate atmosphere with petty crime. That was the first time we came into contact with something like that. That was in LeMans. I also remember that somewhere very darkly and weakly. But those were stories that you forget very quickly.

H: What kind of woman was that? 

G: No idea. I have only a very weak picture of it.

H: And then we came to Bordeaux. I remember well how we got in there, because the brakes were broken. And then we stopped right next to the American circus.

G: Yes, that's right. We repaired the brakes there. That was probably brake and gas, the gas was broken too. I can still remember the place very well. Next to the circus. The people from the circus. Where we were next to a circus for the first time and the people from the circus were still quite strange to me. At that time. That was still quite a different world than our world. In our bus. And I can still remember the show we saw of them. With the big wire mesh, where the motorcycles drove around in it. Where we all had the same opinion about it. About the circus: Forget it!

H: Then we went to our appointment with August, to Lacanau Ocean. 

G: And that's when Biggi and Marion came. And Regine. With Ali. Oh God, horror, because we had just left the people of Fulda behind us.

H: But Biggi came at least announced. 

G: Yes. She arrived announced. And they were actually relatively horrified that we weren't all excited. 

H: What was it like with you, you already had something with Biggi before? 

G: Yes. I had a relationship with the Biggi in Fulda. For a long time, actually. More than a year before that. And I had also had an end with Biggi when we left. I think I had written to her or something. The relationship with Biggi was never as important to me as some other relationships, so it was never as intense from my side as some relationships I had with other women. 

H: And did she come to Lacanau to freshen up? 

G: I think also to see myself. From Biggi's side it was always much stronger than from my side. This relationship. And I also had a hanky-panky with Jutta. At that time. But that was really so ... that was actually a bad story, because from my point of view it was a bedtime story. For Jutta it had become more important at some point. And that's why it was pretty bad. 

H: Everything we had planned, with August, everything didn't work out. It was the case that we didn't do a workshop.

G: No, we didn't do a workshop. Because the people were there, too. Didn't they? 

H: August had another girl with him. Isabelle. And Marion came because of August. 

G: Oh Marion came because of August. Then of course everything was clear. I didn't think about that anymore. 

H: After all, we spent a whole week there with everyone. We were on the road for a month. 

G: A month? Not more? What I know, we had had an amazing success. When we played in the street in Bordeaux. 

H: The workshop didn't work out. For these unfortunate reasons, that there were too many people there, that relationships were refreshed or played a role. You could say that that way, couldn't you?

G: Yeah, sure. 

H: What did August mean to you at that moment? In that time. In those days.

G: August wasn't that important for me in the group yet. I didn't get that until we started working with the fact that it would be quite good if he came. But I never believed that August would come to the group sometime. Never! 

H: And how did you personally see that? Did you wish that? Didn't you? 

G: Yes! Because I knew that August was someone who would bring me forward. He personally would help me forward, he encourages me with certain things.

H: What things would he give you courage for? 

G: For very specific things that I do. If I want to do things now, then I don't do them on my own. It's still the same, I talk to somebody about it. I have to find someone who thinks it's good. If I don't find someone who thinks it's good, then I'll let it go. And if I find someone who thinks it's good, who says, do it, then I have a reason to do it. And August was someone like that for me. Quite clearly. From the beginning.

H: And the others? 

G: The others too. But different. We already had our group history behind us. 

H: What kind of group history? 

G: We already had history together. These are things that also consume each other, sometimes. Such energies. Or, not that they consume each other, but... I never got this energy from the group anywhere like from August. That is a very crazy story. I also underestimated our cause, as always. I think to myself. I underestimated the group. 

H: You just said that you never thought August would do it, not even then. Why not? Did you not trust him to do that?

G: No, no, it was rather the opposite. I rather thought, that's nothing for him. Because he did completely different things before, as I saw it. I set August relatively high. In what he did, what he experienced. Not high, but... I thought so sometimes, well, August, he has the opinion about us... he thinks it's cool... or maybe through August I understood what meaning the trip had we made. What significance it has at all to do something like that. Because it wasn't difficult for me. I saw the whole group. I saw how we bought the bus. The logical consequence was that we took off with the bus. It wasn't difficult for me, it wasn't unusual for me. It's something I never felt was extraordinary. 

H: What did you find unusual? 

G: Something we couldn't do. Absolutely.

H: What couldn't we do back then?

G: Yes, for example, making music. We also made music and there were a lot of musicians and in my opinion back then, we couldn't do that. So not really. There were a few moments when I said, that's good. You understand. Where I really thought, that's good.

H: And that wasn't so important for you either, whether we could do it or not? 

G: For me that wasn't so important at the beginning. And I actually got the meaning of our group a little bit through August, when August really wanted to get involved. And to get in there. When he went for it. I thought then, why does August go for it? What is so extraordinary about it? What are we doing that is extraordinary? I've already seen that we don't live like the others around us, but I thought, well, anyone can do that. With a little effort, anyone can do that. I have always thought that. And that started to change in Bordeaux when August came. When we had our success in Bordeaux, that was at the time. That was three or four weeks later. Or a week or two later. When we had our success on the street, I suddenly thought, and that was also insanely due to the influence of August. Then that changed for me. There I had then also more interest for our thing, which we did on the street. 

H: Was August's influence more professional influence for you? That you recognized him as the authority of the subject? Or did it go somewhere else? 

G: I first saw him as a director. I've already seen that somewhere, that August can do well. I also saw later that he is really good at that. And even today I still think that this is the only profession August should have. Director. I have never seen August as an actor. On the contrary, I often felt August to be a bad actor on the street. I didn't like a lot of things August did. Which I also never formulated correctly. I never formulated that. That is also one thing.

H: Why not?  

G: Maybe because I didn't think I could do it. Or because I thought maybe I didn't see it right either. Maybe I don't have the right to say so. Which is a bullshit. I didn't have the courage to criticize something like that.

H: Why? Did you think that if I can't do that, then I can't criticize anyone else? 

G: Somewhere like that, yes. In that way, I thought so already. 

H: So how did you see yourself in the group in Bordeaux? 

G: Yes, I mainly saw myself as a musician. That was my idea, that I would become a musician. I am also responsible for music. I always saw myself that way. That's why I sometimes had difficulties with Seppel. And in between I really had difficulties identifying myself with what I was doing. Often. In terms of achievements. So, when I was repeatedly knocked out of rhythm, it made me mad. After my second year of bus history, I was actually only feeling good when I started to really see (when we lived in Villobi, when I started to set up my workshop there) what I am good for in the group.

H: So in Bordeaux you saw yourself as a musician? 

G: I saw myself primarily as a musician. And I also wanted to participate in everything. I also wanted to try to do theatre and things like that. And in Bordeaux I also noticed that I had missed the workshop in Fulda. Because you already had a different relationship to August through the workshop than I did. 

H: How did you see that, the proportion?

G: I don't know, you already had more experience with August. I had the experience of installing a Mercedes engine with August. Which was a very good experience. I learned an awful lot in that process. That was a very funny thing. 

H: What did you learn from that? 

G: How to work cleanly, for example. I didn't work cleanly. I didn't know how to work cleanly. At mechanic's work. August knew that much better than I did. What fascinated me so much about this guy was that he always proceeded systematically. I often approached something without a system. Even when I installed the engine with August, I learned that you have to proceed systematically. And what I never did with the music. But what I have always tried. That has always degenerated into blunt practice. I actually understood music much later. My whole violin education I understood only much later. But also during this first year. In the bus I understood that. What music really is. Music isn't notes, music isn't theory, it's not like learning vocabulary from any foreign language. That is something completely different. Someone who learns a foreign language is not a writer because of that. So these things, I understood them in my first year. That this music theory, that the whole lesson was a waste of time, because I often thought, why didn't the "asshole" say that, that if you've got the bow technique, then you'll get rhythm. The bow technique is the rhythm. These are all things that I only understood much later. I only understood them later with Gabi from Barcelona. I tried it again and again, I always locked myself against the music because I let the theory in. Playing the sheet, that says nothing at all. Because I never got the chance to understand the music you make. 

H: How did the work go? You can say that from Bordeaux on, a phase of continuous work occurred within the bus-team.

G: Yes.

H: I think through Ali came a lot of new things. The possibility that Ali then presented as a person, not only that he could juggle and all people started juggling, he also made more effort to make more pantomime stories on the street. He didn't come as a musician.

G: Yes. He really did bring in a second thing, or a third thing.

H: How did we work then? 

G: I don't even remember how we worked there. I only know, actually whenever we started something, or arranged something, that always made it a lot of fun for me. That, apart from my rhythmic setbacks, I always really enjoyed it a lot. To do something like that together. But I mainly believe that it was the plot. That there was something in the end. And because of that, which changed daily again and again. I mean, we had already played for a month and we already had a bit of routine in it. And that I had concepts, that the freedom just in making music, that this also comes insanely through the routine. What I could afford.

H: And how had everyday life developed,  the group life itself? The everyday life? How did we get along with each other?

G: Oh, I think very well. I think that never really caused any problems. At least not in that period. I think we had the first real crisis in Granada. When we were down in the camp. Where the whole group really got sick. Where it went completely downhill somewhere. Where we really ended up in the last corner.

H: I think we also had a pretty good time in Bordeaux. 

G: We had a really good time there. 

H: We also had relatively little to do on the road. We were then in Pyla sur Mer.

G: Yes, which was a really great thing. We started cooking (a very important thing) on fire. 

H: Back then already?

G: In Pyla, we cooked on fire for the first time, outside. That was an incredibly important step, I remember that as well. When Jutta couldn't believe that you were boiling water on the fire. That's one thing I still have in my head today. Jutta, who then cared for the hearth fire. Jutta is someone who is very close to the earth. Which I feel so. Because Jutta then made fire with preference. And to cook on fire. I don't know if you noticed it that way. I noticed that insanely. And then we got on.

G: In Pyla, we cooked on fire for the first time, outside. That was an incredibly important step, I remember that as well. When Jutta couldn't believe that you were boiling water on the fire. That's one thing I still have in my head today. Jutta, who then cared for the hearth fire. Jutta is someone who is very close to the earth. Which I feel so. Because Jutta then made fire with preference. And to cook on fire. I don't know if you noticed it that way. I noticed that insanely. And then we looted.

H: In Bordeaux? 

G: No, in Pyla sur Mer. 

H: Where did we get in?

G: In such a winterly deserted snack bar. We didn't break the door open, we kind of went in through a window or over the roof. I think it was Ali and me. And we just took out a salt shaker for the bus and a bottle opener and some glasses. And that's when I felt like I was on the street. A bit more like a gypsy, or something like that.

H: At that time we still had the story with the "music cannon". It was sent to us by Christian Föppl. That one, which was broken before. There was also still some story with the police. With a police raid.

G: Yes. I was there. That was in Arcachon. Bine, Seppel and I went shopping with the bus. The others stayed in Pyla. And there we parked the bus at the roadside. And suddenly the door opened. A fat and a thin customs officer stood in the door. In the middle of Arcachon. That's a customs foulon, I didn't know that. That’s one thing that happens so often in France. That's customs, which also drives around everywhere. Also here on the suburbs, here around Paris doing the customs checks. Yes, and those were the guys who got in the bus. They also introduced themselves as customs.
For me it was completely incomprehensible that customs was jumping around somewhere, because we were not at the border. I also did not think that Arcachon is a port. And then this "grease gun" got in there. Seppel immediately christened him "Fettpresse".
Yes, and they came in and tapped the shelf on the top right where the cassettes were underneath and took an old diary from Seppel and there was a pressed grass leaf in it. That was the first thing they did. They confiscated the leaf. And with that they had found the reason to examine the bus. And then they started and said, there must be something there. They also found a pipe, or a chillum, what we had on the bus, where there was also some stuff left in it. And in any case they confiscated it immediately. And then they started searching the bus. And Bine suddenly remembered with horror that there were still two LSD-trips somewhere. One was her and one was hidden by Jutta. And these trips were usually stuck on one side under the sink. So one trip, and the other Bine had hidden somewhere. Well, when they didn't find anything in the bus on the spot, they said they had to take the bus with them, they wanted to take it apart completely. And then we had to go with them to their customs office.
And that's when they really started looking. During this time, Bine secretly threw the trip out of the window. And then we were really scared. Because then they drove down along the ledges. We knew that Jutta had the trip somewhere, but we also knew that Jutta wanted to take it somewhere else. We just didn't know where it was. It was then stuck under the lid in such a jewelry box, which only had a slide closure. They also opened it and rummaged through it, but they didn't find the trip.
And then they discovered the bed, that was so incredibly important, that's funny, because this huge fat press crawled into the bed at the bottom of the back. And he got himself in the bed at the bottom. And suddenly he was stuck down there and couldn't get out again. And then he called his colleague for help. Then we unlocked the back door so that this guy could get out again. That was such a disgusting greasy fat guy. He had made fun of the women's briefs he got from Juttas and Bine's Fach. That was such a disgusting sow. And then we all had to go into the office. After they had found nothing more. And there they drew our attention to the fact that the pipes, the leaf and the chillum had been confiscated and that we are now in the French drug computer. Which must be true somewhere, because now, every time I cross the border in Saarbrücken, the French take my passport and look, and every time they search the car. So I just can't cross this border with the car, without which they won't take the car apart completely. Where I think maybe that's because. And then we could finally drive. And that was the story with the customs.

H: For you, life was well established, everything was going well, everything was working? 

G: No, that just started to work. I really enjoyed life back then. 

H: We had visitors the whole time. The were still the two guys with us. 

G: What I noticed was that I found my group boundary. Seven, eight people, that's ok. When it gets more, it becomes difficult for me. When I got on the bus and looked at it at one glance, at dinner in the evening, I knew immediately who wasn't there. I knew that without thinking. At eight it was sometimes more difficult and at nine. At eight it was still possible. But when the two were still there, for example, it was no longer clear for me.

H: I think from Bordeaux we were always eleven people on the bus. There were always two people on the bus who didn't actually belong.

G: Yes. Which never really bothered me. But then I started to realize that people can get in the way when they really sleep down on the floor. That the bus was simply overcrowded. On the other hand, where I thought, I didn't want to miss things like that. That there are people like that, that you shouldn't miss the opportunity to meet people. That was also never our problem, that the bus is simply too closed. In the end we never had this problem. Because there were always people there. Or somebody brought somebody back, whom he met somewhere, or something like that. I always thought that was really ok. That has always brought something fresh. And what I slowly noticed, what sometimes disturbed me when people weren't there. From us, from the group. When people were somehow away for a day or two. I was always happy when the whole group was together. A very crazy story that I thought when two people left now and still go to some party... I was always happy and satisfied when they were home again. That was such a family consciousness that I had in my head. I believe that it began to become family there. Around the time.

H: Then we drove slowly towards the south. Then it became uncomfortable in Bordeaux at the coast. Toulouse. Carcassone. 

G: Carcassone, important! Grape stealing was a great thing. Then the experience of playing in the street for the others. That was a new thing for me. Our theater didn't work with the group. We could not earn money together. So Seppel and I played in the street and played food together for the others. That I was standing alone in the street somewhere.

H: How did you feel about it?

G: Very good. I had a very good feeling about it. I was proud of it. I thought it was really great. That didn't bother me either. Seppel once told me that it was hard for him when Jutta and Bine came to collect money in the evening. That what made him tick. This is a key experience for him, he told me that much later. I didn't feel that way. I just found it incredibly funny. How Bine and Jutta came by in the evening with a big sack and shovelled in all the change and then left me behind as a lonely violinist. I found that very funny actually. I thought that was great. Out of feeling, too, I am important. That was a completely crazy experience for me. And above all for my self-confidence as a musician. To stand alone in the street. I always had a few notes with me that I could stick to and a few things that I could play. That has always fascinated me. I also lived the first time in Paris from street music. When I came here. That is one thing that I would do again. I recently thought again that I would do that. Just to start now, to grab the violin and to put myself back in the metro in Paris in order not to unlearn that simply. And also because I felt relatively free there, from playing. That was also an antispasmodic story, you play for an hour and at some point you are much more relaxed than at the beginning. Then all of a sudden it goes all by itself. Then you also play what goes through your head.

H: In Carcassone we also had a gig, didn't we? 

G: In Carcassone we also had a gig, yes. I thought that was a great performance. I also got a lot of compliments as a violinist, from there. 

H: What did we actually do during this performance? 

G: We announced ourselves as Irish folklore, didn't we? 

H: I remember that we did a real show there. Like back then in Fulda.

G: Yes. We made a program and prepared a real show. A different thing than the one we did on the street. With the numbers that were played on the street, of course. But we had prepared a real show. And Manfred, I think, did the conferencier back then. If I am not mistaken. And I also felt Manfred very well there.

H: In Carcassone? 

G: Yes, in Carcassone. Later in Perpignan again no more. But so in the way to work on this thing. Because Manfred has already been a driving force in working on it. You too. Doing the program. To bring things forward and to really think about it. The best things were always things that were a lot of fun to prepare a performance. Or this one, too, we didn't put on make-up like that back then, we only dressed ourselves. With the make-up it actually only really went off later. Except for Bine and Jutta, they put on make-up.

H: Then we went to Perpignan. 

G: Yes, Perpignan and Bourdigou. 

H: Not at first, but then. How was Bourdigou for you?

G: Bourdigou that was something. There we met these Englishmen with the tipis. They were always a bit scary to me. Too freaky. Too much on drugs and live into the day. 

With us it went nevertheless relatively... we had still another thing in the head, which we had made in the bus, or which we had made together. And that was one thing they didn't have like that. And then it could happen that a part of the group said goodbye the next morning. What I could not imagine with our group so simply. So, that somebody says in the morning, no, now I don't want to do that anymore, now I do something else. I mean, the first separation we experienced was in Granada. And that weighed quite heavily somewhere. Although I have always thought for my part, something like this must be possible in the group. Because, as I said, I have never been able to plaster group pressure. If somebody has his own idea in mind and just thinks that he lives better somewhere else and lives better alone, then he should do the same. Although I thought it was a pity that Manfred and Katharina just took off. I found that already somewhere bad. Because there was something missing. It suddenly became empty in the bus. Although from Granada Biggi went with us. That's very funny, I never remember Biggi like that... in the first year not so much in my memory.

H: She was only half there. 

G: She was only half there, yes. 

H: Bourdigou, do you think something has changed there?

G: Yes, we tried to wash the dishes with sand. And then we went back to our detergent anyway. No, nothing has changed in Bourdigou, I think. But what I have noticed is that the traveling people are a community. That they know each other. But it wasn't the first time I had seen that in Bourdigou, but afterwards, we also got to know people through it. With the English. We didn't meet any French people there. The first time in Bourdigou. There were really only the English. It was also almost winter. And it was already uncomfortable to live there. Because it was incredibly windy. Marion came there, I think.

H: Yes, Mario was there too, with Marion. 

G: Mario with Marion. Ah yes. I don't remember that anymore. 

H: Mario had his abscess on his ear. 

G: Yes, with his thick furuncle. He came with the surfboard. 

H: Yes, yes, and then he broke the mast right the first time he tried it. 

G: What then meant a job for me, that I tried to mend the mast for him again.

H: I always remember Bourdigou as a very busy stay. As a stay where we practiced quite a lot. Partially all together. Ali and Seppel were constantly juggling. They also learned how to pass with clubs.

G: Yes, and I learned how to juggle. So I started to learn there. 

H: We also played in the restaurant in Perpignan. 

G: Yes, exactly, in La Mondie, the almond tree. That's a word that I've always remembered. My first French word. 

H: We didn't have it that way with language.

G: No, French wasn't a language for me. That was one thing I would never learn, I thought to myself at the time. And that's exactly how I behaved. I never tried to learn anything in any way, because I thought it was too difficult for me anyway.

H: Then who did this for you? 

G: That was our general translator Manfred anyway. Who actually got everything important or something. Otherwise we always tried to speak English. I wasn't really that keen to get to know a lot of people anyway. Not like Bine or Seppel, who always met someone, flew out and did something.

H: Have you seen yourself more at home? 

G: Yes, quite clearly. Because then I also noticed that when you sit at home you also have peace and quiet in the bus. I already noticed that Bine and Seppel brought us the most contacts at that time. And there I saw a tipi for the first time. Which was very important. Then came the idea to have a tepee sometime. Because I saw how it was set up and that fascinated me a lot. That was a hell of a story, the tipi.

H: And we smoked like world champions. 

G: Not me! I didn't smoke at that time. I mostly rejected that. Only very rarely, when there was very little. 

H: In Bourdigou we got a whole plastic bag full of marijuana from the English. 

G: Right, yes. But I never smoked very much. I wasn't so much for that.

H: Did you have any difficulties with the others? 

G: No, no, I didn't have any trouble with that, I was just holding back on the stuff. It didn't interest me as much because it didn't show the same effect as others. At that time. For me, that also remained in bad memory after the second year, when our neighbour put a whole bundle of grass on the table, as big as a bundle of brushwood you carry on your back. Many problems were simply no longer discussed. They didn't come on the table like that anymore.

H: Have conversations been held? How were problems tackled? Were there taboos? So were there any things that were not talked about? 

G: I don't know. I didn't think about it that much. 

H: Was everything always clear for you? Or were there any subliminalities that you wanted to have clarified and that didn't work?

G: Nope. Can't remember anything like that. That time was also incredibly long ago for me. Probably longer for me than for you, because I still have a second year of bus in my head. That's why I can't remember anything in particular, except for the story that Manfred told me earlier. Where Manfred asked me if I wanted him to leave. Where I said, no, I don't want that. I didn't want to take that responsibility on me either. That Manfred leaves because of me. He knew that too, the bastard. 

H: Did you resent him for that? 

G: That was a very spontaneous reaction I had. At that moment I had resented him very much. And then I thought to myself again afterwards, Manfred is also a guy who sometimes is like that. Then I was a bit more tolerant than today in such stories. I simply accepted that as well. But that's one thing that's already stayed in my head. It's not forgotten, or I didn't forget it back then.

H: Did you have the feeling that this was something important for the whole group, or was it more or less just a thing between you and Manfred? 

G: Nah, that wasn't a thing between me and Manfred, that was quite clear. That was a feeling I had about Manfred, but that was Manfred. That was no problem between me and Manfred. That's why it was complete nonsense that Manfred asked me if he should leave.

H: Okay, that wasn't a problem between you and Manfred. Did it just refer to your relationship, or did it also refer to the whole bus?  Manfred was still there because of Katharina. 

G: Yes, yes. I had only one reaction from the whole bus, that was that of Bine. From Bine I had a reaction. Bine told me I had reacted well. I never talked to Bine about it afterwards, but I suspect that Bine felt exactly the same as I felt. So I didn't see it as a reaction at all.
Of course it was a reaction, but not a conscious one of mine. I was actually amazed at myself for reacting like that. That really came out spontaneously. I'm not that kind of person who normally reacts that way. I had also never tried to condemn people before. Or to judge people in some way or other. For me there were only sympathies and certain antipathies, that was all. But there were relatively few antipathies. Even before the trip I used to hang out with people who were often not so popular.
Drug counselling centre, as George is called, that was a very pleasant person for me. That was a person who was interesting for me. And he was not very popular with most of the people I knew. For me it was someone very pleasant. I actually had a lot to do with George, too. Also at the Holzberghof. I have also always tried to understand the people in what they do. Today there are definitely things that I wouldn't try to understand anymore. They are just too stupid for me, I don't give up with them. I think to myself in the meantime. But back then I was still a bit different. It was certainly also due to the seventies. The general movement which existed in such a way. That was certainly also due to the time in which I lived.

H: And then we went to Spain, to the great Spain, far away. 

G: Yes, that was very scary to me. France with its tidy cities, with its small towns, the pedestrian zones and stories like that, I was still a little familiar with all that. And Spain, I didn't quite know what to think about it. Spain was already a bit scary for me at that time. And I didn't feel so comfortable at first either. When we went in there. I remember when we exchanged the first pesetas. The people. I didn't understand the French either, but I don't understand the Spanish at all, although I spoke as little Spanish as I did French. But that was one thing for me, I didn't know much about Spain. I had never been to Spain before either. That was with very suspect. 

There was still the movement Italy-Tunisia-Algeria-Morocco-Spain. That was still in Perpignan, where we wanted to go this way to Spain. That was always Seppel who shouted that. There was the other movement: Sell the bus - walk! That was always Manfred and Katharina's idea. That's what they did later. And for me, for example, that didn't come into the bag at all, Algeria and Morocco. Not at that time. That was too scary for me. Even Spain was suspect to me. I had to get used to it first. But that went relatively fast. That went relatively fast, that I felt very well there, much more comfortable than in France.

H: Where did that come from? 

G: Through Barcelona. Through this city, through this movement in this city, through the way we worked there. Go down into the port, into the pedestrian zone, up the Ramblas, then play. Then it was around Christmas time.

H: We had trouble with the police, didn't we? 

G: Yes. We were also a bit scared of the Policia National. We very quickly understood that the municipal cops, the ones from the city, that they can't do anything to us and then we somehow got along with them, relatively quickly, I think we just got over it. But when they called the national cops once, we had a lot of jitters. I think everyone does, too.

H: I can only remember one thing. We wanted to play on the Ramblas, had everything ready and the people were already standing around, masses and waiting and there came two policemen and stood in the middle of the crowd and started: "Aqui No!" And then there was such a huge whistle concert from the audience. And a huge discussion, we would be a democracy and so on. 

Can you still remember an appearance in Casteldefels? A performance that didn't work out. 

G: I can't remember it.

H: Then we went on to Taragona. What was in Taragona? 

G: Bicycle theft. The one from Katharina in a very fast way. Gogo took it down from the roof stand, goes into the bus to put on a sweater, comes out again and the bike was gone. There we understood how fast something like this can go. From then on we paid attention in the future.

H: Valencia? 

G: No, I can't remember. 

H: We were constantly sent away by the police. 

G: Alicante, I can remember that. That's when we played on the promenade. There we met this black guy with the Hamburg accent. 

H: That's where you looted a villa. 

G: Yes, that's right. There we got into such a concrete box at the sea. A very ugly part. And what did we get out of it? We took chairs with us, folding chairs, a table top, heaps of crockery. Yes, that's what we did there.

H: Baza? Does that mean anything to you? The night before Granada? 

G: We spent it in this film area. In this bleak landscape between Malaga and Granada. What happened there?

H: I don't know exactly. Those were such moods. First of all this sunset, that was already overwhelming. There was a plateau. In the wide surroundings one saw here and there very high mountains. Very near stood such a single mountain and the sun rolled down so slowly at it. And then it became cool at night. Starry sky. 

G: We stood there at a ruin with a lonely olive tree. 

H: There were still skulls of sheep lying around. All that already uncanny. Creepy. A camp fire, lying around together. Stories told. 

G: That was incredibly lonely. 

H: And then we came to Granada. And then we went into the next phase. 

G: Yes, awesome phase. That was also the first time we had such a goal. We reached a goal. We said we wanted to spend the winter in Granada. We had already said that before. And we also had the idea to rent something. So it was a completely different story to drive into Granada than to drive into Alicante. There we had arrived somewhere really at a goal. A first stage goal. 

In Granada I can remember that we first lived on this terrible stone ground, down there behind an industrial hall. And that we all became terribly ill. 

Actually, we didn't really know what to do. I was totally scared of the Gitanos. After they had gotten Manfred out of a bar once and dragged him along, showed him a knife and told him to get his money out. Or at least had threatened him with beatings. Where I then really had jitters all at once. I was sitting there talking to somebody at the table, suddenly I saw Manfred walking out with two strange guys, two Gitanos, and then he said to me in his helpless acting way: "Help me, I'm going to be kidnapped! I was there with Ali and said to him: "Something's wrong." And then we went out. I was scared to death. And then Ali started to hit. He had already hit. Ali was incredibly courageous there. He had much more courage than I had. To get Manfred out of there. Then I was insanely angry. The people then ran away. So nothing bad happened. But that didn't happen until later, that didn't happen at the beginning. That's why I always had a bit of a socket in this city. From the Gitanos who beat me up sometime, but I was always afraid of blows. I don't like punches. I couldn't fight either. 

H: We had very little money back then. 

G: We had very little money and we simply had to repress it. You can say so. 

H: Nevertheless, we got to know a bunch of people right from the start. 

G: Yes, we met: Benny and Brian, a decisive acquaintance. We met Lolli and Christian. Heiner and Dorle.

H: But not until later, when we were up at the Alhambra. 

G: That was very impressive for me, by the way. When we looked for a place and said we could pull up there. When we found that. The story where I thought the bus didn't come through the front gate. Then we drove up against the one-way street. And Bine cursed in the back. "You are crazy! Ah, I can't stand that here. That's shit." Bine was then insanely angry. Because that was complete nonsense, because all the big coaches drove loosely through the gate. And for us it was always a mystery how they got up there. We thought they were somewhere in the back and because we didn't want to search, we just drove up there. 

H: And there was another bus coming towards us and we had to drive aside, that was close. That's when I drove. 

G: Well, in any case we had taken this insane risk on ourselves. And when we were at the top of the field, we were fine. Except for you, you weren't well. You have seceded yourself. If I'm not mistaken, you went up that mountain and you didn't go down that mountain again. I think that was there. And you retreated. But completely. That frightened me sometimes, something like that. If you were like that, then you scared me.
Then there was the story that Iwan (the dog) got the shard in his foot. Then we got to know this English family. They also had a tepee. Who lived with their three children in the bus. About which we had gossiped a bit. They were quite interesting somewhere. But they were also madly secluded and they were also suspicious of us. That's why they were also secluded. Only later did I realize that the mistrusts were against us. I found that already fascinating, three children, who were only on the trip. I think a child had seen nothing else but the bus. And they also were self schooling and drove around like that. It was very fascinating for me that a family can live like this. For me they were also quite normal somewhere. But still they were fascinated by us somewhere. We noticed that too.
Then we got to know Remedios (the healing one). I was relatively often house hunting with her. That was actually a lot of fun for me. To do that with Remedios. To explore the area. There I had also no language difficulties, no language inhibitions. Because she spoke just as much German as Spanish. I had a lot of fun with Remedios.

H: Then Angeles. 

G: I met her through Remedios because she lived in her house. I was in love with Angeles. But that was something exotic for me. I had never met anyone like her before. We could hardly communicate at all. We communicated in English, but Angeles English and my Spanish, that had approximately the same value. That was great for me. That period there. Also with Manolo. And the house. Although we were already quite impatient. With searching. But I think that was mainly the rest. Because I was searching, I was less impatient. The people who were in waiting position, for them it was probably much more difficult. Because there was an insane energy and it was cold outside. We couldn't do much outside. We still didn't have much money. That's why it was difficult. 

H: Did you have problems with Jutta? Because of Angeles? 

G: I don't remember any more. In any case, I experienced a very difficult evening in the house. Once, when we were already in the house. In the house in Dudar. There was Jutta. Then Biggi arrived. Then Angeles came up to visit us. So mainly to visit me, too. And there was Cecile, who was still called Renate at that time. That simply only turned in my head. There I did not understand anything at all any more. Because I didn't want to disappoint anybody and all these stories. That's why I didn't know anything at all anymore. 

H: Haven't you sorted that out either? 

G: I didn't settle that either, no. Not fixed at all. I thought you had to get through that. I didn't settle that at all.

H: Once again back to my reclusiveness, which frightens you. What was it that scared you? Or why did that scare you? 

G: Because I knew something was going on with you. What really moves you. And when somebody shuts himself off like that from the whole group, it puts a lot of pressure on the whole group. Instead of saying what's going on. So that you can sort it out. If I know what it's about, then I have something in my hand that I can handle. And silence is hard to deal with. 

H: How did you react to that? 

G: I was angry at that moment. Quite simply. I tried to understand it again because I always try to understand everything. But then I was really mad at you. That was really very boring. And then I knew that you also had a story with Remedios. And since I was pretty much with Remedios, I knew how she was moved by it. I don't know if that story was at that time or after you pulled out or when you thawed a bit.

H: Yes, yes, that was at the time. 

G: And Remedios, she was a bit disturbed and wanted to stop. As far as I noticed that. 

H: I don't remember that anymore. But as a reaction you were angry. 

G: Yes. 

H: Then how did that work out again? 

G: I don't remember any more. Well, you got off your mountain.

H: Yes, and then we got the house. What was the house like for you? 

G: First of all I thought it was really great. Through Remedios and the searching, I got to know some really great things.  When we were up in the Sierra Nevada in all these small villages. It was just great to come someplace together with Remedios. She was really good with people. To talk to people. She spoke the language. She knew the customs of the country. She knew a lot of things. During that time I had the feeling that I was getting to know an incredible number of people. I also get to know the mentality. Once they offered us a house, right at the top of the dam. A dilapidated barrack. That was really at the end of the world. It was fascinating. When we found this house, we first visited the owners and the people asked us to the table. And they put the tablecloth over it. The Pasiero, who then warmed our feet. We drank wine with the people and talked about it. Remedios then translated me. And then I also got a bit of Spanish. That was already great. That was a lot of fun for me.
And when we found the house in Dudar, I don't know how we found it anymore. When we first saw it, we met the administrator, José. And then we took a look at the house. And Bine pissed somewhere, she was there with us, and she said, "So, I pissed there and that will work out." And then we got the address in the city. And I don't know with whom, I'm definitely was with them, Remedios was, Katharina and Manfred also were part. Because Katharina already spoke Spanish quite well. And then we met this guy who rented the house to us. That was one of those noble apartments in Granada.
And when we got up there, I was in my element: organizing the house, furnishing the house. How we can do that. Decoration and stories like that. What I wasn't so aware of back then was that this was part of what I actually had to do. Or what is more in my direction. Much more than making music.
Then it was just amazing to prepare this party. The party was an insane story, what we had organized there. Receiving the guests downstairs, with the glasses and the people just asking them up and something like that. That was the only time in all the time that we really managed to be hospitable. To make a party hospitable for people. We never made a party for people, we were always invited to parties, or relatively often, but we never really made a party for people. Or never again as one like that in any case. That was a story that was simply extraordinary. And that was actually very good for us to do something like that. And this evening, this festive evening, where we presented this stove as a Christmas present. It was also Christmas yes, yes of course.
And then those times where we were sitting up there on that balcony, sitting on the terrace with our beautiful swimming pool. That was already great. The fireplace. The roots of olive trees that burned there, that we had dug up before. And these things, I liked that very much.

H: At first we didn't do anything else than living up there more or less. There was nothing with our street performing. 

G: Yes. 

H: Although we had this license. 

G: I don't even remember what we lived on anymore. 

H: From Manfred's money. Manfred had had over two thousand marks sent to him. And first we paid for the whole house. And then came August. After Biggi came. So what was it like with Biggi all at once, riding along or not? 

G: We quickly became friends again.

H: Yes? 

G: Yes, very quickly. It was okay for me that Biggi was going with me. Although I always had the feeling that she was having a lot of trouble being in the group. But I also had that in the second year. Only when she really started doing something did that feeling stop. That was only a year later when we got this house in Villobi. When she started to take singing lessons, when she suddenly went completely off with jazz. Biggi was there because of me, like Manfred was there because of Katharina.

H: Not because of the whole group. 

G: I don't think so. I don't think so today. 

H: Was that a pressure for you? 

G: That wasn't pressure. I think it was very bad for Jutta that it hurt her very much. Because I talked to her about it. I think so. And then came August. And then he drove away again. But then it suddenly became clear to me that he was coming. And since we had run one of our goals with Granada, it was also quite good that we had a new one. And that was then also somewhere the fact that we meet with August somewhere in South France. In Perrotet.

H: Did that change anything in you that he came and that this new goal was there? 

G: Yes, I had a horror because it was something about running again. 

H: Yes, we did run a lot of terrain there. 

G: We did things with physical training and stories like that. I knew I had to do that. There was a group pressure behind it, which is also completely justified, with such a story, which must also be there. Alone I got lazy way too quickly.

H: That was clear to you then? 

G: That was clear to me. Say I, no, then I was excluded. But also the story that you have to have very certain requirements, that you have to have a certain condition, that you also have to perform very well. You have to get it somehow. When August drove away, he wrote us that he had written a play.

H: Now I know how that went. 

G: He kind of wrote it on the train. 

H: No, no. That was a story between August and Ali. Both of them made it up. During the time in Granada. 

G: And August never wrote that on the train? Why do I have that in my head? He wrote the story together. 

Then someone else came with me. With him. Wasn't there Susanne and ... or weren't they down there? No, they were not there. 

Oh yes, another story that was important for me personally. When Christine's sister, Susanne, wrote to Seppel that Christine had killed herself. I experienced that at that time. In the house in Dudar. That was once a big love of mine in Fulda. She had been quite important in my life for me. That was my second very big love. 

Where I was actually so surprised that it touched me so much. There, the moment I was so far away. Far away from Fulda, far away from that story. Where I noticed that I was still busy with it for days on end. That Christine had killed herself, that she had depressions. What no one knew. Where I thought about it again and again. And I also thought about the fact that I didn't notice something like that. Although I was together with her for a relatively long time. And was with her twice on vacation. I thought about it relatively often up there. 

H: Did you wonder why you didn't notice anything? 

G: No, I was later...yes, I was wondering why I didn't notice anything. I think Christine hid it really well, because the whole family didn't know anything about it. They only learned that through Christine's diaries. That she had suffered for years from regular depressions. Christine had it packed and hidden in such a way that nobody noticed. Only I thought that I should have noticed it sooner than the family. So, in my pride I think so. I thought about it quite often. There in the time in Dudar. I associate Christine's death with the house in Dudar. That's why I say that now. I thought about it quite long and often. Have also tried to find some experiences why. Or to find experiences to which I could attach that Christine had depressions at all.

H: And then Manfred and Katharina left. 

G: So they left when we drove away from Granada. 

H: We took both of them with us as far as Almeria. 

G: That was still such a common history. The departure in Granada. And there went a part... there was really a part of the group gone.

H: How had it developed in Granada that they had decided to leave? 

G: Well, we weren't on the bus anymore. We were in the house. That means there were also more opportunities for retreat. I think it was because of that. I think it is much harder to get out of the bus than out of the house. 

H: That we lived in a house, ok, but that was always only meant as winter quarters. The bus was always there and in the end it only watched out that it was driven again. And that was the intention that this should happen again in spring. 

G: Yes anyway. I mean, why this just happened after Granada. That's what I think, that's just what it was all about. 

H: I suppose it had something to do with Manfred's fixation on Katharina. And Katharina had met Asuvre in Granada and Manfred was jealous. And he could always show it in a very theatrical way. You said yourself, this pressure that he understood to exert on other people. Don't you think that had something to do with it? 

G: No, I think that Katharina withstood this pressure differently, was not so sensitive, or less. How I am slowly learning to withstand such psychological pressure. Because I simply no longer accept it as pressure. Although I still feel it as pressure. 

H: Psychic pressure? You've already mentioned that in relation to me, when I had withdrawn in a radical way, it scared you and made you angry. Then there was the story with Manfred's way. Did that happen more often in the group? 

G: There has been that before with people, when some people brought along others, or that the group brought along other people. There came the pressure, I think, also from Katharina and Manfred. That they said, not so many people, one does not have any peace anymore. No more time for yourself. Where you also the first time, I know that still relatively exactly, we drove once down into the city at that one... what was the name of the guy who hitchhiked after us?

H: Oh yes, I don't know his name anymore, but I know who you mean. The little one. 

G: The little one, yes. ... when we drove into town and fetched our mail, he was standing at the post office because we lived with Poste Ristante. And that's when you said that it was slowly becoming psychological pressure. Manfred and Katharina are exerting pressure on the group. So with him, fewer people. I can only remember such a phrase from you in the dark. So not psychic pressure, but... yes, psychic pressure. Where the word went pretty much through my head. Where I then also pondered relatively often what that really means at all. Whether this is really psychological pressure that they exert on the group can be formulated in this way. Since I think there has to be something for everyone in the group. And things like that have to be possible for people to get there. 

H: And then Manfred and Katharina were no longer there. 

G: I didn't understand your reaction when they left. Because I reacted differently. You were pretty angry, you didn't even shake her hand anymore. What hurt Katharina insanely, I think. At least she told me so. And what I did not understand either. Because I felt the same way. Also as a kind of pressure maybe. I didn't understand why you can be so angry about someone else wanting something different than you. I didn't understand that. I didn't get it all worked out that way. 

I can still remember very well when they left... I wasn't sad, I think. I wasn't even sad. And you said something else, which maybe is also very important, which also stayed in my head, "Now we have to start all over again! So with our show and such things. Because for you, I think, it was also much more important, because a whole part of the show went away with it. That a part of our quality has gone away as a group. It hadn't been as important to me as it was to you for a long time. That also became clear to me at that time. I thought, well, then we'll do something new again. Although I noticed with the first play on the road, there is simply a hole. That also became clear to me then. Where the quality had really diminished. Then Biggi was added as reinforcement. Which wasn't so bad for the show. Then also a little movement came into the whole music stuff. I can't really remember much when we drove towards Barcelona. 

H: We drove quite straight through there, too. There was no longer a long stay. There was still this beautiful stay in Denia. After August had left us, respectively on one of the last days, he had pinched my finger with the bus door. And then we ended up in Denia with such freaks. And then I treated it with lemon juice and healing clay. So for two or three days, it was almost good again. And that was two, three days, it was hot in the bus. Can you still remember it? 

G: At night. Well, of course. Seppel had some woman towed away there. If I'm not mistaken. I was there with Biggi. Downstairs in the evening. Seppel slept with the woman. That triggered some kind of chain reaction in the bus. I then slept with Biggi at the time. I can still remember that. Ali was also there.

H: Then we went back to Barcelona and there we got almost all sick for the second time. There were a lot of stomach aches and nausea and all kinds of things. We bought hop tea and drank it. Then we drove on, too. And then Anna went with us for the first time. She had had a little hanky-panky with Ali. And Gabi as a true Spaniard... 

G: ... came after with his guitar, of course.

H: In Bourdigou he came along. And then there was a heavenly romance between Gabi and Bine. And then in Bourdigou, I felt as if we had had an argument in Bourdigou. Because of you Biggi and Jutta.

G: That was for me in Perrotet. This argument. 

H: Not in Bourdigou? 

G: Well, I don't know. So the whole group had an argument with this problem?

H: I think we talked about it together once. And I somehow remember it as if the group had given you the task of finally settling this. 

G: Yes, that can be. Yes, that's true. But I don't know that exactly anymore. These are things that I also like to forget. I know, Biggi, Jutta and I, in Perrotet we sat down together in the kitchen. I took a long walk with Jutta. Biggi had a talk with Jutta. I talked to Biggi. Then we sat down together. And then we talked. I know that Jutta had a drinking phase afterwards.

H: Jutta told me about an act of desperation in her drunken head. Of which I knew nothing. And I suspect that this just happened in the days when I was in Berlin with Ali. And that's where the whole group is said to have banned Jutta from drinking alcohol. 

G: Yes. I was for the fact that no more alcohol at all in the group. Not all of them. On which the resistance developed fast and nobody was for it that they should limit themselves because of that. Jutta had drunk an awful lot.

H: Yes, she was totally freaked out one night. 

G: And I had a guilty conscience. 

H: Did you think you did something wrong? 

G: Yes, of course! I thought I took advantage of Jutta. I still think today. Maybe not exploited, but always having to live this dependency with a woman. Therefore I had a bad conscience as well. I could have imagined that I was simply destroying too much. That's why I had an insanely bad conscience. 

H: Yes, and then came August. 

G: Then came Mario, too. 

H: He had been there before. 

G: Yes, he was already there in Bourdigou. The appendage, the minibus.

H: Anyway August came. With a thousand ideas and a thousand things. How was that for you? When he was actually there. 

G: That was totally good. That was what was missing at that moment. We had also arrived at some Death Point for ourselves. Maybe also because we had relied on August to come. Maybe everything would have been different otherwise. That would have come differently. And from there... also the view, now it's time to start working. With work on a play. And from there the house... 

H: Had you had the feeling that you were waiting for him to come? Just to do something new now. To work on the play. 

G: I didn't know what would change, but I thought something would change in the group when it came. And I also thought that we would become more professional. That was clear to me then, I was aware of that then. That we might start to work differently now. Our working method, it has always remained the same somewhere. During the whole time we traveled. And it only changed when... when August arrived in Bordeaux it changed, for the first time. Or that's when we really started to work like that. Not everyone worked individually for themselves, but we also worked together on stories. Or worked together more than before. And then... for me that was already clear somewhere, when August comes now, then... 

H: But you fixed that more on August? 

G: No, also to the expectations that were placed in the group. 

H: You mean, the whole group is fixated on August? 

G: Somewhere indeed, yes. 

H: But to expect that from yourself was not possible? Well, that you expected the same from yourself. That only went over August? 

G: Since it was clear that he was coming.

H: You only had to rely on August. 

G: First of all yes. That's how I saw it. We have already landed in Perrotet at an address that came from August. Which also played a major role. We lived in a house that belonged to people August knew from somewhere. Who we didn't even know. That was also a bit of a strange feeling in the house. I didn't feel very at home there either. Because I didn't know to whom the house belonged. 

H: There were a lot of things that had nothing to do with us. 

G: For me it was very important that we moved into the canyon. Because there we were with us. There we were at home. From there it started to go incredibly well. The moment we were in the canyon, it really started. With some story. We also saw that it was really the most ideal conditions we could have. To live like that. It's just a hell of a chance to do something like that. Such things don't often exist anymore, such spots. So in Europe you certainly don't find them often anymore. In which you can live as we have lived there. Where you can live spaciously, where you can withdraw, where you can rest. Where you can do everything. That was really just a really great place on earth. Where we landed there. Where we also understood very well how to deal with it. I think we handled it very well. 

H: With the canyon itself yes. I just think that dealing with ourselves has become a bit different. 

G: Why?

H: Because a decisive situation has arisen. 

G: Yes, the things that never happened to me... suddenly we realized that we had two buses. That was an insanely crucial situation. That there was the bus and Mario's position, which wasn't quite clear. But I didn't have much to say about that, because I always had an understanding with Mario. Similar to Katharina. There's a base there, it's just irrefutable, unshakable. I was able to overlook things like that. That never bothered me either. That never bothered me either, when Seppel, Mario and Ali go out for a drink in the evening. Something like that didn't bother me. 

H: The others were bothered? 

G: Sometimes I had the feeling with Gogo. But I don't have a certain story in my head, to which I can put it. 

H: Wasn't there a talk about it? 

G: Yes, there was also talk about it. Which was relatively incomprehensibly recorded by Mario.

H: That you talk about it? 

G: Yes. And I was really impressed by that, but probably only later that we had a lot more experience with it, in group life, than Mario. Because Mario is someone who always needs people around him. He's always living somewhere in a group, but he's an amazing individualist. With his stories. I don't know how openly we talked about it. I know, once or twice it really came to speech the problem. That was unpleasant for me these discussions. I didn't attach any importance to the things. 

H: Didn't you say that then? 

G: No. 

H: And why not? 

G: I don't know. It didn't bother me like that and I listened. But I didn't say anything about it either, nothing at all, I think. 

H: Hm, but it's funny. 

G: There is nothing funny.

H: I mean, funny because you said that you were uncomfortable talking about it. Well, that there was such a discussion about it that you were uncomfortable with it. 

G: So I didn't get involved. 

H: Because it made you uncomfortable? 

G: Yes. Especially since I was miles away from Seppel and Ali on the story.

H: What did the group look like to you in detail? The state of affairs? 

G: I don't know what that looked like to me. It slowly became clear that Seppel and Ali were slowly doing other things. At that moment they weren't really there for me anymore. Although I then... or I don't know if that was later, in any case it became clear in the canyon. Which certainly had a lot to do with the small bus. I thought. That the decision was made at least then. That it was also such a trigger. So, that they simply had no desire anymore to take part in this group life with the certain compulsion they felt. 

The music rehearsals were pretty hard for me. That was incredibly hard for me in the canyon. The whole time in the canyon was hard. But with the result that we achieved, I knew exactly that it could only have been that way under the conditions. Because our play, what we brought out afterwards, that was beautiful, that was wild, that was brutal. There was a character like Gogo's Krampus, just brutal. And really the bad guys at all. The story with the organ grinder. That was just brilliant. That was partly so simple. Such an idea, you know. That was just wild. Where I noticed, the acting, it doesn't work for me either. Although the body training has done me very good in the time. Where I had sometimes every morning total pleasure. Now it starts again. We have lived so healthy. Because we didn't have much money either.

H: But this little money has also led to other difficulties at the same time. 

G: Yes, we have experienced food envy. 

H: What kind of key story was that? 

G: The key story is the egg of Jutta. We always had an egg on Sundays. Only on Sundays there was a breakfast egg. And every Sunday an egg was cooked for Jutta too. Although it was quite clear that Jutta doesn't eat eggs. And every Sunday someone had the privilege to eat this egg of Jutta. So that was a key experience. That is actually madness. You can boil one egg less. You can just do that. But every Sunday the egg was cooked for Jutta. Because then everyone gets the same. The only one who was fooled was Jutta. Do you understand? This story, that's a key story.

H: And what happened in the canyon? 

G: Yes, there really wasn't much food. There was enough food that everybody got full. More or less. No, everyone got sated. Whether the pleasure in eating was satisfied, that's another story. But everyone became enough. Nobody is emaciated in the canyon. You can't say that. Because it just wasn't true. We just had rice and we had very nutritious stuff we had for dinner. Nobody was hungry. But the desire to eat. Food is also a drug. I mean, a third or two thirds of the food you devour, you don't need that at all. You don't need to consume that at all. That was the desire to eat, it just fell away. Then tobacco was also restricted. Smoking was actually already allowed, but there were discussions about it. And if there was chocolate, Biggi was able to get herself a special egg because she didn't eat chocolate. Such stories are simply madness.

H: Wasn't there any trouble about that? 

G: No. There was no trouble. I think that was bad for everyone and certainly a reason why Ali and Seppel decided to make such a decision. Because they always told me afterwards what it would look like in their bus. There would be fried meat every day. They have always told such stories. Because they had calculated that they could make so much money that they would eat much better. Which probably didn't work out for them later. In principle, they lived off the money they got from home or somewhere else.

H: There was also a big argument in the canyon. 

G: What kind of fight? 

H: Because of me. Or with me. And of course I also wanted to know something about that. 

G: I don't know. 

H: Oh! For two days, it was almost continuous, and probably the most famous, Ting, we ever did on the whole bus ride in the tipi. 

G: Yes, go on, it's not quite there yet.

H: What it was about in concrete terms, I don't remember anymore. Anyway, it was about me. And it was about that... so I was alone and I was sitting across from Biggi, you and August, Bine, Ali, Seppel and Jutta were sitting to my side and Gogo was somewhere in between and Mario was always gone anyway. Was somewhere else. The confrontation situation looked like this. There was a fight between me and August. 

G: Yes.

H: It was about authority relations within the group. And I remember that I recognized August as a director and as an authority, which concerned the whole acting and the whole work on the play. Only that I felt that his authority was increasing more and more in everyday life and that in my opinion he felt too important in everyday life. 

G: Yes.

H: What I couldn't accept. But at the same time there was a second story between August and me that is more psychological. I really wanted August as a friend. And August didn't want that. That probably came too close, or the devil knows what it was. And after that I was angry at August. And I constantly gave him some tips. What I ask myself now is, what did that concern you and Biggi? 

G: I don't know.

H: Why was there such a strong confrontation? Anyway, after what Ali told me, it was very clear to Ali at that moment that he was going away. From that moment it was clear for him personally, for Seppel it was already clear from Granada. Seppel must have always been working on him, but Ali always waved. But at that moment Ali knew that he was leaving the group. The trigger, not the reason, but the trigger was that there was suddenly a discussion about whether or not I should stay or not. 

G: I don't know anymore. Can you imagine that, I really don't know anymore. Can you remember the conversation so well? 

H: The discussion itself no longer. I only have certain pictures. And only projections of my feelings. Nothing else either. I have that myself, God knows how far, repressed. This is, for example, a point in the myth that I see throughout the story. In this relation, the myth is only determined by the personal projection of my feelings. But why was there a union between Biggi, you and August? In confrontation to me. Which in the end was decisive, because this confrontation, which actually remained constant from this point until the end. 

G: I can't remember that at all. Not at all! 

H: After this conversation I made the suggestion, in order to get back to normal, we have to get out of here. We have to get out, we have to get back on the road. Regularly. At that moment everyone agreed and so we left for Grenoble. With the play we were nearly finished. The play was never in doubt because of that. Because of this whole argument. 

G: Yes.

H: What finally collapsed for me in the Canyon, that was the group for me. From one to the other this feeling of togetherness was suddenly gone for me. It had burst like an air bubble. The group had burst for me. What was most important to me on this whole trip. What was actually the point of the whole thing for me. 

G: I know that you said to me back then that "the group died for me the moment Seppel went out". Because for you there is no more perspective in terms of music.

H: Yes, I may have said that concretely then. But the projection of my feelings was even more important. That it went beyond that. 

G: Did you withdraw at that time?

H: Not that I know of. So not as dramatic as it was in Granada. I know, there is a key talk between August and me. There you had to walk a little bit along a grade before you completely arrived at the bottom of the bus. And then I had a talk with him about it, about friendship and like that. And there he rejected me so to speak. That was a shock for me, it then turned over against August. I became much more receptive to all these authority stories. Yes, and then there were all those bits and all that. And it was a pretty loaded situation anyway because of the little money we had. 

G: Yes.

H: And also because it was never possible to earn a little more in one fell swoop, because we always came somewhere too late. 

G: Yes, not only that. There was also simply no market. There was really no market. Whereby I liked these things that we played very much. I had the feeling that we were building a stand, selling our product and then dismantling it again. So this feeling. When we went to a market in the morning. When we left at six o'clock.

H: That never happened. 

G: But that happened. It even happened very often that we left very early when we entered the market. The problem is that we didn't have a marketplace. That was the problem for us. That means we were always too late to play because we just had problems finding the place. We had also never bothered to get any kind of permission to reserve the pitch. 

H: Because it wasn't so important anymore. So it was more important to work on the piece. 

G: Exactly.

H: That was more of a necessity. It was then also so that we had shopped on the weekend for the whole week. That we arrived with such a bundle of baguettes, which became softer from day to day. 

G: Where the dogs broke into the tent one night.

H: It was always a happy moment when this farmer and his wife came down with a bottle of wine and some goat cheese. Anyway, for me that was the decisive point at all and I also think that it was decided in advance, which became a decision later in Fulda. 

G: One thing is for sure, the group in that way has made a turn. That's right. That's right. In time. That's right, that the group wasn't so central anymore. That was no longer the focus of our existence. That was really the thing we did. That was the centre of our existence. That is the thing that has shifted and that clearly shifted with August and that August brought in. The professional point of view. I'm quite sure that's what happened in the Canyon. 

When you see how our make-up on the street changed within four five six weeks, how our picture on the street changed, with an incredible speed. That was really very amazing. If the photos, I unfortunately have no more here, but if you saw the photos before and after, that was really amazing. From then on it was the other way around in the group. That's why you went to Fulda, after the group had continued to exist in another form, you looked for a musician from the point of view of the show rather than for someone to live with. That that was Christoph, with whom you can also live together, that was of course great. But first and foremost it was about looking for the profession, or what he does, what he brings in. That's one thing that clearly changed with August. Which is not necessarily a bad development. It's a follow-up development. 

H: The consequence of the development is correct, it is only the way in which this changed, or how it was carried out. 

G: That came suddenly. 

H: I think it came very dominant. It wasn't so much the professionalism. The professionalism wasn't so repugnant to me at that time either. 

G: Yes, yes.

H: That was not what it was about. It was simply the dominance that came suddenly with August. 

G: Quite clearly, yes. 

H: That everything then concentrated on August and that something happened as a result, which was not right at all. 

G: Quite clearly.

H: Of course these are things that have partly taken place inside of me. Which are essential for me now. Those are important for me now. Which are also crucial. 

G: I really have the canyon that way, from my way I remember it as something insane, as the most positive experience of the whole trip. For me. For me, the first year on the bus, the Canyon was the most important time.

H: For me it was the time of contradictions. That was absolutely awesome on the one hand, as I said, the whole work on the play, that was outrageous. 

G: That was crazy, yes.

H: I was so into the whole story, too. I felt like God knows how and who. Opposite others I always floated a bit above the ground. Physically you were fit. Absolutely fit. That's where effort was made. 

G: That was madness simply. That's also why we were so convincing in this play. We came to Berlin. The story in the Kukuck. I had invited my cousin. He came with his girlfriend. He said how healthy you all look. Because all around only these pale faces of this squatter scene. Mostly this hard punk head of the people. They looked relatively pale, damaged in the big city, broken. And we the freshness itself. Really. Really. Fresh from the country. Three months of training.

H: On the outside, we are completely convinced of what we have done. 

G: Completely convinced. On the way to play at our own festival in Fulda. 

H: That seemed ten times bigger for the people outside than it seemed for us. 

G: Absolutely, yes. Geneva was good for us. In front of the people. 

H: For ourselves that was a very important thing. 

G: That was an incredibly important story for ourselves, for our consciousness, for our expression.

H: They were colleagues, they were artists, they had a hunch. 

G: They gave a real critique. They didn't say that was good, that was bad. They already said it was good, they already said it was very good, but they criticized it. They have said why. They went through every single role with us. I had the feeling that I was not an actor. Because I failed the criticism. I knew that I was there in the group as a whole for the play. That I am also carried by the group as a whole. I also knew that without me the play was worth much less. Those were things that I was also aware of. But I also knew that I was not an actor. I knew that, I learned that in Geneva. Like the guy said, I had a nice costume. Thank you, I know about that. I don't remember who that was, that American.

H: I can't remember the people, except the Monteurs d'image. 

G: But the play itself, the conditions under which it happened, I just loved it. I was convinced of that. For me it was also a summary of what we had experienced that year. 

H: For me it was such a story, it separated all of a sudden. That separated from the group itself. It was the group, but it was a kind of separation. This play and all the work with it and the meaning of the play and so on, it had nothing to do with the condition of the group at that time.

G: For me the piece was a summary of the first year. We drove away when I saw the final result, with relatively nothing in hand, with really relatively little. We have gathered a lot of experience, which is all reflected somewhere in the piece. We took our street theatre as a basis to make the play. We linked the scenes. Have thoroughly reworked the scenes. Everyone has been given a role. A very important story. We didn't have a role on the street. We had a thousand different roles. Depending on the play. 

A very important story, each person had had a very specific role. And so for me that was also in the play the arc of tension, all the stories, it could have been like the year we had experienced. There were low and high points in the play, it was incredibly brutal, sometimes we really put brutal scenes on our feet. At the same time it was again incredibly funny. We had played all directions, the Varietéshow, a mad scene simply the Varietéshow. Then the medieval mystical march we made, the Good Friday Requiem, what we sang with open mouths. An incredibly beautiful scene. The pyre and how she is shot down from the pyre. The little dear God. Simply crazy. Totally good. Where people didn't know anymore how many we were on stage. How many are you actually? Couldn't understand how many times we had changed and how much moving and such stories. This surprise effect with the corpse, oh, that's just awesome. Really conjured up in the magic show. That was just awesome the piece. 

H: But I think that we in the time from the Canyon over Grenoble, over Geneva, to Berlin, that the life in the group was different. 

G: Yes.

H: Nothing more to do with the play. That things had clearly changed, that relationships had changed among each other. Relationships were no longer the same.

G: Quite clear. It was always clear that Seppel and Ali would stop, leave. It was clear that Mario would stop. It was clear that you would stop. Wasn't it clear yet? No, that was decided in Fulda, that's true. It was decided in Tiergarten. Sure, it wasn't the same anymore. Besides, it's dangerous for such a group to return to their homeland anyway. You quickly relapse. 

H: Bernward once said that we wouldn't have been on the road for three months if we had only stayed in Germany. 

G: Yes. He's quite right about that, too. I completely agree with that. For sure, there are reasons why you simply want to leave. Since at that moment you don't have that easy the possibility, then you think about it again. And everyone had had such moments. For two it was possible, for Katharina and Manfred. In a couple it is more possible than alone. Alone this is incredibly difficult.

H: Yes and then I had another argument with August in Berlin. 

G: In the Kukuck. Why? 

H: I don't remember any more. Then I had a longer talk with Biggi. A kind of reflection of the story happening in the canyon. Yes and then, of course, it was the frenzy of success. And we had success. 

G: Yes, you can say that.

H: Only August didn't see it that way. 

G: That's another story, I think. These are stories that are much older. Those that went off there.

H: For him, the criticism from the people he had left in Berlin at the time was decisive. They were all there. And that's where he got something on his nose from them. 

G: Yes, especially since his role was weak. August played weakly. You noticed that August was the only one who didn't have a director. Because he was the director himself. That's why his role was weak. And there are things that disturbed me during the play of August. But I could never have formulated them. Just like some scenes on the street had disturbed me. The fly piece we did, where I had the feeling... the way we worked it out, it was just fantastic. That was a very important experience in Granada, which I would like to add.

H: Yes, that was this strange evening, whereupon this piece was developed. 

G: Yes, one day later. That was simply madness. So this way of working on this piece. Which, funnily enough, was a key piece in the play. 

H: This was actually the first time that we approached such a piece from the idea point of view. And that most thoroughly. Where the cooperation between acting and music has been so intense. 

G: What bothered me, was how afterwards this story with the hairdresser around it came in the street. When August played the hairdresser. The whole thing happened in the hairdressing salon. 

H: I don't remember that anymore. 

G: You don't remember that anymore? When we played the piece on the street with August. Oh, then it was in the second year. Yes, and that's why August also got a kick in the nose from the critics. That his role wasn't edited, which he also knew. Which was also quite clear.

H: Then he tried to change something before we played in Fulda. That's why I got in a fight with him again. Because he wanted to change things where I thought they should stay. 

G: Yes. What did we actually change? We changed something.

H: Yes, the sharpness of Krampus should be taken away. It shouldn't look so brutal anymore. These blows and the fire on the body, all that. That had been an important point of criticism in Berlin. I don't know who from anymore, it came up and August wanted to change that. And that's exactly what I didn't want. 

G: No, of course.

H: Which of course had a background. For me personally, psychologically on the one hand and on the other hand from the theatrical point of view, of course. That would have become a bit shallower as a result. I don't know if we really changed it then. 

G: Nah, we didn't change anything about it. We changed something, but I don't know what anymore.

H: And that had its effect. My parents said that it was blasphemy, what we were doing there. And that was then again a point of contention with August. And somehow I think, was it then so far, that I with August... that it simply did not work. Today I think that was due to an authority problem. And that was never really solved properly. 

G: Yes, of course. Nor is it.

H: The wrestling between August and me in the canyon may be symbolic of that. 

G: You had a wrestling match? 

H: Completely naked and rubbed with olive oil. In front of everyone. 

G: I can still remember an experience I had with Jutta. In the canyon. You weren't there somewhere, I don't know where all of you were. Jutta and I, we rubbed ourselves with mud. With the mud that was in the river down there. And so we strolled through the woods. A very crazy story. I felt as if I had lived in the forest. A very crazy thing. That was totally great.

H: There was also another nice situation. Almost the whole day we walked naked through the area. When suddenly the military appeared. First the officers, a reconnaissance troop and then the whole crew afterwards. We sat there partly completely frightened up at the edge of the forest and looked at it. ... ... Well, when we were in Fulda... that was the thing. 

G: It was great that we lived at the festival.

H: We were the attraction, we were the festival. 

G: Yes. 

H: And then when Mario didn't want to play. The drama. 

G: You, he was under pressure, I can tell you that. But from all over the world. There it had hacked out with him. 

H: Yes, and then Tiergarten. And that was so, I anticipated the decision.

G: How decision? 

H: Whether I leave or not. 

G: Why? 

H: Yes, because that's what I said instead of August, you and Biggi. That I'm not traveling with you. 

G: I didn't say that back then. Did I say that then? 

H: Yes, that was definitely what it was all about back then.

G: I can't remember that. 

H: The last Ting was announced. In Tiergarten. People arrived little by little. And August came, and then I went for a walk with August. And I talked to him. And there I made a stupid mistake. But that was typical for me. I thought, because August said to me, "Watch out, if you stay, I'll go and if you go, I'll stay". 

G: Yes, yes, I remember that. I heard that.

H: I felt completely guilty and thought before August leaves, he is more important than me, I prefer to leave. And then I was more or less beaten. Then there was no Ting either. How did you see the whole thing?

G: I don't remember any more. I almost don't recall the whole argument. Now that you tell me that there were so many things about it, I try to remember them. And so chunks come up. But I still haven't quite got it in my head yet. That actually surprises me. The mythologization of me, that only now struck me, how it went from place to place. How certain scenes are no longer in my head at all. I have forgotten almost all the discussions and difficulties.

H: What can you say in conclusion? What did the whole year, the whole story mean for you? 

G: For me, the second year is still incredibly decisive. For me it was just a step, the first year. That was a phase with an incredibly great ending for me. This play. All those feelings I had in the canyon. Then also the lost feeling when we left again. That you had to get used to it again. New people. Brian, Christoph. And where we actually had success again relatively quickly in San Sebastian. Have played again in Bordeaux.

H: What does all this bus story, including the second year, mean to you in the end? 

G: I am still firmly convinced that it is good for me to live in groups. After the bus, much more so than before. Because I noticed that groups just... creativity in groups... but that must actually be a group that has common goals. That is a very important story. I think if I can fully unfold somewhere, it is in such stories. What was insanely decisive was the way... money, for example, what that meant. To go out on the street at noon and buy food from it in the evening. An incredibly important story. A clean feeling to deal with money. To really see it as what it is, as a medium of exchange. As nothing else. And then it brought me a mad self-confidence. Because of what you can do. Without you running on any of the tracks you normally run on. It was no lost time at all. I lived things after that, after I was in Berlin and also here in Paris, where I have the feeling that it was just lost time. Which may not be true either. But I have the feeling that I'm not running at full speed. I actually only have such a feeling in the group. Then it was also a detachment from home. I hadn't lived with my parents anyway.

H: Do you have the feeling that the bus time was the detachment from home itself? 

G: Nope. Not that. My distance just got bigger. But it was already there before. Then I also recognized the possibility of conservative places, like Fulda. When I think that I would have grown up in Berlin, that something like that happens from Berlin, in this way, something like that would not be possible. That you also need a certain environment to do such things. 

H: Well, you can also say in other words that you came out of this whole story very strengthened. 

G: Yes. Until the last minute when I was alone on the bus again. I unloaded the last people in Fulda. I had unloaded Biggi in Fulda. After the second year. How I suddenly went to Berlin all by myself with my things in the bus. That was a very crazy experience. I really went from Fulda to Berlin all alone with the bus. That was really a journey for me, what do I know about how many hours. There were a lot of things going through my head. I had unloaded the people in Essen. For them the group actually went on. For them the group clearly went on. For me the group was over the moment I was out. Or better, where the others are out. Because the proof that I was still on the bus showed that I wasn't out yet. I thought to myself that way. A funny story that I really resisted this bus at the beginning. And that it really followed me. So also this idea. The idea to stay mobile. Even if I'm sitting relatively tight at the moment. But out there it still goes a little bit ahead at the bus. It will also run again sometime. Whereby that is a completely different story. Completely different. There are also no more traces. Or there are almost no more traces. I don't know the bus anymore either, it's not the same bus anymore. That is clear. I had already left it once in between, the bus. In Berlin. There you had it in your fingers. Maybe it's also quite good that it doesn't really want to run.