Hola K - Catching my breath, now being back in Germany and soaking up Munich at its best... Oktoberfest time!!! Madrid has been just one big unbelievable blur, as always. I ran into old friends at Atenas, the terraza de jour, and never looked back: Nightlife until 9:00am every day, the most amazing flamenco and salsa dives, etc.pp. Ended up joining friends to head for the beaches of Benidorm, just south of Alicante, for the last weekend, and spent the day on a cable-ski platform... woohoo! Too bad there´s no beach in Madrid... Talked to Mr. Woody already; they got delayed from the good old US but we will all meet up tonight and warm up for the Oktoberfest at the fancy Augustinerbraeu beer party house. I''m already seeing myself gaining back those 13 pounds that I've lost over the past two months...

Yowza Kermit... Madrid, Madrid! La vida, la noche, la Marcha, las Latinas - this is the life. Going out every night... been to Palacio de Gaviria, Joy Eslava, my beloved La Venencia, an awesome night at Cardamomo, witnessed a soccer pummeling of Valladolid by the royal ballet of Real Madrid (7:2), watched a bull scale the side walls into the stands at the latest Corrida at Las Ventas (oh, and also a torero getting dismembered by that same bull - they carried him out of the arena with the bull grinning), more soccer tonight (Real Madrid again, this time Champions League against Olympique de Marseille, again at Santiago Bernabeu in front of 100,000 fanatic aficionados), etc. pp. Never a dull day here! Going to check out the new terrazas, too - Bolero and Boulevard have closed at La Castellana, so now it's at Atenas below the Puente de Segovia. Hasta luego...

(Mr. Kermit Jr. speaking Tweety-style) "I thought he went bananas... He did!!! He did!!! He did go bananas!!!" Oh well, so I did go bananas - people buy fancy cars all the time, so why can't I blow money on traveling?!? Long story short, I will follow up my South America adventure with an all-business class, 5-continent, 150-day round-the-world trip... how about that, huh? You only live once! Here's the tentative schedule but as I am traveling in style I can change anything and everything as often as I want to, whenever I want to:

10-SEP-2003 Munich-Madrid La Marcha.
24-SEP-2003 Madrid-Munich Oktoberfest.
28-SEP-2003 Munich-Madrid-Buenos Aires South America, here I come!
18-DEC-2003 Buenos Aires-Madrid-Berlin To mama over b-day and x-mas.
25-DEC-2003 Berlin-Madrid-Miami-Cancun Tequila and sunshine.
30-DEC-2003 Cancun-Dallas-Tokyo Rising sun for New Years.
12-JAN-2004 Tokyo-Nadi That's Fiji, for the geography-challenged!
03-FEB-2004 Nadi-Sydney-Perth No worries, mate. Boink, boink, boink!
03-MAY-2004 Perth-Sydney-Johannesburg An old promise to the baronesse...
17-MAY-2004 Johannesburg-Nairobi Gotta do Kenya and that fancy white mountain!
01-JUN-2004 Nairobi-London-Berlin Catching my breath at mama's.
07-JUN-2004 Berlin-Zurich-Miami-Caribbean Going on visa-standby on the beach.

Note that there will be serveral major side-trips: While in Argentina, just about the entire continent is unsafe from me. Plus, add Antarctica to that. While in Fiji, I plan to hop over to Western Samoa, Tonga and Tahiti. While in Perth, Western Australia will be explored. While in South Africa, I will head to Capetown and to Kruger National Park, maybe Botswana. And, finally, while in Kenya, short hops to Tanzania and to the Seychelles are a real possibility.

Oh, I am in Munich right now. Visited the pre-Oktoberfest Theresienwiesen today - woohoo!!! They have cantinas open for the workers setting up all the shit, which is basically Oktoberfest beer and food at a quarter of the party prices... awesome! Beer really does serve as basic nutrition here. To beer or not to beer - shakes beer!

Yo KJ - just to let the last one know: The "J" obviously stands for "Jr." (if the real K was the real K and I am the original fake K then the blog can't be another fake K, got that?!?). Anyway, I survived Ios and the Far Out Club pool games (even though the last night at Flames was pretty wild and their Flaming Lamborghini truly is one downable and sexy-looking drink) and made it, fucked up ferry schedules and all, safely to Santorini. What an amazing island... truly postcard and Kodak moment material, even though the masses of stupid, emphasis on stupid, tourists are getting on my nerves. Visited the ancient settlement of Akrotori today and hiked down to overrated Red Beach (well, it's pretty but ugly commercialization with umbrellas and lounges kills it). Also did my second sunset today - yesterday's caldera version in Thira was spectacular; today's famous version of Oia was otherwordly to say the least, and I have seen my fair share of kick-ass sunsets. Bazillions of Asian video camera operators, though. Will see what the night life holds later tonight. Monday back via Athens and Zurich to Munich, then Wednesday on to beloved Madrid. Cya!

Yoodidlidoo Kermit... Just another 5-second thingy from the islands... people keep asking what kind of places I am staying - well, try these for starters: On Mykonos, it was a bungalow at Paradise Beach Camping, http://www.paradisemykonos.com. Right now, I am on Ios at Far Out Club, http://www.faroutclub.com. If you really want to know what's going on here at night, go to http://www.iospartyisland.com and don't tell my mom!!!

Okey dokey people, stop sending those inquisitive e-mails... here are a few dictinary entries, finally!

KERMIT, a.k.a. the Muppet Show frog chief reporter, green as hell but wrongly reported to be in love with that drag queen pig, was my boarding school pseudonym from 1984 to 1988. Don't ask me how my then-buddy ZAI-MEN cooked up his acronym (of course, I do know) but, as far as me and Kermit go, the story is fairly simple: Boring rainy weekend day in coed dorms led the adolescent pupils to engage in a hillarious staging of our own Muppet Show on the 11th floor. Apparently, my rendition of the kick-ass frog and a convincing love-scene with the girl who tried hard not to be Mrs. Piggy (because of the pig association, not because of me, obviously!) was the talk of the school the next Monday and I had to cope with the nickname Kermit during the following 4 years.

Shooting stars will never stop, even when they reach the top. One of the biggest smash hit albums ever produced, Bang! by Frankie Goes To Hollywood contained many words of wisdom (!) for my life. Even though the New York Edit of Relax is unsurpassed in sheer power to test those JBL!s, numerous other killer hits made this album one to remember. My line is the basic idea of Welcome to the Pleasuredome - no meaning gets more basic than this.

Para que sigue viviendo al 100%. Basically, the most to-the-point dedication on any photograph I have ever received, my dear friend Yolanda (de la noche de Marcha salvaje) passed this one to me between visits to Bolero on Castellana and whatever other night venues her throng of people and me visited during the days of debauchery way-back-when. Too bad most of them are married-with-children these days.

Yoodlidoo Kermit... woohoo!!! Time to peel off my Fruit of the Looms!!! Mykonos was its touristy beach and party self (did I mention nakkid rip-gurls dancing to house and techno on the 40 meters long Tropicana bar on Paradise Beach at 3 in the afternoon?) but today it's finally beach heaven again: Took the Hellas Flying Dolphins high-speed jumbo jet cat to Naxos and voila, here I am at nothing but white beach sand as far as you can see, a.k.a. Plaka Beach. Being a good Washbear I am staying out of the lunch-time sun and surf the net for a bit. Gonna rent a scooter tonight and head downtown, maybe I will also do some more ancient Greek stuff across the island tomorrow morning (a.k.a. after 2 p.m.) if the Meltemi hasn't blown me off the moped by then. Speaking of wind, fucking heaven for Feleep & Co. here - bazillions of French windsurfing dudettes and dudes here. At least the chicks are naked on the boards; quite the sight. So, in a nutshell, it's sweet as on Cloud 7 here so either I will go to Paros and Ios two days from now or, well, maybe I won't.

Hallihallo Kermit - finally in Greece. I am getting older... I actually didn't travel deck-class like any good InterRailer should but treated myself to a nice cabin. Patras to Olympia via Pyrgos was quite the little experience, as Greek railways are third-worldish to say the least. Sunrise the next morning at ancient Olympia made up for it, though. Transferred myself to Korinthos (Corynth) next and posed in front of the Temple of Apollo, before doing the clamber up to Akrokorinthos, an amazing expanse of stone rubble resembling a fortress atop a mountain right next to ancient Korinthos. Nafplion the next day was absolutely marvellous and relaxing, even though I climb up the 1,000+ steps of the stairs to the Palamidi Fortress overlooking the town. Nothing to complain about the beach club there... nice chairs and good house tunes all afternoon. Getting to Delphi today was another example of Greece's archaic state of public transportation - which isn't that bad as long as all you do is travel to and from Athens. Took one bus from Korinthos to Athens Terminal A, jogged around to the city bus station to catch one to the Terminal B about 5 kilometers away, missed the next bus to Amfissa by ten minutes and had to wait for another 2 1/2 hours, then another 3 1/2 hours on the bus. However, by the time you see the amazing village of Arachova on the mountain top before Delphi the views do make up for everything. Visited the Oracle but didn't get any answers to my burning questions, as I forgot to pack the obligatory sacrifice (sheep or goat). Back to Athens tomorrow, on to Mykonos two nights later. See ya...

Ciao K... mamma mia Napoli! Forget the stories about rich north and poor south of Italia - finally a place where more people honk their horns than in Madrid, more cars criss-cross in front of each other than at the Place Charles de Gaulle in Paris, with some ridiculous number of scooters added into the mix, and the power of prayer when crossing the streets as a pedestrian. The birthplace of pizza and pasta, anything from Domino's just looks decidedly wrong. And then talk about having a master-piece of a pizza at Napoli's most recommended place, da Michele, and life can't be better when relaxing in your trattoria looking at the crazy traffic after a long day of explorations. Speaking of explorations, I hiked up the volcano of Mt. Vesuvius yesterday, wandered through the excavations at the Herculaneum, and then finished the layer of dust on my skin in the streets of ancient Pompei. So, obviously, I needed some beach contrast today and caught a jet ferry to the island of Capri. I've had one beer too much last night so I decided it couldn't hurt to do some more hiking... all the way from the marina grande to the mountain top Villa Jovis of emperor Tiberius Maximus, with a breathtaking sidestep into Parco Astarita, where the most unspoiled views down 300-meter cliffs to the cobalt-blue waters can be enjoyed. My three days here would have been perfect if it hadn't been for a little accident during the last swim of the day at the Bagni Tiberio in Capri: I got swiped by a medusa; fortunately not my body, but my left wrist is about twice as big as my right one right now and it burns like fire. It's been three hours now and the pain finally seems to go away but stay away from those things! On to Brindisi tomorrow, where I'll hopefully catch the 18-hours ferry to Greece at 8 pm.

Salve Kermit - more from Bella Italia. What a nice little surprise my sidetrip to Cinque Terre turned out to be! Spent another wonderful day along the breathtaking cliffs of these 5 incredible villages - some major hiking in the late morning (Maranola to Vernazza via Carniglia), then finally some nudie exposure on a hidden beach. Talk about a fancy access... I had seen Gonava beach from way atop the cliffs during my hike and couldn't figure out how to get there. So I get all my Spanish/Italian combo ginglish together and ask some old dude how to descend to that bay and he tells me some story of abandonded railroad tunnels and doorbells to ring, which will magically open doors (or so I understood). Heureka! The old man was right - after I had found the old tunnel entrance past Corniglia I rang the bell at some private property sign and voila, a gate to the tunnel opened and a 1-mile hike under the earth followed. Once again in daylight, I found myself on this old railroad bridge with just a short descent to a pretty little beach - no hotels, no umbrellas, no tourists not sure of the meaning of "clothing optional". I finally realized that true vacation time had begun, and I couldn't help but marvel again at the Mediterranean people. How come they eat and drink so much, yet everybody seems to be in kick-ass shape? The girls are stylish as can be and would pass any bouncer at the most en-vogue nightclub in L.A., even (or especially) the way they dress going to the spiaggio. The guys are never overly muscular but always fit and some chiseled as if designed-by-Buonarotti. Not to mention that even the beachwear is never anything less but D&G, motivi, or Armani... with the obligatory Chanel shades without frames (seems like everybody has them right now). Anyway, killing an hour at the railway station in La Spezia right now, so on the way here I wondered what all the commotion in the streets was about: A little calcio on TV, so all the bars are overflowing with Milan and Juve fanatics! It's just the pre-season Trofeo Berlusconi but the San Siro is packed. I can't help it but somehow this Mediterranean thing is always getting to me and it feels more and more like my home away from home.